CFL Questions

So I've been keeping an eye on this grow utilizing a cheap Walmart light setup. The plants seem happy enough but one thing I've noticed about this grow that seems unusual is that the plants are staying very short. I was told they are just past three weeks in vegetation but not one of them is 6" tall yet? (schwag seed)

They each have 6+ nodes, but none of the leaves are huge like some I've seen on here?

They are just exploding with branches like nothing I've noticed on here, each node has two branches on each side.(so 4 branches per node) The secondary branches at each node are in fact branching out as well from their own baby sized nodes....

It's like every original branch from each node just has the one set of leaves, but then secondary branches on each node seem to be themselves branching out.... so many branches are exploding out of these babies!

In fact the secondary branchings are growing faster than the original branches from each node.

So my question is what is causing all of this branching rather than the plants getting taller? I can already see pre-flowers on these babies but they aren't even at four weeks yet and so short! Does CFL prevent plants from growing taller?

pics would be helpful, but your description is pretty dead on with my cfl experience
cfl's with plenty of blue(i use 5000k for veg) can produce very compact plants
a node an inch is what i get, start flower around 5/6 nodes
in flower is when they explode

I know nothings wrong with them.... so I don't really need pics as this is not a "diagnosis" thread. Not to mention this guy is the paranoid type....

I'm just impressed to see all of the vegetative vigor, I mean some of these secondary branches have far surpassed the original branches in size in such a short time.

I was just curious if that's the typical effect CFLs have on growth?

I mean if that is typical why would anyone veg under anything else?! Three weeks to show pre-flowers, ridiculous amount of branching, super short, low power, low heat, cheap..... The stems are nice and fat for three weeks too. This is definitely not a dialed in grow, I mean it's sitting in some dude's closet on a pile of text books with a rigged up cardboard box light.... I can't even see LST being beneficial if CFL will always result in this kind of vegetative growth?

cfl's are kick ass veg machines, lot of people use them, but i see a lot of mixing of HPS and cfl's
i agree with your point, you don't need anything else for vegging, they are just plain better, especially when you take into account how cheap they are
as for pics, everyone likes pics no matter what's going on, but understand the paranoia, took me a while to work through it

Yeah maybe I will be able to talk some sense into this guy later on when he's feeling a bit less paranoid.(we've both known multiple people busted.... seems like the law enforcement around here has little else to do) There is one node that's particularly funny looking to me as both of the secondary branches have completely overgrown the original branches from the same node, to the extent that they are being supported by the original branches. Just like a double stack of stem right there, maybe they'll eventually fuse into a super thick mega branch lol.

Edit- Also thanks for the input man!

Id say you are getting decent light penetration

Sub said:

I know nothings wrong with them.... so I don't really need pics as this is not a "diagnosis" thread. Not to mention this guy is the paranoid type....

Click to expand...

well i guess now isnt the time to tell u, if the feds really want u theyve got some nerdy computer wiz who can log into this site trace ur username back to ur ip address, back tour home,to the specific room in ur house where u sat and confessed to growing mary jane........best part about that is they already haveur confession lol im just sayin.....

Shwag seeds from my experience can grow pretty crazy..could be the strain but cfls work good imo i use them to veg and flower mixed red n blue spectrums throughout and i always end up with short compact plants, whether shwag or kill

I have not used CFLs long but so far they seem great. I just built a fixture that is made with CFLs 7 cool white and 7 soft white cfls built into this fixture. The fixtures total size is 3 feet by 2 feet. My plants have been loving it.

im planning on using cfls for northern lights auto flower...due to closet space heat is an issue.
im hoping to yeild decent on it..since it