Plants got a little unwieldy vegging too long. How much to top?

[Mandelbr0t]

So my pictures were just to focus in on the size of the plants, but my entire room is evenly covered with Gavita's. I went for lighting the entire room versus lighting tables (Gavita recommends this and says lighting tables versus rooms is wasting light and not giving an even PAR coverage in the room), and used Gavita's placement guide for an almost identically sized room. The below picture shows the Gavita DE room better. I appreciate the acknowledgment of the building -- I spent a long time learning how to do everything myself. My building/electrical/plumbing experience prior to this was hanging a picture on a wall, but I learned how to do everything to code and safely as I did it.

The problem was the veg room. I had plenty of space when they were small, but because I wasn't able to flip when I anticipated, they just got out of control. I'll add some pics to show what the veg room looked like when I first got the clones (even before they were transplanted from cubes to the pots), what they looked like a couple weeks ago, and you can basically see how the plants actually looked under that thick ass canopy from the picture from the HPS-tinted room. They just had no more space to go. They would have been flipped when they were at the ideal height/growth/number of nodes, but again...technical difficulties. I thought everything was done and it was not, plus I had to change numerous things. In addition, my Teros 12 sensor must be getting thrown off because of the perlite creating air pockets in my coco (according to numerous Athena reps), because it was showing consistent 4.5 - 5 EC in the substrate, but then after a couple weeks I noticed nute burns on the tips and other weird things. Tested the runoff EC and it was an 11.5 EC. It's taken a long time and a lot of P2 feeds to correct it, and I was talking to Athena almost every day. The substrate sensor shows 2-4 EC regularly, despite the runoff EC being closer to 7.5 usually until I knock it down. I think part of the problem is the size of the plants and the size of the pots they have been trapped in.

But Athena didn't recommend flipping to flower until I was able to bring the runoff EC down closer to 6 (they recommend 3-5 normally, but they say closer to flipping to flower, it's not bad to build up the nitrogen with a higher EC, since their Bloom formula contains almost no nitrogen.) So in between fixing my RO system, hanging carbon filters in the other room, troubleshooting Trolmaster issues that were not present before, trying to fix the insanely high EC in the veg room, etc. etc. etc. shit just got out of control.

EDIT: Here's my old thread which describes my equipment and layout fairly well, although there were changes after this was made: https://www.thcfarmer.com/threads/n...aste-setup-input-welcome.135456/#post-2743307

You have a light(s)/coverage issue. This whole room, whatever the square fottage is, but (what looks like) one small light way up there. However you try to salvage a harvest out of this, you need to readdress your space so that you have a light or bank of lights right over a canopy, delivering the kind of straight down light power the plants in that space require. As a result you have plants that are lanky, reaching, growing weak, easily breakable stems. You'll probably spend more time and effort and electricity than the benefits of any potential very small harvest.

There's nothing "bad" or "wrong" about anything, there's just what's working or not working. And when somethung isn't working it's an opportunity to hit the reset button and get to what will work. I would get a notebook and pen, and while working on cleaning up and emptying and prepping your space, start redesigning from scratch a really good grow room. And that means starting with "I have an A' x B' room, and will need this kind of light(s)".

We can all help you get there, but it has to be your vision of what you want. And before you rock 2 rooms, get 1 room done right, your main room. Then........once you have everything in order, then room #2. What's great is that it looks like you're an excellent builder......far better than I am. You built a fantastic space, you have skills, I can see that in your pictures. A lot of your attention went towards tables, and your watering system. Ultimately you can get as technical/complicated as you want. But you can lose the basics in the complicated.......basic doesn't mean lower end results.......after all, what we're doing is giving our plants exactly what they needed to thrive 20yrs ago, 100 yrs ago, and 1000 yrs ago. That hasn't changed. Space, a good environment, good soil or whatever will give the plants what they need from the stem down just as much as from the stem up.......good, strong light delivered efficiently and effectively, delivering energy to your full space......good water, and nutrients (fundamental before supplemental). Check all the basic boxes. Other than strong, modern-day full spectrum light(s), the rest is as old and low tech as can be.

 

[Harpua88]

So what do you want to do? Top them and veg a little more before flipping to flower? Usually everyone wantts more information, but this is really only about end of vegging strategy.

Yes, you can top them, especially the tall ones, bring the canopy to an even level, plus regular pruning of bottom/old leaves.. i would then keep vegging for a few more days to allow tor a little more branching to occur from the topping.

 

[Mandelbr0t]

So what do you want to do? Top them and veg a little more before flipping to flower? Usually everyone wantts more information, but this is really only about end of vegging strategy.

