Bud Size Not Overwhelming - Why? Not enough light? Strain? Pots too small?

F

flexy123

Well-Known Member
I am vegging in a greenhouse and for flowering we put plants up on our sun-roof. This is already our 5th or so harvest, but I am less than overwhelmed with the number and size of the buds. See picture.

buds219.JPG


This one is "Somango" feminized. As far as I remember my wife even topped it at some point.
It should be in week 6 or 7 of flowering.

What you see is all those branches and "ok" sized buds on the top, but the rest of the branches all those small and dainty "buds" if you see what I mean.

My question is...WHY?

(I am feeding organic with Plant Magic Oldtimer nutes).

There are some explanations:

* Those pots we use for those grows are WAY too small, this maybe the reason why the branches don't get many LARGE buds?
* There is not enough sun light currently (I mean it's December) to have them grow many LARGE buds?
* It's the strain, the yield is simply not that great?

We had similar harvests in the last weeks but those last few ones are all like that with branches with less than impressive buds.

Here is an example (not mine) how I'd like them to be:

bigbuds3.jpg


Nice, big buds along the branches. Not some dinky little buds like ours have.

Anyone know why?
 
flexy123 said:
Oups...interesting! We always harvest week 8 at the latest...I guess I just wait longer this time and see
Click to expand...

there a few cannabis that flower 6 to 8 weeks most cannabis is around 10to11weeks some sativa go 14weeks but keep a close eye near the end thats when the buds start packing your doing a good job keep it up

P.S Dont for get to flush the plant for nice clean smoke :blunt:
 
flexy123 said:
I am vegging in a greenhouse and for flowering we put plants up on our sun-roof. This is already our 5th or so harvest, but I am less than overwhelmed with the number and size of the buds. See picture.

buds219.JPG


This one is "Somango" feminized. As far as I remember my wife even topped it at some point.
It should be in week 6 or 7 of flowering.

What you see is all those branches and "ok" sized buds on the top, but the rest of the branches all those small and dainty "buds" if you see what I mean.

My question is...WHY?

(I am feeding organic with Plant Magic Oldtimer nutes).

There are some explanations:

* Those pots we use for those grows are WAY too small, this maybe the reason why the branches don't get many LARGE buds?
* There is not enough sun light currently (I mean it's December) to have them grow many LARGE buds?
* It's the strain, the yield is simply not that great?

We had similar harvests in the last weeks but those last few ones are all like that with branches with less than impressive buds.

Here is an example (not mine) how I'd like them to be:

bigbuds3.jpg


Nice, big buds along the branches. Not some dinky little buds like ours have.

Anyone know why?
Click to expand...

-Genetics
-Fert/nutes
-enviroment
-Climate in general
-Techniques used during the grow

There can be several of these factors going astir with your plant. "Oldschool organics" could be the cause of the issue. Or just the nutes and fertz your using in general. It could be the genetic background of the plant itself. Or you didn't use certain techniques to really fatten the budz up..

If you want those types of budz in the picture you provided below yours, there are a few things you must learn. Lollipoping, proper feeding schedule (with the good nuts/ferts) and certain techniques used to aid the process.

As you know the last two weeks of harvest or flowering is the most exciting. But you must keep your wits about you and still follow procedure. Only water for the last two weeks of it's life will help flush out all the nutes you've given it during it's life. Also (this is where you get the big thick budz) If your able to lower the humidity to 28-36% the plant will recognize this as winter is coming fast and go into higher trichome and resin production. Now if you cut or slice your plants stock towards the bottom (cut about half way through the stock or a bit less) Then your plant thinks it's getting eaten by a deer or animal. THEN the good parts! (if you have a marijuana strain that doesn't typically produce big thick budz organically you'll want to do this) Hit her with a 8/16 light schedule. This is "the last straw" with the plant. 8 hours of light and 16 of dark tells her winter is closer then she originally thought. So she think she's getting eaten and winter is coming FAST. What this dose is stress the plant out and makes her (if done the way I stated) almost quadruple in trichome and resin production. She makes her last ditch effort to fatten up and produce nanners.. Now this of course isn't what you want. so only do these techniques ( cutting and lowering the humidity along with changing to 8/16 ) in the last 48-56 hours of the plants life so she doesn't have enough time to produce naners and pollinate your fat fine budz. ;) These techniques are usually for advanced growers, but it's not that difficult to do. If you follow what I said precisely, your genetically small budz will not only be bigger (resin glands the size of grapes) but the trichome production will be ridiculous.

Basically that's a few little hints/tips/secrets in marijuana cultivating.. But, even with small genetic budz, if you use the right soil/organic/nute/fertz throughout the grow, then they will grow bigger. It's all a fine art perfected by trial and error my friends ! :):Namaste::thumb:
 
I would more likely put it down to strain genetics & that it is only just past mid flowering, she will get fatter.

Buds on different strains all are various to some degree & how the plant grows.
 
I am not certain what the full compliment of nutes and additives are you are using but I find it is much easier to really pack on the weight when you are using some sort of Alfalfa like AN Nirvana (I just use alfalfa with some stuff).

