Week 6, a little small?

Hey so I only recently started growing and decided I want to start out with this random seed I got a while back. Long story short, overall things have been pretty good, I just finished with my LST (first time doing it) and my growth definitely has slowed down a bit. I am currently on an 18/6 cycle, and I haven't flipped yet because I feel like she is still super young (at week 6 now with pictures included) She is just started to show some pistils, and the stem is getting a little frosty. I have her in a 5 gal pot, with about 3-3 1/2 gal of soil (Fox Farms Ocean soil) and I am using Dr.Earth dry fertilizers (VEG 4-6-3) (Pre-flower 4-4-4) and (Bloom 3-9-4) I only just started giving her the pre-flower, feeding her every other week, but I feel like that might have been a mistake because of how short she still is. Previously I was watering once a week (and I ph my water between like 6-6.5), but as of recently she has really been drinking, and I feed her every 3 days. I notice that when I wait to water her, her leaves will start to droop, and sometimes it can take a while for those leaves to bounce back. Any advice if I should just flip her now to 12/12, do you think the growth is stunted, should I just toss it? What y'all think? Any advice at all is welcomed.

Def don’t toss it

it looks sad. With the leaves pointing down I would bet you have some kind of root issue. Over feeding or over watering

Why did you not fill the pot up all the way? Pull it out and fill the pot up with soil once it’s dry. (If you have enough soil)

Just use the 4-4-4 until week 5-6 of flower.

Stop ph’ing your water and use it straight from the tap.

Get your plant healthy before flipping.

Wattzzup said:

Def don’t toss it

it looks sad. With the leaves pointing down I would bet you have some kind of root issue. Over feeding or over watering

Why did you not fill the pot up all the way? Pull it out and fill the pot up with soil once it’s dry. (If you have enough soil)

Just use the 4-4-4 until week 5-6 of flower.

Stop ph’ing your water and use it straight from the tap.

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Alright, appreciate it. Yeah the first picture really shows how sad it can get sometimes, but the second picture is of this morning when the leaves started bouncing back. I don't really overfeed, at least I don't think, I only use like 3 tablespoons of the 4-4-4, and I definitely don't overwater, because I have noticed every time my plants started to droop they want water, I give it to them, and they usually bounce right back, but weirdly enough, they don't always bounce back so fast. If you think filling up the pot will also help, I will probably do that. I was actually worried about my plant getting too much nitrogen because of how dark my leaves are, but again, I am truly just a beginner.

Well you’re doing pretty good so far. Yes the dark leaves are a sign of too much N. When did you start feeding? How many weeks?

When you pot up the new soil will feed it just a little bit. So plain water when you do pot up.

I would pot up. Fully saturate the soil until runoff. Wait until you can notice a difference in the pots weight AND stick your finger down to the first knuckle, if its moist, it’s too soon. Plain water until it looks better. 4-4-4 once it’s ready for more nutrients.

Wattzzup said:

Well you’re doing pretty good so far. Yes the dark leaves are a sign of too much N. When did you start feeding? How many weeks?

When you pot up the new soil will feed it just a little bit. So plain water when you do pot up.

I would pot up. Fully saturate the soil until runoff. Wait until you can notice a difference in the pots weight AND stick your finger down to the first knuckle, if its moist, it’s too soon. Plain water until it looks better. 4-4-4 once it’s ready for more nutrients.

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I think my dumbass started feeding like, 2nd maybe 3rd week. I was following this chart: Feeding-Schedule.pdf because I didn't really have any guidance. I started with the 4-6-3, and only like last week (week 5) I started with the 4-4-4. I watched some videos and some people recommend mixing 60% 4-6-3 and 40% of 4-4-4. I did that for my last feeding, so I don't think I will notice changes until like next week. As far as the watering. I do exactly what you recommend, I put my pointer finger down all the way to the knuckle, and I usually water when the soil is just still hardly moist, but not dry completely (this just happens to be around 3-4 days now, but before it was like once a week) Overall I was just worried because I haven't seen too much growth, and I noticed that most plants start to bud just a little around week 6, and I still have like 3-4 pistils and that's about it. While it is starting to smell a bit, I was just worried that I was fucking it up.

