Stretching

What's the best way to stop stretching from happening.

I've read keep lights close as possible to the plants will help an also keeping temps when lights off close to when lights on temps.

What stage are we talking about here ? seedling , vegging or flowering ?

SMALL dosage of bushmaster helped me... Everyone hates it on this forum tho lol... I vegged for like 4 months into a huge scrog and need something for vertical growth.... SMALL AMOUNT!!!!

Also I bent some of the tops.... Also known as super cropping I think??? And now I have like 6 tops from that with is awesome! Search some topics on here bro it helped me a lot but u just have to be careful because not everyone is right all the time including me

Keeping light close should do it. If it's in seedling stage it's normal just replay it up Yo the bottom leafs, easy as pie!

Yeah when moving them into the flowering stage i seem to get the stretching. Keeping the lights close is bull as i have cooled hoods an keep them close anyway an that doesnt stop it ive been away for a week once an it just grow right past the light.

Just strange as some my plants do it an some don't, I am going to try an keep my temps close when light are on an off see if that makes a difference as there was a big drop when lights went off on my last grow.

lack of root space can cause stretching also.

plenty of root space still only on 2nd week of flowering

If you are changing to 12/12 it's normal for the first couple of weeks for them to stretch

They are in darkness for twice as long when you switch to flower so they stretch for light. If you want to stop the stretching turn your lights back to 18/6.

Floral stretch or light stretch?

Plants will stretch reaching for light if the lamp is too high or if there is too much red in the spectrum. Use bulbs more in the blue spectrum AKA halides during vegetative. Having them in wide pots also helps slow vertical stretch. I am growing in huge 27 gallon totes, thus they have a very wide root space, thus they grow horizontally faster than vertically in these units during vegetative stage. Short and wide.

They will also stretch during the budding stage due to floral hormones. The general rule of thumb is they stretch for 40% of the flowering cycle. Thus a 7 1/2 week flowering strain will stretch for 40% of that time, or three weeks. If you know how many weeks they flower, you can easily estimate how long they will stretch.

Eg, a 9 week flowering strain can be calculated with this simple formula:

9/100 = x/40
9x40 = 360 (9 weeks flowering time multiplied by 40% stretch = 360)
360/100 = 3.6 thus a 9 week strain stretches for 3.6 weeks. (result of previous calculation, 360, divided by 100 gives us stretch time)

Also, keep in mind that sativa strains stretch much more than indica strains. This is why indica based strains are so popular with indoor growers.

Topping your plants will also slow the vertical growth of plants.

i just tried flowering a crop with barely any veg time in 6" rockwool cubes and it didnt help with the stretch at all plants grew like a fuckin vine all the way to the bulb and i had to chop the top of the plant. this is a huge amount of root space for plants that size so bigger root space didnt do shit for me. this next crop im gonna use a sunmaster cool deluxe mh for the first 3 weeks plus run bud ignitor so we'll see how that works. im so sick of dealing with the stretch on these hortilux super hps's in flower