Wondering about forcing flowering early and which form of training to use.

[RanboTrout]

I have two previous grows under my belt that went fairly well and I'm just starting my third in a new, smaller grow area with better lighting; height is my main issue. I germinated and planted a Samsara Seed's Crazy Miss Hyde and an Unknown Diesel Strain I got from a friend and should start seeing them above soil shortly.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some opinions, information from personal grows or just general pros and cons with forcing the plant to flower early. I will be performing some LST or HST training and will most likely top or FIM the plants when they are ready. Can anyone explain to me which method(s) would work the best for my situation?

 

[Hushpuppy]

You can switch them to flower after the first week of growing with the true leaves, and they will do fine, but you won't get the best harvest out of them, maybe about an ounce per plant.
I would make plans to do scrog with them to keep them low as that is what scrog is for. It is far easier than most people think. What you will have to do is when they get to the 3rd node, pinch or cut the tiny top out of it. This will cause the plant to produce 2 top colas. Then when those 2 top colas get to their 2nd or 3rd leaf nodes, top them again to produce 4 top colas. Then veg them until they get about 15-20" tall, then set them in their flowering space and build a fence cover out of "dog fence" or "pig fence" mounted on a frame of 3/4"PVC pipe that will suspend the fence over the plantsat the 20" mark.

Continue to veg them while bending the branches over to keep all of the stems below the fence. You may have to do a little bit of supercropping to get them to stay bent over. Once the fence is about 3/4 full of veg growth, flip the lights to flower, but continue to tuck and bend stems to keep them below the fence until you see the buds begin to develop. At that point you let them start coming up through the fence. After a couple weeks in flower, go under the fence and cut out any low branches that will not make it through the fence and are buried under the existing canopy as that will send the budding energy to the upper parts of the plants.

 

[Hushpuppy]

Here is a pic of one of my last grows with the scrog :http://www.marijuanapassion.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=203578&d=1366250075
You can see where I let the ends of the plants come up through the screen too soon after they started flowering. They ended up getting a little tall but not enough to be a problem.
Here is the fence material that you want to use as it has the right size holes in it for using as scrog:hxxp://www.homedepot.com/p/YARDGARD-4-ft-x-50-ft-14-Guage-Vinyl-Green-3-in-x-2-in-Mesh-308352B/202024093

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

What are the dimensions of your space? What are you using for lighting?

I think that you are basically going to have to decide if you want to put them into flowering early OR do some advanced training to keep them short as the 2 don't really go together. If you are going to put into flowering early like 3 weeks or so, I wouldn't top them or do any HST. Plants need time to recover after any stressful training and you aren't even going to have enough plant to top, lst, or hst until they are at least 3 weeks or so and then they need a recovery period and t5ime to grow new tops if you have topped. A scrog will veg longer as you basically have a regular sized plant that you have trained to grow horizontally.

So, my advice is to decide whether you want to plant single cola plants that you do no training to (I seldom get even an ounce off these) or whether you want to take a longer veg and do some training to keep them short.

 

[RanboTrout]

I will have them under 4 CFL's and a 150 watt HPS setup.

I have them in a homemade grow box using containers that is about 3 1/2 to 4'' tall x 2 1/2'' deep x 3 wide'' when fully setup; but the top attachment that i have set-up to be clamped for when the plants grow is not attached now so it's about half the height until I need to make it higher. I used 90% reflective flat white roofing paint to cover the sides and lid

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Your space is definitely workable, but you really need more light for 7.5 sq ft. The trouble with using both HPS and CFL is that the CFLs need to be really really close, like an inch or 2 from the top of the plant to be effective. The HPS is going to have to be further away. It is hard to get the CFLs close enough to be effective and still not shade the light from the HPS. Your 150W HPS is good for about 3 sq ft. What your CFLs will cover depends on the lumens.

Is your box 100% light tight? This is critical when you get to flowering,

I did a cool scrog in a space around 2 x 2 that was only 4' tall. I don't think that I even used all the height. The link is in my sig.

 

[RanboTrout]

It seems light tight yes; a friend helped me construct it and it's air tight and clamps down so the lid is on solid. Right now it's a fairly small space as I haven't put the add-on a top it. I could always use risers to make the space smaller.

 

[Hushpuppy]

You say its air tight? you absolutely have to have proper ventilation for the plants to live, let alone thrive. You will need to have a centrifugal fan to pull the air out of the space andf pulle fresh air in that is cooler and recharged with co2.

 

[buddogmutt]

If height is your issue...LSTing will solve it..and increase yield 2-3x's depending on strain.....IMO...it's one or the other...some strains will hermi under too much stress...topping,fiming causes "damage" that some strains can't handle it..plus I'm against damaging plants..lol..I'd simply bend'm until its time to flip 12/12..

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

LST can increase your yield if your space is short, but 2-3 times more yield is definitely not the rule. There is really no magic formula that is going to increase yield 2-3 times if your grow environment is within working parameters.

Your lighting is your big issue now. You need more/better light if you want a bountiful harvest. Your yield will be directly tied to how much lighting you have.

I am a big believer in fimming and do it to virtually all of my plants unless they are going to flowering early and won't have time to develop the new growth.

 

[grass hopper]

You can switch them to flower after the first week of growing with the true leaves, and they will do fine, but you won't get the best harvest out of them, maybe about an ounce per plant.
I would make plans to do scrog with them to keep them low as that is what scrog is for. It is far easier than most people think. What you will have to do is when they get to the 3rd node, pinch or cut the tiny top out of it. This will cause the plant to produce 2 top colas. Then when those 2 top colas get to their 2nd or 3rd leaf nodes, top them again to produce 4 top colas. Then veg them until they get about 15-20" tall, then set them in their flowering space and build a fence cover out of "dog fence" or "pig fence" mounted on a frame of 3/4"PVC pipe that will suspend the fence over the plantsat the 20" mark.

Continue to veg them while bending the branches over to keep all of the stems below the fence. You may have to do a little bit of supercropping to get them to stay bent over. Once the fence is about 3/4 full of veg growth, flip the lights to flower, but continue to tuck and bend stems to keep them below the fence until you see the buds begin to develop. At that point you let them start coming up through the fence. After a couple weeks in flower, go under the fence and cut out any low branches that will not make it through the fence and are buried under the existing canopy as that will send the budding energy to the upper parts of the plants.

these 2 posts are great! how many plants are under your scrog???

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

I did a 2 plant scrog in a space that was something like 28" x 22" and 4' tall. I had a dual 150W HPS over them.