Top Colas Taking Longer?

Anybody experiences this before?

A couple of the top colas are taking a lot longer for the stigma to turn orange and calyx to swell.

The tops did have some heat stress, and have a couple of deficiencies showing, only really on the tops, the lowers seem absolutely fine. I was letting my coco get a bit too dry previously, and these symptoms don’t appear to have worsened since I started feeding more regularly. Takes around 3 - 3.5L per day in 5gal fabric pot to get some runoff. Also one threw out so many leaves from the bud, not very frosty at the top either (pic 1&2) which I assume was the heat stress issue.

It appears a lot of my lower buds are a lot closer, but the top colas have loads of white stigma, with none seeming to turn yet, and with the front right bud, pictured below, calyx not looking very swollen etc. These did foxtail a bit, but don’t appear to have thrown any new stigma out for a while but they just seem to be staying white.

I don’t want to harvest them early but don’t really want to degrade the lowers either as they look a lot prettier/frostier than the troubled top of the tops!

1.This one of the tallest... very leafy, foxtailed, no orange at the top.



2.I just took another pic from the back where I don’t usually see and it looks a bit better lower down the bud.


3. Bit of a general view, the above leafy bud is out of view front right. The back left also pretty white at the top with no turn of orange higher up, but calyx looking swollen on this one.



Basically just wondering if anyone else has experienced the tops not maturing as quickly as the rest, or any opinions on why (I would assume it was down to the heat stress?) or how you would approach harvest?

Feeding GH trio with rainwater & calmag + couple ml of Atami bloombastic. Usually fed to 600ppm, couple feeds around 800, now tapering down, and currently at about 450ppm. PH previously to 5.8 now swing from 5.8 - 6.2. Run off has been slowly dropping, currently around 4.75 (which is why I started PH’ing a bit higher)

All opinions welcome!

Oh, for the record, flipped on 23/2/19 with first signs of flower on 2/3/19 so day 62 of flower and 69 from flip. Barneys farm red cherry berry.

Happens if you mess up some - live and learn

They dont look too bad man , any stress and damage will slow them down especially in the areas it was done to.

Get checking those trichomes under at least a 30X loupe.

Sometimes areas that get a huge amount of new growth can seem 'behind' some bottom bits but its just because theyre throwing more flowers.

I personally incrementally dim my lights during the last 10-14 days along with reducing CO2, temperature and feed PPM. This results in denser, frostier nugs.

CptBluemax said:

They dont look too bad man , any stress and damage will slow them down especially in the areas it was done to.

Get checking those trichomes under at least a 30X loupe.

Sometimes areas that get a huge amount of new growth can seem 'behind' some bottom bits but its just because theyre throwing more flowers.

Click to expand...

Thanks @CptBluemax I’ve got a little digital microscope thing... I’ll grab some pics at lights on and drop them in here! But yea it seems like it threw new growth out in response to the heat stress, just seems a bit behind at the top because of the new growth, though I was going to dry in the tent so don’t have the luxury of part harvesting lol.

Renfro said:

I personally incrementally dim my lights during the last 10-14 days along with reducing CO2, temperature and feed PPM. This results in denser, frostier nugs.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip @Renfro ! Unfortunately I can’t dim my 250w HPS, I guess it’s already dim enough lol but have been reducing the PPM for the last week, and had the temps down at around 25c since the heat damage to the tops! Maybe I’ll slow the exhaust down a bit also.

Appreciate the responses guys!

Few trich pics from my little cheap Chinese usb microscope.

shes 70% Indica according to info so if you want got a good smattering of ambers and as little clear as possible , I mean you want as little clear as possible always really , just not overboard on the ambers.

Its always by the ears with each plant but , Indicas supposedly better to let go 5-10% amber then harvest..........Sativas around 15-25%........ harvested my super lemon haze about 15-20% and its the bomb bomb. Some change very slow some change very fast , my SLH change was very very slow , clears turning into cloudy at the same rate as cloudy to amber at the end almost.

Theyre not usually ready or coming to ready until they start consuming their main fan leaves , defo seems a bell for the end.

Not an expert by any means.