Late flowering: plants seem to have stopped growing

[d42zero]

Is it normal for my plants to seem to have stopped growing in late flowering? I've been following this GH feed chart for DTW coco and I'm in the 'ripening' week (week 11 of 12) which dropped PPM down to about 400-500 or so.. I figured since they've still got a little longer to go I would just continue feeding them the week 11 mix until I've decided they're ready to go, but they sort of seem to have stagnated a little bit and aren't really doing much.

Trichomes on the plant with the sugary buds don't really seem to have changed, still a lot of clears with some cloudies and a little sprinkling of ambers. The trichomes on the other two plants are much less thick, so thin that they don't really seem to have 'sugar leaves' but instead they just seem to have little fan leaves in between the buds. The pistils on the sugary plant are probably mostly red, but as you can see in the last pic I posted there are still quite a few white ones at the tip which kind of appear to be new growth, almost like a second round of pistils have popped out.

The plants appear generally healthy, they're dropping the occasional fan leaf (maybe eight or nine leaves over a few weeks) but I'm turning them 90degrees once a week to spread the light across the plant a bit and it's possible when I'm doing it I'm just catching a leaf which then dies and falls off.

In hindsight I feel like I should have kept feeding the 'mid bloom' mix from the chart for a couple of extra weeks, then gone to the 'late bloom' mix when I thought they had about three weeks to go. Should I think about upping nutes back to the mid bloom mix, or just keep going with the ripening one until I'm done?

 

[Old Salt]

General Hydroponics has several feed charts and the instructions on the bottles. They are all different, and it caused quite a bit of confusion for me. Yes, even the named of the growth stages is inconsistent in the General Hydroponics literature. I took the label instructions and worked from that. Here is what I'm feeding during 'Final Ripening:'

CALiMAGic: 1.71 ml
Flora Micro: 3.5ml
Flora Grow: 1.75 ml
Flora Bloom: 5.25 ml
Floralicious Plus: 0.33 ml
Dry KoolBloom: 0.42 gm

These figures are per US gallon. Everything is at 35% of the label instructions, except for CALiMAGic which is at 45%. I had a plant that showed a cal/mag deficiency at 35%, which is why it's higher. I feed the same mix, with the exception of Dry KoolBloom from the time the first pistils appear. During the first 2/3 of the breeder specified flowering time I add 1.66ml Liquid KoolBloom instead of the Dry. The last 1/3 they get dry as specified above.

 

[d42zero]

Yep I understand the contentious issue of feed charts, I've simply been using this as a guide and it's been working well.

All that aside I really need to know is it normal for flowering plants to appear to stop growing after around day 50 of flower? They seem to have stagnated and aren't really *doing* anything, I'm asking if that is normal or whether it's a sign something is wrong (such as me reducing nutes too early).

 

[CO Finest]

What are the average grow area temps and what is the lowest temps?

 

[Old Salt]

They can stop growing for a while. Try increasing you run off to 50% for a couple of feedings in case there are excess salts and/or nutrients built up in your medium.

 

[d42zero]

What are the average grow area temps and what is the lowest temps?

Daily min-max and humidity are in my grow thread (below in my sig) but averages would be around 20-26degC (~65-75degF) and humidity between about 45 and 55 with occasional spikes to 60 when the weather's wet and the dehumidifier can't keep up. You've just made me realise that I can't get average figures from my data without doing it manually so this weekend I'll transfer all of that into a spreadsheet so I can get those more easily.

They can stop growing for a while. Try increasing you run off to 50% for a couple of feedings in case there are excess salts and/or nutrients built up in your medium.

Ok will do - they're being flushed with 60 litres plain water each plant every two weeks, last flush was two weeks ago (so they're due for one now).

I double-checked the feed chart too and the change from last batch to this batch is very minor (4ml micro+8ml bloom per gallon vs. 2.5ml micro+8ml bloom per gallon) and nothing else has changed, so I'm feeling more like it's not something I've done and just a natural thing..

They have started to drop the occasional fan leaf.. I'm picking up probably two or three a week now that has shrivelled up and fallen off, that's a good sign that they're getting close to harvest right?