Plants too leafy

[blackone]

I've just harvested my last grow of sweet tooth #3.
The yield looks to be very disappointing - but I won't know exactly how disappointing before they dry up so I can weigh them.

The problem is that my plants are very leafy - on most only a small bud was poking above the canopy, while the rest of the bud was burried in leaves and not getting very big. I'm wondering what could have caused this?
My setup:
600W hps
6.5 L pots with BioBizz Light Mix soil.
BioBizz nutes (Bio Grow, Bio Bloom, Algae Mic)
SOG from rooted clone.




I've got a few thoughts on what the reason might have been, I hope someone with more experience could take a look at this and maybe make a few suggestions:

Low intake/night temps?
I didn't have a thermometer but I could feel the intake and night temps wee getting quite low - the pots felt cold to the touch, and the room my grow was located in was cold. Reason: I left a window to the outside ajar, and ventilated out the chimney. I fixed this by closing the window, but it was only 1-2 weeks before harvest and the bud structure was already set.

Too much nitrogen?
I have been using Bio Grow along with Bio Bloom and Algae Mic throughout the flowering, because BioBizz recommends it. In the beginning I was using Bio Grow according to BioBizz' schedule, but some plants started clawing so I cut the amount down.

No TopMax?
I forgot to order TopMax when I bought my gear and never got around to ordering after that. It isn't really a nutrient like PK 13-14 - mostly beneficials, so not using it shouldn't have that much of an impact, or?

Thrips?
I did have a quite severe thrips infection, causing upper leaves to become hard and brittle. Perhaps those leaves were supposed to be the canopy from which large colas should shoot up, but just didn't have the energy because they were too damaged? My plants were quite small, from 30-45 cm, so that sounds plausible to me? I fixed this for the next grow (I hope) by spraying my vegging plants with pyrethrum, but I didn't do anything about the flowering plants because I didn't think thrips were a serious issue. When I realized my mistake the plants were already in week 5 flower, and I didn't want any residues of piperonyl butoxide in my crop.

Plants not established enough / strain not suited for SOG from rooted clone?
I'm thinking maybe Sweet Tooth just isn't fit for this kind of growing as the few larger plants I had in there did somewhat better. My next grow has fewer, but larger plants that has an asymetrical growth pattern at the shoot tips.

 

[MynameStitch]

Your grow area is too small to have that many plants; your strain is just of the bushy type; when you get that much green in there the 600, with how high you have it can't penetrate enough down to that canopy which your buds are being under developed which is why your yield was poor.


If you were growing out a different strain that was not so bushy then you can have that many plants in there; but with that strain being bushy, you are having the issues.

Thrips do not cause leaves to become hard and brittle, especially if the leaves are at the top part of the plant only, that would suggest to me the light was too close.
How close was the 600 light? Sounds like you had the light very close to your plants, too close for there liking. Have you tested the canopy temps? I am sure with the way you explained things you had them, but thrips cause damage to the leaves by meaning of striping the green from the plants by sucking on the leaves, looks a bit like mites, but a little big bigger areas are affected and you can see them a little better.




You should never listen to the directions in terms of amounts on the back; they are 90% of the time wrong; canna,advanced nutrients and gh is the only companies you want to listen to there feeding charts.

Biobizz is no exception. Nitrogen will cause slowing of the buds too, big time; it lows down flowering and cuts your buds yeild a lot; and yes it will also cause it to become very bushy too. So with the 2 much nitrogen, strain and the light being close is where your problems came from. You should always use half the dosage you used in veg. the Grow fert, use half of it.... like 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of water up until 2 weeks before harvest.
You would have ended up burning them you added that pk 13/14 with the nutrients you were already using and the amount.....
you would have had to cut your other bloom ferts a bit if you wanted to use the 13/14.
Would of been a waste of money, so you saved yourself some time and money.

 

[blackone]

Thanks - I didn't really have the light very close to the plants - my minimum distance was 45 cm and I raised it to 50 because I thought it did feel a little warm. I didn't have an oscillating fan because the one I ordered never arrived - I'm still waiting for it and I hope it will arrive before I start flowering.

 

[MynameStitch]

45 cen= 17.7 in which could have been a little close, I am going by the information you gave me about how your upper canopy leaves were; if they were crispy and dryed out looking most of the time it's from dry heat... which the light will cause it.

 

[blackone]

Yeah it definitely makes sense. The lowest yielding and driest plants were in fact directly under the light, while some of the best plants were on the edges. Perhaps it also had something to do with how the low temperature intake air reaches a really low humidity when heated? I wish I had a thermometer and hygrometer - I'll see if I can find the money for that but I'm a little broke
I'm pretty sure the thrips would still be in part responsible though, since the damaged leaves have less resistance towards drying out.

 

[Guest]

I pack my plants in that tight, 8 in a wardrobe under a 600, but I use a cooltube so the light is right down a couple of inches from the canopy and I don't grow anything as stocky a SWT#3, I reckon stitch is right and that it's low light penetration, but I would also look at other causes such as too much N in flowering. I swear by PK 13-14 and once my plants have begun producing flowers I give them some PK every day (handwatering coco), I mix my nutes to 1.6 then add PK to take it upto 1.8 or 1.9. This seems to increase flower production for me.

 

[MynameStitch]

Ya, I agree it is a combination of things causing it, so I think it's got to do with both the nitrogen and the strain..... thrips don't help nothing all they do is cause trouble!
So when you got issues like you adding a pest to the situation makes things worse; so not only does the plant have to try to recover but it has to deal with bugs eating them!

 

[BigAl]

I reckon you hit the nail on the head with this comment.

Plants not established enough.

 

[blackone]

Yeah I looked through my old thread. A number of things could be done a lot better and I'm hoping the things I'm changing for my next grow will help. I think I'm looking at a 2-300g harvest, so 0.33-0.5 g/W. I guess as a beginner having only completed a few noob cfl grows before it's what to be expected but I did expect more;p I wonder how much more I could have harvested if I had waited another week - I took them down between day 54 and day 56 but when I trimmed the stuff I got the feeling that the calyxes might have swollen a little more if I had left it a little longer.

 

[Shliite]

Its funny blackone, I was just looking at my Sweet Warps and thinking how leafy they were. I believe Sweet Warp is Sweet Tooth #3 crossed with a Texada Timewarp. I actually ran into problems with OVER-establishing them and they grew right up to my ceiling and some of the tops touch the glass of my 400w HPS aircooled hood. I definitely feel the brittle and dry leaves, but assumed it could have been from a number of other problems i've had. The potency on the tops that are right on the light looks smaller, but the buds are pretty large. It'll be tough to estimate a yield until i can see through the massive amounts of leaves that cover the buds. I was thinking of running a SOG with sweet warp in the future because i feel like this pheno was a very good yielder, but i'll have to wait on smoke report to make that decision.