Early Flower Plant LST/Shaping

[nugwrasslin]

I'm only a few days into flower now. I flipped my timer on saturday evening, so the first 12 hour phase occurred the next day.

I'm wondering how to best approach training my plant from this point forward.

Right now i'm planning for a defoliation around day 21 of flower.

Should I spread my plants out more with LST to use the space that I have available? Or would it be better to leave them alone and let stretch happen so I can have some long colas?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Weaselcracker]

If you have the light coverage, and the means to spread them more- yes I would continue to spread the thicker/taller areas flat as long as they are stretching. There comes a time, after around three weeks or more depending on strain, that the plant becomes more frozen in its flowering shape. At that point Lst becomes more difficult and I more or less just let it run.

 

[nugwrasslin]

I'm running a "400w" Mars II L.E.D., along with a 25w Snap-On shop L.E.D. as well as two t5 fixtures fitted with 160w of bulbs between them.

I'm not really sure if this is enough? I think it is?

 

[Weaselcracker]

I use hid lights with reflectors and they cast a fairly obvious rectangular light footprint. I don't know about your situation- but you may be able to tell more or less by eye the area that is well lit. Whether to try and completely full that space with buds or not is personal choice. Yield increases if you do, but it's more work, and a definitely less 'natural' looking.

 

[nugwrasslin]

My combo LED and fluorescent setup seems to have a pretty blurry edge to it's footprint. If anything it looks like I could probably stretch these guys to all four walls of my closet. (although I might be throwing a small veg box in there for my clone and some seeds soon)

I'm only pulling 241 watts at the wall though for my 5'x3'x6' closet so I might be running a little low for my space currently. (only 16 ACTUAL w/sqf...)

Anyway dude thank you for the input.

+REP!

 

[Weaselcracker]

Yeah that's definitely on the low side for that size of space. I cover a space 3' 2" wide x 4' long with each 600 watt hps, and it still looks a little dim around the edges to me.