Plants in vegetative conditions tending to flower on lower axillary shoots.

[WillCall]

Hey there - hoping to understand a growing problem.

The purpose of my indoor growing is to maintain small mothers for outdoor summer gardening stock.

Summary of conditions.
I have a cabinet with an array of daylight CFL lighting; lighting power is modest, but plants grow well and deep green.
The temperature ranges 60F at night to 80F days; nice fan breeze.
I know, so unprofessional... but here's the thing: most of my 12 varieties grow wonderfully in this small setup, suitable to the purpose.
They are vigorous (enough) and healthy, good color. I cut them back hard monthly and regenerate mothers on a cycle.
I'm keeping "mothers" in 16oz solo cups, but it works fine, regenerating about 3mo intervals.
Eleven varieties grow nicely, vigorous, axillary buds flush out producing nice branching.

I have one clone that is giving me fits. It was given to me as "Amnesia Haze" - source was trustworthy - 5 yr ago.
Unlike the more "normal" plants, this one is very "columnar" - seems to have strong apical dominance so that only the terminal bud continues extending - axillary buds lower on the stem grow out compressed, like flowering mode, and don't extend. This makes it hard to do more than reclone on a 1:1 basis and I can't expand the number of plants. Plant is very healthy.

The axillary shoots are just "floral": short internodes, don't extend, very tight to the main stem; whole plant is very much uni-axial.

In the summer when this plant goes into the garden (42N latitude - I plant ~mid-June) this plant will grow nicely, push out branches, makes a nice bushy plant and I can clone from the many branches. It doesn't grow this way in my cabinet - alongside 11 varieties that do stay veggie and branches extend nicely.

This plant is just intrinsically different from all the others. I have limited experience. Is this just a "Haze" thing? Maybe it needs higher light intensity? Or maybe the cool nights affect it differently from the others? It is very healthy; this seems like a growth control issue and not plant health.

Any ideas?

Thanks much!

 

[Roy Growin]

Could well be low light levels/temps, or maybe that cutting was taken from higher up the plant?

 

[WillCall]

Thanks for the welcome and advice! I can't practically do anything about the conditions - in my cool cellar and it works well for most strains. I've only got 132W of light from the CFL array and they are 4yr old too. I should have said these are on 16hr light. Just this one strain is really fussy this way. You can top it to clone the top (only shoot very cloneable) and the next lower axillary bud takes over and does the same thing. In the picture here it is sitting next to a Blue Dream that shows normal branching. It is just something I'm trying to understand. I have a GSC that will grow like this at times, then will grow normally other times.

My only purpose with indoor growing is keeping the acquired clones over the winter. I can grow outside here in summer, legal.

It is getting warmer and I have a sunroom - I'll take your advice and try moving a cutting up to daylight (with light extension to 16hr). Sunroom gets chilly at night, but I can at least test if stronger light will kick them out of this mode.

 

[Roy Growin]

They both look like they are in re-vegging mode, so the cutting was probably taken from a tip of the plant going into flower, from the top of the plant?
Note the kinking stem as in flowering and all the 3 bladed leaves, and even a bit of stretch

 

[Emilya Green]

just because you are seeing a few pistils in the preflowers, does not mean she is flowering. Keep calm and continue to veg for however long you wish... a few pistils is perfectly normal.

 

[WillCall]

Hi All, and thanks for ideas. The kink toward the top of the AH plant is where I had topped it to clone the top, and the second and 3rd axillary buds pushed out and now make the top you see. Except for this tendency of AH to do this basal flowering (it really is "flowering" in the sense that the internodes stay very short with dense stigs right to the tip), the other plants are just stretchy because of the modest light levels. They have been constantly on 16hr days. The AH gets into this condition late winter and it does coincide with me running the wood furnace less with warmer temps and longer days; I think it probably is just that the AH is a bit more affected by the cool nights when the lights go off. This must be pushing it toward flowering even with 16hr lights. In the garden we only ever get about 15.2hr max hrs of daylight in summer (official daylength) and it grows very normally there. Here is a picture of the AH in the garden; I put it in late and this is Aug10, just as they begin to flower. So it does grow very normally, normally. I actually plant late to keep the size in check. While the temperature and light levels both are probably at work here, the light level is constant and regular so it has to the the temperature causing this. I suppose I could put a heater in the cabinet, but this all gets sorted out in spring (for the last 5 yr anyway) - regardless how funky the plants look, they grow well when they get to see daylight in Spring. On my hill, it is common to get to 50F at night any given night in summer and the plants stay veggie, so it must be the interaction.

Thanks again.