Yes, you can top them, especially the tall ones, bring the canopy to an even level, plus regular pruning of bottom/old leaves.. i would then keep vegging for a few more days to allow tor a little more branching to occur from the topping.

I'm not sure what I want to do. I wanted to ask the hive mind here and then kind of go from there, and I appreciate all the responses. I'm leaning towards the topping them down significantly, and seeing what happens. I feel like at this point between all the nutes, time, effort, headaches, etc. that I would want to salvage this run if possible, rather than burn it all and start over. If I was going to top, should I do so before or after transplanting into the 3 gallons? I was thinking transplanting to 3 gallons, waiting a couple of days, and then topping?

 

[Harpua88]

So my pictures were just to focus in on the size of the plants, but my entire room is evenly covered with Gavita's. I went for lighting the entire room versus lighting tables (Gavita recommends this and says lighting tables versus rooms is wasting light and not giving an even PAR coverage in the room), and used Gavita's placement guide for an almost identically sized room. The below picture shows the Gavita DE room better. I appreciate the acknowledgment of the building -- I spent a long time learning how to do everything myself. My building/electrical/plumbing experience prior to this was hanging a picture on a wall, but I learned how to do everything to code and safely as I did it.

The problem was the veg room. I had plenty of space when they were small, but because I wasn't able to flip when I anticipated, they just got out of control. I'll add some pics to show what the veg room looked like when I first got the clones (even before they were transplanted from cubes to the pots), what they looked like a couple weeks ago, and you can basically see how the plants actually looked under that thick ass canopy from the picture from the HPS-tinted room. They just had no more space to go. They would have been flipped when they were at the ideal height/growth/number of nodes, but again...technical difficulties. I thought everything was done and it was not, plus I had to change numerous things. In addition, my Teros 12 sensor must be getting thrown off because of the perlite creating air pockets in my coco (according to numerous Athena reps), because it was showing consistent 4.5 - 5 EC in the substrate, but then after a couple weeks I noticed nute burns on the tips and other weird things. Tested the runoff EC and it was an 11.5 EC. It's taken a long time and a lot of P2 feeds to correct it, and I was talking to Athena almost every day. The substrate sensor shows 2-4 EC regularly, despite the runoff EC being closer to 7.5 usually until I knock it down. I think part of the problem is the size of the plants and the size of the pots they have been trapped in.

But Athena didn't recommend flipping to flower until I was able to bring the runoff EC down closer to 6 (they recommend 3-5 normally, but they say closer to flipping to flower, it's not bad to build up the nitrogen with a higher EC, since thqeir Bloom formula contains almost no nitrogen.) So in between fixing my RO system, hanging carbon filters in the other room, troubleshooting Trolmaster issues that were not present before, trying to fix the insanely high EC in the veg room, etc. etc. etc. shit just got out of control.

EDIT: Here's my old thread which describes my equipment and layout fairly well, although there were changes after this was made: https://www.thcfarmer.com/threads/n...aste-setup-input-welcome.135456/#post-2743307

I can really only see the 1 square light way up high in these pictures........it looks liie a solitary street lamp at a lonely rest stop.. ;)

I'm just kidding, but if you have these banks of lights with full coverage, why are your plants so stretchy and so lanky......what I see in these pics is a big space with very little light. If there's something else that accounts for this, I don't know, it seems like a bit of information overload...

 

[Mandelbr0t]

I can really only see the 1 square light way up high in these pictures........it looks liie a solitary street lamp at a lonely rest stop.. ;)

I'm just kidding, but if you have these banks of lights with full coverage, why are your plants so stretchy and so lanky......what I see in these pics is a big space with very little light. If there's something else that accounts for this, I don't know, it seems like a bit of information overload...

I believe the reason they are stretchy and lanky is because they started in the room with the LED's and were growing fine without much lankiness, then they reached a point where the canopy got so thick, the only direction to go was up. In addition, I had the lights too high above the canopy and so they were reaching for the only source of light they could find, which was straight up through a dense canopy.

Apologies for the information overload, I just wanted to be thorough to explain the situation. I'm confident that I have good, even coverage and that's not the problem. The room with the Gavita DE HPS's is not the room they vegged in. The veg room was the room with LED's, and all the tables were situated directly underneath -- (3) tables and (6) LED's directly above those tables.

 

[Harpua88]

I believe the reason they are stretchy and lanky is because they started in the room with the LED's and were growing fine without much lankiness, then they reached a point where the canopy got so thick, the only direction to go was up. In addition, I had the lights too high above the canopy and so they were reaching for the only source of light they could find, which was straight up through a dense canopy.

