Budding problems

[buckeyebonger]

i have been growing for 10 years and my buds usually are just about ready at 8-10 wks. my current grow is at 8 weeks and is nowhere near where i think it should be. the buds have not filled in and hardened. its taking forever.

i have a couple guesses why, but i'm no expert and don't know for sure. i'm hoping someone else has had the same problem so that i can avoid it in the future.

first, i am constantly adding plants to my flowering room. i have a continuous grow so that i usually harvest something every 3-4 wks. the reason why i had so few plants is that i had a spider mite problem and cleared the room and started over. when my two 8 wk plants were at 4 wks, i turned on a second 600 watt hps so the new plants could get direct light. this brightened the room even though the additional light was not directly over the older plants. could the added brightness have affected the flowering process? i usually have both 600 watt hps on. one was off because i had only 2 plants flowering at the time.

second, where i live had a heatwave at about the same time so the flowering room was warmer. my exhaust fans couldn't keep the temp low enough. for the last 3 weeks it has been at 85f and then goes down to 74f for the dark 12 hrs.

the plants look healthy. but the white hairs have not turned at all yet. usually i am harvesting by now. the calyxs(sp) also have not swollen very much. and the buds are not as dense as normal. in fact, they're not dense at all. plus some of the fan leaves usually are yellow by now indicating that it is almost harvest time. could the lighting and heat cause this?

the plants are ice and ak48 in fox farms soil.. good ph and water readings. i've grown both before and am usually enjoying the harvest by now. IF the buds fill in, it looks to me like it will be 3-4 wks longer. but i'm wondering if they will fill in at all.

i guess i'm thinking that the added light and heat made the plants think it was still mid summer and not fall. what do you think?

 

[LighTer]

Added lights are not a problem. Heat? Perhaps. I am assuming this is not a new strain to you. Grow it out and see what happens, or if it is causing loss of $$ then chop and make some butter.

 

[Vick074]

How are they now??
Are you using CO2??
sometimes high levels of CO2 can stunt growth in flowering.
It happened to me until I got a CO2 meter to let me know how much I was administering.

 

[buckeyebonger]

not using co2. but i think i found the problem. some months ago i had a spider mite infestation.. a bad one. in case there were any of the little mfers still around, i left a hot shots no pest strip in both the flowering room and veg room. i removed them 10 days ago. now they are filling in, albeit late. i flushed them good and sprayed them with distilled water. they are now about 11 weeks but look like they will fill in and maybe be harvestable at about 13-14 weeks. the veg room had the same results. removed the strips and they shot up 10 inches in a week. too bad because no pest strips do kill mites. i will just have to use them for a couple days and them remove them if i get mites again.

the strips were the only thing different in both rooms compared to previous grows and all plants have perked up tremendously in just 10 days.

i'll post in another week or two on progress but right now they are looking pretty good. it was like they were in suspended animation or something. one plant in particular now looks great, but it looks as if it is in the fifth week of flowering not the eleventh.

 

[Vick074]

Wow, that's good to know about the pest strips.
Whats in those suckers to put plants in suspended animation like that?

 

[buckeyebonger]

when i get a chance, i am going to google the ingredients. the plants in both the veg room and flowering room have picked up so much that they don't look like the same plants from 2 weeks ago.. they grew till about 4 weeks of flowering and then sort of shut down. the only thing different was the strips and now that they are removed the plants in both rooms have responded.

i put plants into the flowering room about every 2-3 weeks. plants at all stages of flowering look 100% better now.

 

[Vick074]

Well it's good to hear that your plants have snapped out of their catatonic state, and are back on track..
Especially that you have identified the problem.
Maybe post a neg review of those strips explaining your experience in the Grow Supply Product Reviews
so you can save others the grief of using a dangerous product..
I did some research on those strips and they don't sound like the healthiest thing to have around the house, and especially around your buds.. Although a nasty spider mite infestation will have people spraying almost anything on their ladies to have them shake off the mites. I don't know why all those pest controls chems just freak me out. Maybe it's because my close buddy developed cancer from spraying avid on his crops for years..lame
I know I wont be buying those things after hearing your experience..

Just curious, what strain in particular are you growing that's taking 10-14 weeks to mature??

 

[buckeyebonger]

the strains usually don't take 10-14 weeks. they usually flower in 8-10 weeks. ice, ak48, aurora indica from nirvana. they are taking that long because of their growth being stunted by the strips. its like 4 weeks of that stuff and the plant slows down its maturing. now they have started maturing again. so it will take a lot longer to finish. at even then, i don't know if the buds are going to be as good as normal.

i googled the stuff that no pest strips are made of. it is dichlorvos. the only plants they have found that are harmed by the stuff are mums, roses and cukes. but no one is going to publish a study on its effects on mj.

anyway it slows down the flowering. if they had not perked up, i was going to garbage them...something i hate to do. even now, none of the trichs have even started to turn cloudy . they are all still all clear.

 

[buckeyebonger]

the reason i left them in the room is that my infestation was bad. i usually take the strip out after 3-4 days, but this outbreak was BAD. bad because i did not know that the no pest strips only last 4 months. i put a very old one in the room at the first sign of mites thinking it would work quickly like it did before. i did not know it was too old to be any good. therefore, while i thought i was killing them, they were having a good time ruining a whole crop. thats when i checked and found out the no pest strips were too old to be any good. i bought two new ones and just left them in both grow rooms. i have not had a good plant since. but they totally perked after i got rid of the strips, flushed and sprayed to get rid of toxins.

to bad.. they do kill mites. just don't leave them in the room. just 3-4 days. then store it in a plastic bag. i just left them way too long.