stunted growth. plants growing bushy but not vertical. help please!!??

my girls are growing really slowly and the node spacing has gotten super tight. the smaller plant is near 2.5 months old and just wont shoot up for love nor money. the lower leaves are just drying to a crisp as the new ones come through. little to no vertical growth.


they've been getting just water.

super tight nodes are normally awesome but down the line the plant just turned into a monster shrub bush. mould central




anyone got any ideas? all help much appreciated.

Have you ph'd the little ones? Seems like the larger plant was trained to grow that way...i would def clean it up

no i've not ph'd them i'll try n dig out the old meter. though they're in fresh coco and have only had plain water and a little cannazym?! the larger plant was one of 4 that went this way super short nodes. it vegged like that i let them go near 12 weeks in veg and they just bushed very little vertical growth at all. just nodes nodes nodes makes me think there's some environmental factor i'm missing.

Yo you got 15,000 post 10X more than me?
All them posts and you don't know?
2.5 months I'm glad you didn't let it go till it was toooo late~

Post count, like rep don't mean jack shit. Thanks for the input....

maybe when you vegged the big one it just grew so fat and short that when it tried to stretch in flowering it did but i didnt do much
thats what i think haha maybe veg them less time and they wont end up so bush like

They'd have been 18" flipped early. These are near 20 year old clone only strains. So I'm confident its some environment factor.

Man, that sucks.
I been looking into using coco by itself as a medium as apposed to hydroton. I've read you need to wash some brands before using it.
You think that might be the case? Is this your first coco grow?

you say you are growing in coco...and only giving straight water...uh...nutrients? coco doesn't really have any nutrients in it like potting soil does...its more like growing in hydro where you have to give it the nutrients it needs...you are stunting the shit out of it by not giving it any building blocks to grow with

the little ones look like they need food , where are u getting your water ? if you ph is to hight or low it only makes some nuti available ... the big one looks like your tops were cut to make it go bushy , what are u using for light ?

Don Gin and Ton said:

They'd have been 18" flipped early. These are near 20 year old clone only strains. So I'm confident its some environment factor.

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thats it,you gonna have to breed her some legs.......i really dont see the environment,makeing them stay so short,with tight nodes.but what do i know..
how close is your lights?what kind of lights are you useing?
maybe,just maybe...you are treating them to good,or maybe,they want to go outside?

cruzer101 said:

Man, that sucks.
I been looking into using coco by itself as a medium as apposed to hydroton. I've read you need to wash some brands before using it.
You think that might be the case? Is this your first coco grow?

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if you buy canna coco the regular or the pro they're both fine to use straight out the bag man. good to mix in a little perlite too

massah said:

you say you are growing in coco...and only giving straight water...uh...nutrients? coco doesn't really have any nutrients in it like potting soil does...its more like growing in hydro where you have to give it the nutrients it needs...you are stunting the shit out of it by not giving it any building blocks to grow with

Click to expand...

I generally dont give any nutes for the first couple of weeks with from seed plants i dont find normally they need it. the clones fair enough yeah. i've given them a 1/4 strength feed. i'm going to give them 1/4 strength one feed and bat guano the next give them plenty of N. I still dont think not nuting them is the cause, i mean in nature rain water is choc full of goodies.

larry005 said:

the little ones look like they need food , where are u getting your water ? if you ph is to hight or low it only makes some nuti available ... the big one looks like your tops were cut to make it go bushy , what are u using for light ?

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waters straight out the tap. i'm blesssed with decent ph and not too hard or soft where i am. i'm using a 200w blue spec cfl i actually thinned the big plants out and they still bushed up

genuity said:

thats it,you gonna have to breed her some legs.......i really dont see the environment,makeing them stay so short,with tight nodes.but what do i know..
how close is your lights?what kind of lights are you useing?
maybe,just maybe...you are treating them to good,or maybe,they want to go outside?

