I was just checking some threads for info on LST and found something interesting- Is it possible to tell the type of plant from the seed? there was one thread where the seeds for a Northern Lights plant was small and the seed that i germinated was small - so small i thought it wasn't gonna grow.
Does this make any sense?
There is no verified way to tell sex from seed...a few rumors but nothing definitive as far as I'm aware.
But your seed being small would go a long way towards explaining your slow growth as well. Even an garden tuned to optimum efficiency will turn out chinzy plants with bad seeds.
Your weed is only as good as it's genetics.
Next time around, look for a good, fat seed with a dark brownish-green color and those "tiger stripes" mature seeds get.
As far as LST goes, what I do is use bread ties. Hook one end over the branch, hook the other end under the lip of the pot. I also start kinda loose and tighten them down over a couple of days. As it grows taller, another bread tie lashes down the new tops in a spiral around the plant. It takes some maintainence, so it's not a lazy man's solution, but it turns out some beautiful bonsai bushes.
If you've ever bought a bag and some of the stems had a 90 degree bend in them, that herb was likely ScrOG'd or LST'd.
*edit*
My reading has lead me to believe that the optimum vegitative growth lighting schedual is
not 24/0 as some believe...it is 20 hours of light and 4 hours of dark. The plant really benifits from the down time for root development, but more than 4 hours of darkness either does nothing or gives rapidly diminishing returns such that you're better off giving it more light time than dark time, ie. root development slows enough that you're wasting time with it and should just get on with leaf/bud growth.
