The white widow and purple haze are about 30 days old now and the AK47 is about 37 days now. They have started showing their sex and I am going to be getting them ready for flower over the next week or two.
I spent a while yesterday tying the branches down to the sides of the pot. I had been using clips for some low stress training, but these branches thickened up pretty quickly after putting them on and as I was taking them off, I snapped a few of the branches. I don't really mind too much about losing a few branches though because that just means that I will have thicker buds on the branches that remain.
I usually wait a bit longer before I start tying branches down, but I have been trying to think ahead on what would be the best for the upcoming flower cycle.
If I waited longer before I began to tie the branches down, then they would have gotten a lot thicker, which would have made it harder to bend them and there would have been more of a possibility of snapping them. With them being skinnier, they are a lot easier to work with.
The white widow seems to respond really nicely to the stress of tying the branches down and the branches have turned up towards the light again after about 24 hours.
I think this plant is going to yield the most out of the three. The structure on it is pretty much perfect and everything is thickening up really nicely. It also is the thirstiest out of them all, and that means it has a nice healthy root system.
I didn't tie down the tops of any of the plants. I have been working on bending them down a bit to strengthen them up because they are going to have some of the thickest buds of the entire plant on them.
One thing I have found to work pretty nicely is after bending the branches down, I like to pinch them and break up the walls of the branch. This helps to keep the shape of them bent over so they don't stand back up. Once I have the netting in, they are going to need to spread out across the canopy and if they are pointed straight up, that will be hard to do.
One of the white widow branches snapped a couple days ago, so I decided to even it out and cut the branch that was opposite of it as well. My purple haze has an uneven branch site and I am tempted to cut it as well.
Another thing I did to prepare for flower was to flush the soil. I brought all the plants into a bathroom and ran about a gallon and a half of water through the soil of each plant. This should help to remove any veg cycle nutrients that havent been absorbed yet. I have never flushed before flower, so it will be interesting to see if this helps of not. I have a little microbial nutrient pack that I am going to add to the next watering in a few days that says it will recharge the soil, but that will be the last of the nutrients that these plants will get until I flip the lights and begin the flowering nutrients.
AK47 is still pretty short and thick. I tied the branches down on this one as well, but they are still short compared to the other plants. They are super thick though, so I didn't want to bend too much in case they snap.
The AK47 has the thickest stalk out of all of them. It will be interesting to see how this one does in flower. I think it might surprise me and push out some really fat buds.
The branch network on this plant is pretty sporadic and branches are just growing out all willy nilly. One of the branch sites had four branches growing out of it and then up halfway to the next site, there was a tiny random branch trying to grow. I have gone through and snipped some of the random branches because I would rather have the plants spend the energy pushes out buds to a smaller number of bud sites.
While I had the plants in the tub, I spent some extra time cleaning things in the tent. My exhaust fan was pretty dirty with hard water spots, so I wiped it all down. The last thing I want is for the exhaust fan to seize up because it is dirty. Plus it is pretty gross.
Another thing I did was turn the entire grow tent. One of the side flaps was up against the wall, and once I get the net in there, I won't be able to move the plants at all, and the last time I had the net in the tent, I had a hard time getting to the corners on one side because the flap wasnt accessible. It is nice being prepared for issues that I have encountered in the past and fixing them before I have the problem again.
This has been an interesting grow so far and it is about to really take off once buds start forming. Once I flip the lights to flower, it usually takes about a week or two before you can see the buds forming. The first couple weeks of flower are usually when the plants stretch up towards the light, so I will be spending the majority of that time creating a nice even canopy and cutting anything that is below the canopy.
I have really been enjoying growing these photo periods. I have so much more control over everything compared to growing autos. I hope that I get a huge amount of bud with these like I did with the GDP. It would be crazy to get close to a pound between these three plants. I am looking forward to having a stash of some nice sativa strains.
