Tuesday's Horror Stories - Auto flower main stem snapped

[mreko]

This is the story of Two Auto Flowers - Day 26

One left untouched, looks really good and healthy. The other one Low Stress Trained, healthy and strong until today.

I woke up and almost have a heart attack, the main stem was snapped, almost fully! She has 7 nodes and she is now injured just below the 4th node, so we have the full main cola with the top 4 nodes compromised!

Tied her and tried to get the two divided sections closer. The cut is about 95% of the stem, she is just connected by a tiny lining.

[Pictures below.]

Hopefully she will be able to heal herself. But she's an auto and probably doesn't have that much time to recover?

Thoughts?

I really appreciate the help

 

[Jsully]

Probs be dead tommorw.. Good luck tho

 

[mreko]

Pictures of the crime scene:

Detail of snap:

Detail of the back of the snap:

Detail of 'repaired' snap:

 

[mreko]

Probs be dead tommorw.. Good luck tho

Check the pictures I just attached, is it worst than you imagined?

Thanks for the help!

 

[bigjack]

probably won't make it but you never know. Maybe put tape over it.

 

[Jsully]

Good job with the repair.. Fingers crossed but i don't think it will make it.

 

[daTenshi]

Tape works sometimes, so I suggest you try it, nothing to lose at this point. Good luck.

 

[mreko]

UPDATE w/PHOTOS:

Didn't try the tape method, and the stem quickly lost strength. So the main stem didn't make it. Hopefully something will grow of what it is left.

Stem detail:

Plant from above - 4 branches survived:

Side view:

Sister comparison (they were the same size):

 

[Spimp]

I snapped a Photo plants cola off and the two bud sites under it exploded. Auto's can be finicky but I hope you have the same good furtune as me!

When you harvest the two plants, you should weigh the broken plant vs the other minus the main cola. Might be an interesting accidental experiment.

 

[mreko]

That would be awesome, I'm not seeing any explosion yet but I notice she's healthy with those 4 branches left, probably the plant is recovering from the stress and starting to think what to do next?
It is not showing clear signs of flowering, probably delaying preflowering for a couple more days (day 32 today).

Thanks for sharing your experience!

 

[Blueballavngr]

Don't even worry about that instead of one cola you have 4-8 now, happened to me and got higher yield from the bush than the tree of same strain. Because it will grow like a bush you can actually take the top main buds from your soon to be bush and leave the under growth to develope in flowering cycle for 2 additional weeks, I got 5 then an additional 2 compared to the the other trees that produced an average of 4

 

[Jsully]

Happy for you lol mreko

 

[mreko]

UPDATE: DAY 36


So the bushy girl just started to flower and now I added another CFL bulb (small 23W - Yellow/Warm spectrum)
- This is a full CFL grow

The Light period is 18/6 from beginning. I was wondering If changing the period could help someway -I know autos are flowering from the start but they are still plants and probably be affected a bit by a light period change? - Would they start putting energy into flowering even more?
- What about changing it to 12/12? Would that help them in someway?

Day 36 Now, Unfortunately I'm having some personal projects on the side and moving sooner that I expected, so I have another 20 days before I'll have to move the plants or harvest them.
- Is a 56 day cycle enough for an auto? It sounds like not much to me. Is there someway to 'speed-up' the process? Is it worth it?

It looks like this transformed into a Journal

Thanks for all the feedback guys!

 

[Spimp]

Ill try to give you some info and you can draw some conclusions if you like.

Ive had several growers who swear by 12-12 autos and they had grown plenty of autos before. Thier resoning was basically that the hormone for bud production needs darkness to 'build up' even in autos. So more dark = bigger buds. Ive ran them 18/6 for the whole cycle and ran a few under 12/12 but I dont have enough under my belt to tell you definitivly which one is better.

There is a technique called DLS (diminishing light schedule) used on photo plants that helps them finish faster. Basically you start at 12/12 and reduce the light by 15mins or so a day to make the plant think its winter and hurry the hell up.

BUT, IMO 56 days is not enough. No matter what you do. I would suggest either A) start planning a move with the girls or B) find a nice gorilla spot somewhere that you can finish them outside for a couple weeks if you dont want to drive them to your new place. You can always harvestthem early, but your gonna miss out on weight and potancy. Depending on how far along they are if you pull them too soon you could end up with not very good smoke at all.

All in all I dont think anyone here has done enough side by side experiments with various strains under differing light schedules to have enough dta for a scientific proof as to which way is better. I suggest looking at some of John705, donpaul.p, Light addict, any anyone else's journal that has morethan about 20 auto's under thier belt. Light Addict has grown alot of auto's but I dont think he has a journal here with any but pick his brain and see what he says.

Most of all, have a Spliffy Day!

 

[mreko]

Yea, 56 days doesn't sound enough. I'll need to give them at least two more weeks.
I'll definitely do some research on the Diminishing Light Schedule technique and try to hurry them up, looks like this crop was meant for weird tests from the beginning.
Saving some time will help and also it will be really cool to see how the plants respond to the experiments.

I'll keep you guys posted!

 

[David Bowman]

FWIW, there is some information on DLS in the Gas Lantern Routine link in my signature.

 

[mreko]

Amazing Information ColoradoHigh, thanks for sharing that. I always asked myself why we push the plants so much with 18/6 20/4 24/0 light schedules when in nature it's almost impossible to find those conditions.

Day 38 Now, last night was their first 12 hour night, 12/12 light schedule starting, I'll let them get used to the new cycle for a week and then start playing around taking half an hour or so every couple of days to hurry them up.

Here are some Photo Updates:

Both Plants from Above:

Injured Plant - 4 Tops developing?

Almost all new growth is experiencing this weird leaf tip twist - What does this mean? Lights too close maybe?

I really appreciate the info guys! You are awesome!

 

[bigjack]

I've seen that on my plants too. I don't know what that means.

 

[mreko]

I've seen that on my plants too. I don't know what that means.

After some quick research (I could be wrong), it looks like it could be some heat stress and/or early stage of magnesium deficiency.
I'll stick with the first option and try get the lights a little bit higher to see what happens (lights were like 2/3 inches above the plants -CFL lights- so not that hot for them)
Linked to the heat stress could be that they are trying to sweat and lose some humidity, I watered them quite a lot yesterday -they didn't receive any water the previous 3 days- So it is possible they are used to be drier and now they are trying to lose some humidity?
Hopefully I'm not that wrong

 

[labexperiment]

Keep in mind when reducing the time of light they receive, the sun rise/sun set only changes by a few minutes every day. So 10 days might only be 20-30 minutes reduction of light. You can check your local weather station for exactly how much sunlight is lost every day.