Light questions for stretch/blooming

[Tonygreen]

Hello all,
I am currently mid bloom of my first real grow and one of the strains I am working with is a lemon skunk variety. Well, she stretched like hell. So I have been researching the stretch alot this week. I have seen some mistakes I made. Too many plants competing for light was one. Another was that I did not have ventilation set up properly during my first week and and half to handle the heat from the hood and 600w hps I upgraded too from the 400w mh I was previously using to veg using and I had my light way too high to compensate.

Eliminating those mistakes is easy enough for next time but I have been researching other things I can do to help even more. I feel like learning to deal with this stretching phase will be vital to me ever producing how I want to be in my head so I have looked at some ideas.

One was to use a MH for the first two weeks of 12/12. What do you guys think? Any input from anyone who has tried that or does it that way feel free to jump in, I'm all ears!

The red spectrum promotes bud growth and I am wondering if being short of red during the stretch the first two weeks would have a major impact on yield.

My other question is that I have heard that the UV from MH helps potency? Would running MH the last week or two of flower help in that regard? If so any negative affects on yield?

I appreciate any thoughts or advice offered about this guys. Now I'm off to stake up my girls...

 

[sneaky101]

I have seen/read threads where people use both hps and mh lights at the same time for flowering. As you said, the mh has some beneficial spectrums. But other than that I cannot help, except to count those first 2 weeks in bloom as vegging, at least from the perspective of figuring out how much room to give each girl to fill out.

 

[devinpits]

They stretch due to lack of light, period. It doesn't matter if it's mh or hps. If your plants are accustomed to 18hrs of light, when you take 6hrs away they will try to find it by stretching. Once they get used to the new light hrs they will stop the stretch. There is nothing you can do to stop except tying them down to control it.

 

[RanchoDeluxe]

I believe they stretch because of hormones. Maybe try going SCROG...it allows alot of control over how high the plants can get. Takes a run or two before you arent over/under filling the space. A general rule of thumb I go by is to fill 50% of the screen at the flip. I think you would be fine running the MH for the first couple weeks of flower. I have two rooms with three lights each. In each room I run one SunPulse MH for the duration of flower...haven't noticed any difference except that the SunPulse bulbs seem to hold up better. There is a thread around where people who run MH and HPS side by side notice that the HPS yellow up quicker than the MH.
Peace
Rancho