A little help to a newbie grower?

[Xiler]

Hey all. New grower here at 4 1/2 weeks from sprout. 4 White Widow plants in soil & 3 gal smart pots in 36" x 20" x 63" high tent; transplanted from solo cups 2 weeks ago and just started feeding this week. I just installed a Scrog screen at 7" above soil level. See pics below.

Couple questions:

1. Wanted to do a Scrog, but am concerned that it might get crowded when I flip to flowering. Should I eliminate a plant or continue with 4 plants? What would you do?

2. I am open to scrapping the Scrog and doing something else. Suggestions?

3. When should I start flowering? Top of plants are 12" above floor; light & ducts eat up 12" of tent, so I have 2'-3" to play with assuming I keep 12" clear from plant to light (400w MH/HPS).

Thanks!

 

[Antics]

You could easily get 1 plant to fill that screen brother.

Since you have 4 plants already going, if I were in the same situation, I would skip the SCROG this grow, I would mentally divide the space in the tent by 4, and train each plant to fill in the space available to it.

It's really easy to train them to grow wide, here's a great article: How To: Bend and top your way to a 1 pound monster

Just to give you an idea how big a single plant can get with a little training, this is one I'm doing right now, last time I measured it was 19" tall, 29" wide, 32" diagonally.

As for when you flower, with 4 plants, I'd start a little LST on them now, training the branches to grow outward for a week or two. If these are photo strains, then I'd also top or FIM them, and then leave the LST in place, and switch to 12/12.

But I like keeping my plants short and fairly manageable, but wide.

 

[Xiler]

Thanks for the advice bro! Much appreciated.

 

[Antics]

Thanks for the advice bro! Much appreciated.

Always happy to help! Now get a grow journal started so you can show off your hard work as they produce gorgeous nugs

 

[wheelz]

Maybe another suggestion start topping them now and continue to top all new tops.before you go to 12/12 lollipop them half way up plant.this is Wat I do I have 2 4x4 x6.5 beg tents and a 6.5x6.5x6.5 flower tent.by lollipoping I get clones an nothing but multiple colas no side buds bottom buds jus all colas I put a tomato ring around it to hold colas together allows me fit 3 more plants to flower

 

[CatDaddy]

Hey you went from solo cups to 3 gal smart pots? They look great

 

[Xiler]

Thanks. I went with Antics' suggestion and did some LST. I flipped 2 weeks ago, they are getting huge with many bud sites and filling up the tent side to side. I hope I will have enough height in the tent by harvest time.

 

[Xiler]

Hey guys, here are some pics of my 4 plants, 2 weeks into flower. The plants are pretty constrained in the tent, but I think they look like they are doing OK. They really got big from 3 weeks ago (see pics in first post).

Do the plants look like they are where they should be at 2 weeks flowering? There are some leaves near the bottom that look bad (see pic). Should I be worried about this? Any other comments or suggestions? Thanks again!!

 

[ChippyMalone]

As a plant matures, lower leaves,which were critical to the plant when it was young, become shaded and lose their ability to provide more energy to the plant than they are using themselves. When this happens, the plant reabsorbs any nutrients from the leaf's cells and then voluntarily drops that leaf in a process called "senescence".

Those lower leaves are just natrually dropping. No worries. When you are trying to diagnose a nutrient problem or disease, you generally want to pay attention to new growth. I always say that leaf damage on old growth tells the life story and past history of the plant, but new growth tells you what is happening right now right where the plant is growing. Look at the meristem tissue if you want to figure out what the plant is missing to be able to grow as it should.

Lots of people purposefully pluck all of these lower leaves, but I've found that if I just let the plant do it on it's own, that it will "self prune" almost exactly as I would have done myself. What I will do is pinch off the little sucker stems that would produce crappy little buds. That's the reason for defoliating down low. Well, that and increasing ventilation. I simply keep a fan blowing through the understory of my well trained plants. When I water, I remove the dropped leaves. By the time the plant is 3 weeks into flowering, the lower half of the plant is as bare as it would have been if I had plucked all of those fan leaves when they were green. My thought is that by allowing the plant to prune itself, it is able to retain more useful nutrients that were inside the leaf when it was contributing to photosynthesis.

Anyway, that's this laissez-faire grower's thoughts on defoliation.

Ediot: just wanted to add that my advice is really for a small scale medical grow. I understand that larger grows cannot take so much time with each individual plant and just doing a wholesale "defoliation day" project makes sense in such circumstances and grow rooms. So, as always, YMMV.

Also, you built that nice screen. Why not go with that? One of the things that new growers mess up on is deviating from their original plan during their first few grows.
Keep your plants in veg for another couple weeks while you train them on the screen. It will be a lot of fun and you'll learn a bunch. It doesn't matter that some other dude grows one giant plant and you have mutlple smaller plants, as long as your plants fill the space that you can provide with enough light. I do a square foot gardening method and each plant lives within one square foot of space. It's just a way that I learned and feel comfortable with for my needs. I could do it differently, I could maybe get a higher yield or whatever, but when you have something that works for you, just do that thing.

Edit: Ha. I didn't see the starting date of this thread. Ignore most of this unless you are someone else in a similar situation as OP three weeks ago or so! Ha!

 

[PTSD 4 ME]

Info was spot on tho!