White Widow Auto - A little help please

[Kilow]

Hi guys, first time grower here. I have 5 white widow autos started at the same time. Tomorrow is the 4 week mark from germ. They have all been under the same light, soil, water, and nutes. They were super compact until about 4 days ago when 2 of them start to stretch like crazy. Is this normal? The new nodes coming out are stretching 5X what the main stem is, they are about to outgrow the main stem.. They also have more nodes coming out of them and seem to be growing exponential. Do I trim these or let them go full bush?

 

[Scientific]

If they've started their stretch, their must be some preflowers in there. On the autos I grow, PFs appear at 21 days.

Bushy is better thank spindly! See how they do. As they stretch that may be less of an issue.

I only defoliate if leaves are so dense they're blocking air flow (on a really bushy plant you can actually get droplets of water on the leaves where water can't escape), blocking light to buds, totally shaded, or looking sick or damaged (in which case there are other things to pay attention to as well...)

Your plants look good! WW is an interesting strain. I'll bet it will be a lot of fun to watch those flower.

 

[Kilow]

hey thanks for the reply.

I'm glad this is normal.. Was concerned with how fast they were going up. Almost an inch a day.. I wont trim unless what you said happens.

They started to stink almost a week ago, about the same time I noticed little white hairs so I'm guessing they're preflowering.
Should I be switching to flower nutes now?

 

[Scientific]

Was concerned with how fast they were going up. Almost an inch a day..

Cool, huh?

They started to stink almost a week ago

XLNT. Stinky = good.

I noticed little white hairs so I'm guessing they're preflowering. Should I be switching to flower nutes now?

Yes, they've started to flower.

I switch to flowering nutes when I see preflowers, but it occurs to me as I write that that that (wow, three "thats") means reducing nitrogen just when they're in a growth spurt. I think maybe the ideal is to let them do their growth spurt for a week or two with vegetative nutes and then switch. Maybe someone else will have an opinion on that.

I use General Hydroponics FloraSeries, which has a phases like "Week 5 Early Flowering" etc, and I just use their schedule but diluted about 50%.

It sounds like everything is going just as it should!