This stretch is pissing me off!!!

3 weeks into flowering and my Widow is commiting suicide...WTF??? It's stretched completely up passed the highest point i can raise my lights.

Kept the lights as close to her as i could without buning leafs the whole time. didnt have any light leaks in her 12hrs of dark...ever!

So WTF do i do now?!?!?! this whole situation is just pissing me off and stressing me out. I dont know what to do....How do i get her to STOP GROWING UP!! and just flower out??

your fan leaves are hella droopy are you under or over watering?
you could of LST'd her but its way to late now, even thou that stem looks quite thin,
try moving the pot as far left as you can and tie the top of the plant over to the right as low as you can without the stem snapping

hopefully you can get some side branching this way aswell as i cant see any :O what are those lights? if you can afford to get better lights do it

and you could allways find a new way to fix your lights higher to the ceiling after you bend down the plant a little and move the lights you could have a nice bit of extra space... even thou during flowering its probs abit late to start trying to promote side branching but i dont see that plant harvesting more than a 8th, no offence meant.

there are a few chems on the market that are supposed to help with stretch, I use B-52 as a foil feed this round and it did make a huge difference, very little stretch at all, but you have to use if from the start.....Look around you local shop or online....Good luck JR

start bending that bitch down, you could probably cut the height in half....

The upper 1/4 of the plants leafs are droopy, I think, because they're just not getting enough light. the lower 3/4 leafs look good to me.
Thx for the responces guys, I think I'm going to try to bend her over (gigaty) and see how that works out. May try to re-disign my lights as well but, with the 2+ feet of space i have, and the way I grew her, she was supposed to be short and fat...It's just a lot of time invested now and it's not working out the way i thought she whould.

BTW, 200w (8 x 25W) CFL's and the stem, at the base, is about as big around as my pinky finger....stem is pretty stiff all the way up.

+1 to what jrinlv says. Start training her, tie off low and get a good anchor, then tie off a little higher and pull down, when it adjusts start training it around in a spiral pattern and you can turn that stretch to your advantage. Looking at the stage of bud developement you still have time to do a little training and work on that height. I had a really stretchy genetic recently that I topped multiple times, tied down at 90 degrees and put into flower, she gave me a touch over 2 1/2oz with 395w. Looking at the leaf shape and length on your plants it is a similar genetic (long thin leaves= long thin stems) and they need control or you get a 9 foot plant with not much bud because you can't get the light coverage.

Just tried to "bend her over", wasnt pulling very hard, and the main stem just kinda gave...and went to 90 degess. Felt like it broke. went back up straight but that spot feels real weak.
May not look like it in the pics, but she's just short of 2 feet tall.

yeah, mm it will make a knot in that place and strenghun its self just be carefull, not the kind of think you want to happen while in flower thou

i meant lean it to the side at the top i new it wouldnt bend, and its way to late to spiral it round the pot as you've just found out

good luck guy

Next grow try LST from an early age. I have a lady who was LST'd and topped at 6" tall and now look at what she is doing. Her pot is 12" wide and she is about 16 inches wide. From the top you can see her branches (all about the same height) starting to stretch from 12/12 which started a week ago.

Once it gets about 6-8 fan leaves top her and start training.
You will be amazed with what happens.
On the light issue if you get some clamp light fixtures and use your Y sockets you could go horizontal with the lights and gain a little room up. Big head screws in the lid of your box could be used to clip the sockets to. Take the clamp off the fixture and clamp the fixture to the screw instead of the knob on the clamp.

Good luck 7

If you are really in a bind, you can actually snap the stem in half but no off ( so that it lays over on its side ). Put some Root Tech all over the snapped part of the stem and support it so that it lays on its side. In a day or 2 it will have recovered and you will be ready to go with more room to grow.

I tried to lst this plant too late and broke it right down the center. Threw some root tech on it, took a q-tip and soaked it in root tech and left it on the plant's damaged stalk for a day. Removed the q-tip when it was dried up and the pic is a result of the damage. Plant is healthy and doing just as good as its surrounding sisters with very minimal to no growth difference.

The root tech is really only needed if you actually break the skin of the stalk.

good luck.

Your plant is acting real strange ! Are you sure it is a female plant ? Cause from what i've heard male plants tend to get taller like that . well im not an expert just trying to help

topping, lst, scrog... all of these would have worked to keep you plant height down

Also, hps lighting helps

i am having a stretch problem too. I am running an aero setup in a 8x8x7 tent and just had to take the roof off and build a pvc hanging system that went all the way up to the roof of my house. i first bent trained the plants for 2 days and got a nice S shape out of them which saved me some room but they kept stretching so i was forced to remove the top of the tent. i am just about week 5 into flower and have about 5 foot tall plants. 3 lsd, 3 og kush 18, and 3 white berry. i am hoping for a good yield off these plants. i am going to try to use some bushmaster to control the height next time and maybe this would work well for the OP of this thread if you have limited space. it is kinda spendy but a little bottle will last a long time.

Uhh one tip is to have the light directly over the top of the plant and have a good reflector even if it is homemade over the lights so they shine down

Riddle said:

Your plant is acting real strange ! Are you sure it is a female plant ? Cause from what i've heard male plants tend to get taller like that . well im not an expert just trying to help

Click to expand...

That is what my first thought was. It could also just be a case of messed up genes.

did u have ur CFL close enough during early stages of growth?

Thx for all the great advice guys....I'll def. try some of those tech. next grow. Also, I'm going to get my hands on some "Autoflower dwarf" seeds next time cause i dont need a lot of bud to survive..I'm just growing 1 plant for personal use (couple of w/e's a month). any recomandations on really LOW GROWING strains would be much appriciated.

On a lighter note, I took some extreme measures today...not sure if it's going to work or not but, I chopped "HER" in half (yes, she's def. female). Cut her down about 4 node's from the top and left myself about a 4 inch stem. cut some slots in the very bottom of the stem and planted her in another pot....We'll see.

Try to get some pics tomorrow.

Can't believe no one has given you this advice it is so important when growing with CFL's.

1) Get you CFL's no less than 1 inch from every budsite if possible. If your not LST'ing, ScrOGing just get them as close as you can to the top of the plant.

2) Get some blue light in the room during flowering it stops stretch massively and still might help you now!!

John Stevens said:

Can't believe no one has given you this advice it is so important when growing with CFL's.

1) Get you CFL's no less than 1 inch from every budsite if possible. If your not LST'ing, ScrOGing just get them as close as you can to the top of the plant.

2) Get some blue light in the room during flowering it stops stretch massively and still might help you now!!

Click to expand...

Bro, trust me, the lights were as close as i could get them at ALL TIMES....i even burn a little of the outer leaf tips at times. It just kept growing up through my light system...

dosnt look like the top that i cut off, about an hour ago, is going to make it. the whole thin is whithered and bent over....sux, but...oh well. I'll keep learning.