More growth, then more tucking this morning. It's getting pretty full, not sure when to just let it start stretching upwards vs tucking or perhaps raising the screen like 2 inches to easier deal with everything. Here it was before the mornings tuck at the end of the light cycle.
In cases like this, i just leave the lights off for additional time to 'set' it up for the 12/12. In my 3rd grow i believe i left the lights off for 24 hrs before i started 12/12. Kinda like a way to really tell your plants its that time of the season to start flowering. Its perfectly safe
So in this case, you have some options. Its absolutely better to get your lights as close as possible to the plants during flowering, or at least after the stretch. The further your lights are, the more stretch you will get so you can use this to your advantage. Same being said for keeping them close. For example, if you have ample space and you feel your plants just arent very tall as you want, you could raise your light to induce more stretching. However if your space is limited, you could put them closer to encourage tighter node spacing and more compact/shorter plants. One thing is certain though, once stretch is over (21 days in flower) you absolutely want the lights as close as possible to encourage the best bud growth. The closer the light is to buds, the more umol's it gets. A plant can use i believe up to 1200 umol's without the addition of co2. The further the light is from plants tops, the less umol's its getting. This is why the top buds are always the biggest (aside from being a main stem vs side shoots), because they are receiving the best amount of umol's as they are closest to the light. Now whats good about your grow area and lights is you have perfect light coverage, that is to say your plants aren't outside directly under the light which means you are getting 'perfect light coverage'. The umol's from the light falls off incredibly quickly the further outside from directly under light, so you're golden in that case. Your buds will recieve the best light coverage they can get so its just about now getting the light as close as you can without burning the tops of leave/buds from having the light too close. Fans blowing on top of canopy definitely help immensenly so you can have the light closer. 12" is what you will want to try around day 21 to 25, when you're sure the stretch is done. From that point on you will want to keep a very close eye on the upper leaves to make sure they arent being nuked from light heat or intensity. if the leaves start turning crunchy or are all showing weird issues, leaf taco'ing up/inwards, thats a good sign the light needs to be backed off a bit.
Just the hydroguard has been enough to combat root rot in my case, plus adds the beneficials.
I do believe having additional hours off makes plants mature faster during flower, so if the thought to have something like 11on/13off or more, thats not a good idea unless you're going for a quick lesser quantity bud. A single day to set a schedule isnt going to hurt.
Thats kind of what i was thinking too. I need to either switch to a rotating disc fan for even air exchange across all plants, or i need to get an additional tower fan hung horizontal for the opposite side haha.
In my case i have a much wider range of water, 7 5-gallon buckets of water with a total of 28 gallons of water that is recirculating through them all. In your case, if i ever did a bucket like yours i would try for every 10 days and see how it goes. If it does fine i'd try for 15 days in my next grow. If weird deficiencies and toxicities starting, id know 15 days was too long. Keep doing it how you are, thats good for a first grow.
