Thin Branches and Fat Buds, What to Do?!

[Sinner D]

I was in a bit of a time crunch to get some new plants veg'ing before I harvested everything else in my grow. I didn't want too long between harvests and my Patient (Wife) to go w/o for any length of time, so I found some clones on CL and ran out at 9:00 P.M. on a Sunday night to buy them off the seller in a liquor store parking lot. I knew that I was taking a chance at getting $hitty genetics, but fortunately, the two clones I purchases seem to be decent in that respect as they're yielding quite nicely. However...I did let the two plants get a bit too tall before flowering and now I'm using a lot of bamboo steaks and twist ties to keep the many branches from falling over from the weight of the heavy flowers, buds. When I told my local Hydro store Sales Associate about this, he said that all Kush strains can tend to do this, be leggy and thin branched as well as top heavy. That seemed possible, but I wanted my fellow farmers thoughts on this. As a new grower I'm sure that I could have went wrong somewhere with either veg'ing the two plants too long, or just not giving them a proper supplement to avoid thin branches. So, with only 1-2 weeks left in flowering, I don't want to keep having to tie every branch, but I will considering it's too late to add any nutrient or supplement during the flush, but I would like to avoid this with any other plant that I might see this starting to happen with. By the way, the two plants are Kush Berry, and I have a upcoming large plant of Grape Skunk that looks as if it may give me the same trouble. It's going into it's 5th week of flowering now. Any thoughts and solutions on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sealed138]

Use trellis netting next time.

 

[Sinner D]

I had bought some of that at Home Depot, but it's got to be stretched pretty tight to have good support. That's a good idea though. I'll do that....

 

[sky high]

Buy more stakes! ;)

If you like the bud and wanna grow her again.....flower her sooner....or thin her to only have a handful of main stems next time. You'll get fatter/fuller buds and have less shit to stake up. Either way, now that you know how she grows you should be able to adjust and take care of >some< of it. (them bitches DO stretch tho!) Good luck

 

[Seamaiden]

Hortonova is better. You can make a frame from PVC that would do very well for you. Let me see if I've got some pix of mine I can share. These are old, I no longer cultivate in this manner.

 

[sealed138]

Hortonova is better. You can make a frame from PVC that would do very well for you. Let me see if I've got some pix of mine I can share. These are old, I no longer cultivate in this manner.
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So that type of trellis is called hortinova?
I use the same PVC frames. But I usually use the white plastic stuff. Never seen the blue type. Looks good as usual.

 

[Seamaiden]

No, that's the landscape fence stuff you can get at Lowe's (or Home Depot), and it sucks because once you cut it to fit IT cuts YOU. I hated it. It's not sized right and it's much more difficult to work with than Hortonova.

This is Hortonova.

 

[Sinner D]

This is a shot of the cola's on both Kush Berry plants, end of week 7. They're leaning because of the weight on the branches.

 

[Sinner D]

I looked for some of that landscape fencing at the box stores near me, couldn't find it. Instead I found some light weight string trellis with good sized 5" holes, but no real strength to it. Unfortunately, I found it just wouldn't work for S.O.G., or any kind of real support for a plant.

 

[Seamaiden]

The Hortonova is very strong. Otherwise, it's bamboo stakes and plant tape for joo!

 

[alpinehi]

If you are going to use bamboo stakes, be sure to purchase the treated ones. I have observed mold on the untreated stakes on more than one occasion.