Alfalfa Meal Gardening Info â€" Usage And Source For Alfalfa Meal Fertilizer

10 Benefits of Using Alfalfa in Your Garden


And if you want to make it just explode with thick dense growth nothing works better than Chitosan (main ingredient in AN Bud factor X). It causes the plant to have sort of an allergic reaction. It thinks it is infested with insects so it runs up the resin to make it in hospitable and the flowering to give its offspring a better chance of survival. It has many other benefits like making the plants stronger against viruses and disease as well.

Chitosan in Plant Protection

Chitosan effects on floral production, gene expression, and anatomical changes in the Dendrobium orchid (PDF Download Available)

Both of these can be bought for dirt cheap at any gardening supply store and there is a lot of info on the web about how to use them in gardening.

:goodluck:
 
For Chitosan you will want to ask for Crab meal or Shrimp meal. I use this stuff.

Amazon: Down To Earth Crab Meal Fertilizer, 5 lb.

1666927304427.png


And this for alfalfa
Amazon: Down To Earth 5-Pound Alfalfa Meal 2.5-0.5-2.5

1666927331548.png
 
There is a shit ton of papers on this out there. That stuff does amazing things. It was found out a long time ago that for flowering plants it causes massive amounts of fruits. Most of the new studies are about how it boost the immune system and makes plants not just tolerant but immune to disease and infections of all types. In Cannabis it makes resin production takes off. The stems of your plants will be very sticky.

It is the secret sauce in the most expensive cannabis blooming additive out there. But it is made from waste material from the fishing industry. So the raw material is dirt cheap. You just have to learn how to use it. OR go buy some AN Bud factor X and give it a try.

Last time I over did it and there was sap oozing out all over the place.

And alfalfa...that is just straight up old school organic growing 101. I don't know an organic farmer not using it.

While we are on the topic another secret ingredient that aint so secret is Atlantic kelp. There is a specific type of kelp in the Atlantic that processes down to Ascophyllum nodosum. Look that up and again you will find a ton of info on it. You can get a bottle for dirt cheap at Home depot of this stuff. Everybody is making it. Seriously if you look on the labels you will find most Hydro supliment families have something with this. Just look on the back label for "Ascophyllum nodosum". Advanced Nutrients makes some, Botanicare makes some, you name it they all make something with Ascophyllum nodosum.

Benefits of Sea Kelp

Alaska Pennington 32 oz. Pure Kelp Plant Food-100509476 - The Home Depot

If you add those 3 things you have just put in the major blooming additives needed for max yield. There are others but start with these 3.
 
my grows allways vary. i dont know why. nutes, temps, pot size, light. nothing seems to be a factor. i think ph is a factor. and, too much ferts, will cause small buds. they stop taking up nutes, when its too hot. or out of ph. no uptake=no grouth. mosts of my weight, comes on in the last few weeks, when i have flushed the heck out of them, and all they have is fresh, ph water. and the last ten days or so, a little molases in the water. thats when mine really swell. i ounce got a large crop, off five god buds. i have never been able to duplicate that one grow. it was in a tent. no tent since. was using foxfarm line.
 
-Genetics
-Fert/nutes
-enviroment
-Climate in general
-Techniques used during the grow
Click to expand...

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in those categories above.

Watering techniques and infestations : spider mites and or/overwatering can reduce yield.

As well as absolute pot size, allowing your plants to become root bound before transplant can reduce yield.

Heck overfertilizing, temperature swings, and too small a plant can reduce yield.


- - -

I would stay away from 'the one sure answer" as a solution, instead I would do as most of us do and continue to learn, experiment and refine personal techniques.

Genetics is a good place to start. Get a few seeds of the same strain from the same breeder as some plants you have seen here and admired.
 
In how far would simple crab meal compare to "Bud Factor X"? It is my impression that Chitosan is more than just crab meal, they treated it (deacyli-something) so I don't know whether it would really compare.

The other question I have...do you have experience with mycorrhizae fungi? (For root stimulation).
I read so much good things about it.

Right now I am only using my two organic nutes, Plant Magic Plus Grow/Bloom. On occasion I give some CalMag too and after transplanting (which I don't do often) I use a root stimulator for the first watering.

But from what you say, the Chitosan looks interesting and the Mycorrhizzae I'd also like to try just because I read so much good things.
 
flexy123 said:
In how far would simple crab meal compare to "Bud Factor X"? It is my impression that Chitosan is more than just crab meal, they treated it (deacyli-something) so I don't know whether it would really compare.

The other question I have...do you have experience with mycorrhizae fungi? (For root stimulation).
I read so much good things about it.

Right now I am only using my two organic nutes, Plant Magic Plus Grow/Bloom. On occasion I give some CalMag too and after transplanting (which I don't do often) I use a root stimulator for the first watering.

But from what you say, the Chitosan looks interesting and the Mycorrhizzae I'd also like to try just because I read so much good things.
Click to expand...

If you are adding nutrients to regular waterings, organically formulated or not, those are basically incompatible with mycorrhizal fungi.