Apologies for the information overload, I just wanted to be thorough to explain the situation. I'm confident that I have good, even coverage and that's not the problem. The room with the Gavita DE HPS's is not the room they vegged in. The veg room was the room with LED's, and all the tables were situated directly underneath -- (3) tables and (6) LED's directly above those tables.

Never apologize for more information. It's almost always more helpful than not.

 

[Mandelbr0t]

So just to kind of recap, is the consensus that I could top and still be "fine", and if so should I do so before or after transplanting into 3 gallon pots? If I do it after transplanting into 3 gallons, should I wait a couple days before topping to avoid any further stress from transplanting? It sounds like the best thing to do would be to top, let them veg for X number of days until they get a good number of new nodes/growth, and then flip over to flower light periods and generative cues?

 

[Trash_2002]

So just to kind of recap, is the consensus that I could top and still be "fine", and if so should I do so before or after transplanting into 3 gallon pots? If I do it after transplanting into 3 gallons, should I wait a couple days before topping to avoid any further stress from transplanting? It sounds like the best thing to do would be to top, let them veg for X number of days until they get a good number of new nodes/growth, and then flip over to flower light periods and generative cues?

Transplant, wait 3 days, top and train under net, wait 4 days, flip to flower.
They will be ok.

Cheers

 

[Trash_2002]

i dont remember now this is an co2 enriched OP? i would reduce the offset on those DE's to be more inside the trays foot print.. you gonna get higher ppfd where it matters most, they are too far off to the sides imo.
did you measured ppfd across the room to see the spread "eveness" and if that setup makes sense?
to me i think the middle of the trays will be getting less light than the sides.
i could be wrong tho, have to measure it.

 

[Mandelbr0t]

Yes, there is like a 50-60 PAR difference between the middle of the tables and directly underneath the lights. There is overlapping coverage from the lights on both sides, which gives a more even PAR reading throughout the entire room if your tables are centered in the room and it minimizes the light loss on the walls by having the tables centered. Gavita used to have a .pdf with detailed information about this and extensive PAR reading testing they did (had a map of the entire room laid out in a dot grid, with PAR readings listed for every square foot or so of the room), as well as exactly how far they should be from the walls in an L x W x H room, how far they should be spaced apart, etc. and I literally just built that room to match the dimensions of that layout.

In that document, they say that it's false you should light tables and should instead be evenly lighting the entire room so you have a consistent PAR

i dont remember now this is an co2 enriched OP? i would reduce the offset on those DE's to be more inside the trays foot print.. you gonna get higher ppfd where it matters most, they are too far off to the sides imo.
did you measured ppfd across the room to see the spread "eveness" and if that setup makes sense?
to me i think the middle of the trays will be getting less light than the sides.

 

[Mandelbr0t]

Ok everyone, well it's embarrassing, but these are still not flipped into f'ing flower. It's a series of long stories and it's somewhat irrelevant at this point. This is now month FOUR of veg. To summarize since I last posted, my EC went from a 3.0 to a 1.7-1.8 (and the plants were definitely showing their displeasure) and it took me a couple weeks to figure out I needed a batch tank (to correct flow rate problems) and another booster pump for that batch tank, in addition to other issues and delays. These plants have just continued growing out of control, despite being pruned numerous times. I have relied on my friend to help and guide me, but there are obviously serious limits to his knowledge and experience.

The first picture is what the rest look like unpruned (they've been pruned, just not recently), including a measuring tape to see the height, as well as when the first branches start. Yes, I believe they were bottom trimmed way too high -- again, something I relied on my friends advice for. The 2nd and 3rd pic are what they roughly look like pruned back. The PVC poles on the sides of the tables are roughly where the max height should be at, if going by what Gavita says which is 3' from the top of the canopy to the bottom of the light for 1000w DE's. In addition, while they have been in veg, numerous plants have had branches just snap off -- pretty thick, heavy branches sometimes too, about as thick as an index finger. I believe they may have been so stressed up to this point that they just aren't healthy?

My concern is that if I pruned them back to the level they are at in the 2nd and 3rd pics, then immediately flip into flower, I'm just going to have branches snapping off left and right once the bud weight gets added. I've already burnt through plenty of money just getting to this shitty point, so I'm not in a rush to keep them fed for the next 6-8 weeks, only to have branches start snapping off towards the end, then all the electricity, nutes, and time is just wasted. At the same time, I'm also not trying to just start over if there are other options.

I'm also worried that if they keep growing at the same rate they have been in veg when they are in flower, the plants will be touching the lights before it's over and just get roasted.

You can see that the first branches start essentially at the max height (PVC pole height) that they need to be from the Gavita's.

Is it time to just start over? Is there any way to salvage this?