No More Space! Need Help

[CapitalP]

one of my friend's plants has run out of room to grow in her cab. What can she do to save it? it is already 30+ days into flower and has no more room to grow in the cab.

some ideas that came up were putting it outdoors, however we weren't sure if it is safe to take the plant from 12/12 to 14/10 without stressing it? Another option, although it would seem like alot of work would be to bring it in after 12 hours and put it in a dark room.

What do you think?

 

[Huey69]

You should be fine putting them outdoors. It's too late in the season for them to try and re-veg.

 

[FreezerBoy]

More info would help. Strain, plus size of plants and cab ...

I tried topping , supercropping and LST. Supercropping made her laugh. Topping pissed her off. She kicked sand in my face and grew faster than ever. LST worked wonders. I simply bent offending colas over and twist-tied her to herself. Rather than turn up into the light, most just kept growing in a circle, like a pigtail. While not effecting others, it provided a serious stall in tied stems as the main shoot kept going while several buds along the curve would vie for supremacy.

 

[Pirate138]

one of my friend's plants has run out of room to grow in her cab. What can she do to save it? it is already 30+ days into flower and has no more room to grow in the cab.

some ideas that came up were putting it outdoors, however we weren't sure if it is safe to take the plant from 12/12 to 14/10 without stressing it? Another option, although it would seem like alot of work would be to bring it in after 12 hours and put it in a dark room.

What do you think?

Your friend should have followed rule # 1.

She should employee either topping or LSTing to solve her problem.

 

[CapitalP]

That pigtail concept is interesting FreezerBoy, perhaps it would be best to deal with colas individually. She was thinking about LST but the stems are very strong and feel like they won't bend much.

I forgot to mention if it went outdoors right now it would be around the 43 parallel. According to a farmer's almanac there should be almost 14 3/4 hours of light today.

 

[oldtoker]

well i like to take my plants outdoors in mid summer sun for 12 hours then stuff them back in the darkroom at night, its perrty simple and the bud is alwasy at a higher level

one thing to consider is how will it fit back into the cab for dark period if its getting bigger? also if you are rough while moving the plant around and the pistal's on young female flower's will become damaged and ripen early and look done-sorta but if you grow the strain alot youll know its clearly not done but if you havnt it can lead to premature harvest because it looks done due to rough handle, and its not good for the resin glands at all.

another thing is the first day only let it be outside in the sun for 3 hour's the next day 4, the day after 5, and so on, you might still get a slight burn on the leafs they will look whiteish, ive put some plants out directly into the sun 12 hours and they dont burn so it depends on variable's of what room its coming out of, age, strain and level of overall health i think.

but id defantly recomend if your growing in a cab to harden it off by gradually introducing it the intense sunlight, i promise.

whatever you choose i hope it works out, id say the method of using the sun with a big dark room really is simple and can produce some fine buds.






hope it works out.

 

[FreezerBoy]

but the stems are very strong and feel like they won't bend much.

Mine was a Sativa/Indica mix HEAVY on the Sativa. Sativas are very flexible. Not so Indica's. While you may not be able to bend as much material, the top inch or two should still be pliable.

What are you growing IN? Don Coytle had a great method for DWC. He simply lowered his res level to a few inches and dropped the netpots to the bottom of his res. He regained a foot or more of vertical space this way.

 

[CapitalP]

It is being grown organically. It will probably be moved outside in a day or two as discussed. This plant actually spent its first few weeks of veg outdoors. I'm sure this contributed to the hardened stems and flexibility issues. I'll post some pics in a few.

 

[limey]

Move em outside if you can but...

If you can't your only choices at that stage of flowering are:
to bend... but that will only work if you have some room to play with. You can bend plants with thick stems, you just have to do it slowly and gently, tightening the strings a little once a day. As you suggest, you can do this cola by cola. I would attach the tension string just below the cola. Be very gentle

the alternative to bending is tipping/tilting. in fact the two (tilting and bending) work wonderfully in combination but you need to create some room, laterally. It's also much easier with big plants in pots than it is with an ebb&flow hydro, obviously (I dont what growing style you are using). If you have the space for this, Tilt the plant, say, 20 degrees (put some wedges under the pot, if you have pots) and put in some horizontal strings to hold the stem steady, about halfway down the plant. You can now use more strings to start a bending process. The great thing about tilting is that you often expose more of the lower parts of the plant to light, so you get more bud growth lower down the stem and so, higher yield per plant. I had a skunkxhazexindian kerala plant like this some years back, yielding 150grams of primo buds in a wardrobe with only 5'6" headroom. Straightened out, the stem would have beem more than 7ft long.