The mycorhizal relationship depends on an exchange where the plant offers sugars to the fungi and the fungi presents nutrients to the plant roots.

Most directly, watering nutrients directly to the roots, removes any incentive for the plants to feed the myco fungi and they stop. The mycos die off.

Indirectly, most nutes contain stuff like molasses that feed ALL fungi in the soil, not just the ones n a mycorrhizal relationship. This creates a competition between fungi that often cause the mycos and other cannabus benefical soil organisms to be eaten by less beneficial organisms.

- - - - -

A living soil food web, of which mycorrhizal relationships are a key feature, depends on extracting nutrients and micronutrients from the soil - not the water. Nutrients in foliar feeding is OK. Nutrients in the water is bad. I have fed my girls water only for the last 8 months, with some of them getting a layer of worm castings when I transplant a new plant into the empty pot after harvest. In this scenario, a semi-annual addition of mycorrhizzal fungi and a semi-annual layer of worm castings makes sense. Personally, I would stick with Glomus Intraradices only and skip all the mutli-myco formulations.
 
Wow....this too is extremely interesting, but TBH this must be the first time I had someone saying that nutrients are bad, but I guess you're saying they're "bad" respective counterproductive when someone would also feed mycorrhizae, as you point out?

(Which of course would strongly contradict nute makers such as Plant Magic who 'recommend' their granules [which are basically mycorrhizae and some other organisms] in addition to their organic stuff.)

While I think the idea of not having to feed ANY nutes is "interesting" I also feed nutes because they bring my (very hard) water's ph down which right now is 8.5 or something...so this alone would be reason for me to just keep feeding my nutes. (I grow in soil).

So when I interpret this right what you say I can scrap the idea of mycorrhizae if I want to keep feeding my nutes? (Respective it just wouldn't make too much sense?)
 
First I wanted to add if you go down this path you are going to want to look into adding sugar to you program. Old timers used to use molasses but not just any molasses and there is a process to get it broken down to be usable by the plants. Plenty of "how toos" on here and the web. But again every company is bottling some form of broken down molasses you can buy of the shelf and that stuff is cheap really for how much you use in most cases so again your call. The reason is because like in the picture you showed of what you want it to look like you may start to have so many flowers that the fan leaves can not support it. Sugars are the result of photosynthesis. When you add these sugars you are giving it more available resources that photosynthesis would have done. It is kind of like putting back on some fan leaves. So when they start to stop working near the end and are yellowing a little bit of sugar will help them over the finish line.


Regarding Chitosan...Yea there are a few ways to do it. It is not complicated but it does take a bit of reading. I use a tea brew to break it down from the raw ingredients. I am starting to toy with different ways of adding it directly to my supper soil to see if it can be effectively broken down that way with no effort. I have posted my tea brew on here multiple times...which leads into the next thing.

I did a real detailed explanation once of the fungi and bacteria and additives and how to get the entire line of AN into a single bucket from a tea brew. But it was buried in someones thread I was helping. A few months later a guy posted a nice one and at the end I posted the recipe again I am working with. So I will link you to that and it will explain much of the questions you have about fungi (and should be asking about bacteria).

Tea Bag your DWC

And if you are growing in soil and want the best results and don't know about "Super Soil" then you need to go do some reading on this. If you are knowledgeable you can use chemicals and do really good as well. If you make good soil you can just add water.

What is your Super Soil?


:Namaste:
 
Also I think you are confusing nutes and additives. Nutrients are things the plant directly uses in support of photosynthesis like Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. They are not food for the plant. Light is the food. The leaves turn that into sugars the plant uses, then the nutes are used "as needed" to help with converting sugars into healthy plant growth. But adding nutes beyond the level of available sugars will burn the plants. And you do not need lots of nutrients. There is a very large window but it is best not to ride too close to the top. If for example all of a sudden you broke a major stalk off and the sugar production goes way down and you were ridding high you now have too much in there and will burn what is left. So there is a balancing act of nutrient concentration that is really just in support of the fan leaf size and count. And this is why you have to up nutes as they get bigger and more leaves. More production requires more support.


There are many things we add that have nothing to do with aiding in the photosynthetic process and are not nutrients. There are various strains of Fungi. The primary one that is used is a family Glomus.
Rhizophagus irregularis - Wikipedia

This particular Mycorrhizal Fungi Aids in Phosphorus uptake and works symbiotically with the roots. But this is by no means a Nutrient. this is a fungus living in the roots of the plant.

Not a big dealio...lots of people call everything they buy "nutes". But you may confuse some people.

And yes you are correct. Chemical manufacturers put lots of things in their advertising about why you should be using their entire line for best results...does it make sense for them to say anything else?

But adding sugars to the mix will help the fungi out too.

And all of this leads you right back to understanding why pruning fan leaves for any reason is an urban legend not supported by science. Tucking is fine but when you remove fan leaves you are hampering natural sugar production and may burn your plants if you are in DWC (which you are not yet).

Best of luck in your research. Learning is half the fun...and you have to do something while it is drying.
 

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