Help: too much growth in veg

[adudecalledjay]

So, I've never had this happen before and was looking for some thoughts on what to do.

Before I left for a 2 week vacation, my plants (all indica) looked like this...

I'm still in VEG.

When I got back from vacation 2 weeks later it's within 2 feet of my lights. I haven't even flipped yet!!

I can probably get the lights another 6" higher giving a total of 2.5', but they are 600W MH, so this only gives me a foot of "safe" vertical growth before things get hot.

I can only think of a few options (all plants are indica, BTW):

1) HST into the vacant holes (think it's too late for LST). If I do this I'm probably going to have to sacrifice at least some colas as there's just not enough room (obviously I'd avoid this if possible).
2) Do a second layer a foot or so higher and then LST.
3) Top them all (dunno if I can bring myself to that and am worried I may just create a new problem horizontally in terms of space constraints)
4) Flip to 12/12 and figure it out later

Whatever path I go (1-3 above) I'm thinking of giving them 3 day recovery and flipping to 12/12.

Any thoughts out there?


Thanks!

Jay

 

[HugePeckerhead]

You can pinch the stems to slow them down a bit too

 

[Weaselcracker]

I’d go with option one. Supercrop and bend them all down flat to your netting. Right now your netting isn’t doing anything useful - get it working for you. Fasten the limbs down to it loosely with soft ties like pipe cleaners. Chop out a few limbs where necessary. Don’t worry about losing yield. A full canopy is a full canopy. Flip to 12/12. They have plenty of time to recover during the next few weeks.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Here’s a link to an example from one of my journals. The Hexapus's Garden Shows how you can flatten them completely. If you scroll down a few posts after that it will show the plant recovering 24 hours later. Repeat as needed.

 

[adudecalledjay]

Here’s a link to an example from one of my journals. The Hexapus's Garden Shows how you can flatten them completely. If you scroll down a few posts after that it will show the plant recovering 24 hours later. Repeat as needed.

Thanks Weaselcracker, I'll check it out!!

 

[adudecalledjay]

Done.

My only regret is being a bit too aggressive with the High Stress. Even though I was careful to squeeze and slowly work each break point, I still snapped a few awesome branches and one cola trying to pull the branches back down through the squares. If I could do it over again I would have pulled the net off and gently lowered it back down... I think there would have been fewer casualties. Some lessons are learned the hard way (just sucks when they're obvious!). I put saran wrap on the salvageable breaks and will wait to see if they mend in the coming days.

Changing out nutes and setting the timer to 12/12 next.

 

[Weaselcracker]

I see - should have explained better. The branches do not need to be pulled down through the squares and relocated. This seems to be a common misunderstanding. I just lay them horizontally on top of the mesh aligned whichever way fits and makes the most sense, and use pipe cleaners to hold them loosely in place. Everything worthwhile happens above the screen, not below, and there’s no need to drag branches back through the screen. IMO a scrog screen is just something to tie down to, nothing more.

It will recover fine.
When you snap a limb just splint it with a twig or small stick to hold it back in place. I use a couple wraps of pipe cleaner to hold the splint in place. As long as it’s not snapped completely off they recover at least 99% of the time. The saran wrap may possibly cause festering from lack of air. Keep an eye on it.