How far away light needs to be, and what exactly is topping off. oh and SEX

DirtyDiana

DirtyDiana

Active Member
I have some plants that I started flowering about a week ago. I am using a HID light 400 wats. My plants range from 18-24" so I was not sure how high above the plants the light should be. I currently have the light about 4 feet above plants.

I am also curious about topping. I see how to do it, but I am not exactly sure what exactly it does.

I am a NEWBIE YAYYYYY!

Oh, I may as well add about the sex of the plant. I dont know if I can tell yet. I have read in about 10 different places how to tell the sex but I dont get it. Again my plants have been flowering for a week and I do not see balls. They are supposed to be fem seeds, but i heard bad things about the place I got the seeds. So.....would I normally be able to tell by now if they are male or female?

Thanks a bunch. I really tried to find all this info for myself, but in all honestly I can not find anything that explains what I think I need to know.
Ciao
 
DirtyDiana

DirtyDiana

Active Member
I just went to measure because I was totally guestimating. The light is 26" above plants. They have been under there for a week. I guess I am on my way back down there to put about 13" above plants. The plants have not hardly grown at all since flowering. Could that be why? Ok, so now I now light should be closer. When the plants were veg I had them a lot closer, like 2-3"above plants. I just thought for some reason you wanted lights a lot higher for flowering.

So, what about sex and topping??
 
jondamon

jondamon

Well-Known Member
topping will have NO benefit now you are flowering. This should have been done during Veg.


As for sexing its pretty simple you are looking for a calyx with 2 little white pistils (hairs) this is female.


it will take anything from a few days to around 3weeks for the signs of a female .


if you see clusters of balls then this is male and you will never see a pistil on this plant.


then there are the inbetweeners, Hermaphrodites. They start off female and then grow male balls.


You only keep females!!!!!!!


J
 
DirtyDiana

DirtyDiana

Active Member
I currently have some roadrunners in veg now, so that could help me with those. I am still not sure exactly what topping is. My brother wants any male plants that I might have, so we already made plans for him to adopt any. The northern lights, the ones in flowering, are 'supposed' to be females. The roadrunners are who knows what. So as far as the roadrunners go, what would topping do for them, and again, what is it? I am looking and looking and i swear everywhere says just to do it, but not what exactly it does. Thanks a bunch
 
N

NoDrama

Well-Known Member
Do not top, get light closer, as close as you can before it feels hot on the top of your hand when placed at the top of the plants. Sexing is EASY, you either have Pistils or you don't. Pistils (white hair looking things) are what you want to keep, cull all others.

Topping is cutting the top of your main branch off, it helps if plants are getting too high, but otherwise I would not recommend anything but grow and see for a noob.
 
DirtyDiana

DirtyDiana

Active Member
So topping is strictly to keep plant shorter? I have been lucky to have my plants short and full and always kept light closer with veg stage. So if thats all that is I could really care less. I thought from some other readings that, besides cloning, topping you could replant, like I said they didnt explain it well, which is why I asked it here. So, with flowering also you want light closer, but not as close as veg? 13" flowering. got it. sex, look for pistils, maybe got it, i guess i will see when the plants start doing something. And topping, basically forget about it, unless I start to worry about my plants getting too tall? maybe got it. Right on, if im wrong, please tell me
 
jondamon

jondamon

Well-Known Member
topping is the easy way to get 2 or 4 main colas as apposed to a single cola left untopped.

With artificial lighting you should always try to keep plant shorter due to the inverse square law of lighting which is something along the lines of you double the distance from your light you 1/4 the light that area receives (that right frmrboi?) so because of this we tend not to grow tall specimens but small wide ones. This is where plant training comes into play.

Various methods include

LST
TOP
FIM / PINCHING


have alook for some of the above .


J
 
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