Click to expand...

hahahah gen breed them legs!? get them a wheelchair more like. 200w blue cfl at about 18 inches above them. Ive been thinking ill put my chilli plant in there n see if that goes well.

they best straighten up and fly right or they'll go outside...... in the bin



thanks for all the suggestions guys

I am no coco grower so don't flame me.....how much nutrient value does the coco you are using have??.....those plants look hungry to me.....

hit them with some more light and give them some nutes half strength ,not looking to great , for 2.5 months old they look il 2me

Don Gin and Ton said:

I generally dont give any nutes for the first couple of weeks with from seed plants i dont find normally they need it. the clones fair enough yeah. i've given them a 1/4 strength feed. i'm going to give them 1/4 strength one feed and bat guano the next give them plenty of N. I still dont think not nuting them is the cause, i mean in nature rain water is choc full of goodies.

Click to expand...

Yeah but the medium contains most of the nutrients not the water..I am no coco grower and don't know if it has any nutrients but those plants look hungry to me especially the last pic of a smaller plant the only other thing it can be is some type of nutrient lock out if your ph is way off.......thats if your environment is ideal,only so many things it can be....

jcdws602 said:

I am no coco grower so don't flame me.....how much nutrient value does the coco you are using have??.....those plants look hungry to me.....

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hahah no danger bro. i'm not one for flaming. right now the coco will have 1/4 ish strength a ml each of canna A & B

STILL PUFFIN said:

hit them with some more light and give them some nutes half strength ,not looking to great , for 2.5 months old they look il 2me

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yeah thats next on the agenda. i've got 1200w of hps not doing anything at the mo. i'll chuck them under a 600w n see what happens this next week. i dont want to fry them though

jcdws602 said:

Yeah but the medium contains most of the nutrients not the water..I am no coco grower and don't know if it has any nutrients but those plants look hungry to me especially the last pic of a smaller plant the only other thing it can be is some type of nutrient lock out if your ph is way off.......thats if your environment is ideal,only so many things it can be....

Click to expand...

never dealt with lockout but i guess it's deffo possible. i'll get on it and find the ph meter tonight when i move things round. it's pretty hot in the veg cab that could have something to do with it i guess.

cheers guys, i'll report back in a few days n see what happens

yep well i'm a fool and they were just underfed. starved more like. though i find it hard to believe that the big ones with the super tight nodes could be caused by being underfed if anything they'd have been stunted not overproduce nodes?! i doubt i'll ever know.

the small ones now

Problems back

a while back you might remember i was having an issue with my plants growing bushy rather than vertically. I stopped growing to move house and set back up. did a first run in new coco and had no problems the plants grew as normal, second run re used the coco and they've grown stunted with more side branching than you could imagine.

anyway pic tells a thousand words so here goes:

the original plants that went bushy looked like this come harvest:
View attachment 2210701

The new plants, not the same cuts or even strains, these all came from seed.

View attachment 2210702View attachment 2210703View attachment 2210704View attachment 2210705View attachment 2210706View attachment 2210707

at first i thought it was because I'd topped the larger ones out and lollipopped underneath but this amount of side branching just isn't right.

nutewise they've had canna A&B and a little bat guano. nothing else.

I've yet to find anyone else who's had similar issues!!?

anyone got any ideas?

I was thinking i might get a fresh bag of coco and try up potting into that but there's risk of contaminating the fresh (if the issue lies in the coco?!). these plants have been under the 600 but due to the large sativa i have in with them they've been a good 2-3 foot from the light. so they should have been stretching for the sun!?
View attachment 2210708
it's doing my nut in, but i don;t know how to correct it. i'm thinking i may have to scrub the lot and start afresh, new pots, coco, plants, but i'm loathed to do that without knowing the root of the problem.

anyone even had a similar problem? i can't believe i'm the only grower to have ever had this issue

i had a similar thing because to way too much nutes
i was using a self watering pot with its own res, and i just kept pushing in more nuted water and never flushing it out. the EC must have been insane.
the pic on my avatar is from that. looks cool but it was a mess

the original problem plants were in an auto pot system doing the same as yours, feeding constantly, these new ones are just in standard pots. I'll give a flush and see what happens. though i would have expected to see burn signs on the leaves if it was too hot a mix.

what happened when you flushed or did you let it go to term?

thanks for the input Dave!