EElges said:

Alright, appreciate it. Yeah the first picture really shows how sad it can get sometimes, but the second picture is of this morning when the leaves started bouncing back. I don't really overfeed, at least I don't think, I only use like 3 tablespoons of the 4-4-4, and I definitely don't overwater, because I have noticed every time my plants started to droop they want water, I give it to them, and they usually bounce right back, but weirdly enough, they don't always bounce back so fast. If you think filling up the pot will also help, I will probably do that. I was actually worried about my plant getting too much nitrogen because of how dark my leaves are, but again, I am truly just a beginner.

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No clawing, green healthy vegging plants.
Leaf droop could be due to watering issues. Are you fully watering the pots, then waiting for them to dry?

Boatguy said:

No clawing, green healthy vegging plants.
Leaf droop could be due to watering issues. Are you fully watering the pots, then waiting for them to dry?

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Yah, I have been watering about 1/2-3/4 of a gallon of water for 3 gallons of the medium. I have been feeling my soil like every other day, and I wait for it to be just hardly moist but not bone dry. I have noticed the past 2 weeks, that when they start to run low on water in the soil they start to droop, that has been my problem, and you can see what I mean in the first picture. They didn't do that before, and I would let the soil get bone dry before watering, but not drooping (it is a more recent thing). Usually, when they droop and I water them, they bounce back in like an hour. The other day they were drooping for a while, like a whole 48 hours, and just this morning they have bounced back and look a lot healthier.

Every other day seems excessive for a plant 6 weeks into veg. Do the pots feel light that quick?

Boatguy said:

Every other day seems excessive for a plant 6 weeks into veg. Do the pots feel light that quick?

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Well I also just check on it every day cause I am a psychopath, and also I guess because it's my first plant ever, I check on it so much. But yah, they do get pretty light pretty quick. Its a 5-gallon cloth pot, with about 3 1/2 gals of soil mixed with perlite. I didn't have to check the soil moisture so much like the first few weeks, it was consistently getting dry every 6-7 days, which made it easy. Now it goes dry every like 3-4 days, and I water even more than before. The humidity is usually around 45-50 and the temp is usually 75-80 at the most, and at night averages around 65 degrees. Any ideas/advice about that?

Your conditions seem fine.
I try to save my watering till night and wait till the pots are totally dry. You are better off waiting till they droop from lack of water than not. The leaves will literally be praying within 15 min of watering.

Boatguy said:

Your conditions seem fine.
I try to save my watering till night and wait till the pots are totally dry. You are better off waiting till they droop from lack of water than not. The leaves will literally be praying within 15 min of watering.
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Nice setup, looks good.
I will try watering at night. I'll also wait until it's really dry, 1 thing I have noticed, but I don't know if I'm being a dumbass, is when I am feeding my plants, I usually sprinkle it throughout the soil, mix it in with my hands (like digging maybe like half an inch deep) then watering it. I have noticed that when I reach in like an inch deep with my fingers, my soil is pretty fucking packed, but I don't know if there are roots or what. Do I just leave that alone, or do I like break it up? Just wondering I just don't know if that affects the soil or what not

I use the DTE 4-4-4 and the flower girl amendments for my grows. I mix it in before planting at a rate of 2 tbls per gallon of media and don't top dress at all until about a week after I flip. Then I'll use 4-4-4 at 2 tbls per gallon of media which is a little bit more than the DTE schedule but seems to work well for almost all strains. After two weeks I'll go 50/50 grow and flower at the same rate, then every two weeks it's 100% flower girl until I switch to just water for the last week or two depending on how they look. It's good stuff but I've needed to add magnesium to a couple strains that were showing deficiencies using it. You can use a bamboo skewer to poke down into the root ball to aerate it. Go all the way down to the bottom of the pot I do it every time I water about 8-10 times. It won't hurt the roots.

FirstCavApache64 said:

I use the DTE 4-4-4 and the flower girl amendments for my grows. I mix it in before planting at a rate of 2 tbls per gallon of media and don't top dress at all until about a week after I flip. Then I'll use 4-4-4 at 2 tbls per gallon of media which is a little bit more than the DTE schedule but seems to work well for almost all strains. After two weeks I'll go 50/50 grow and flower at the same rate, then every two weeks it's 100% flower girl until I switch to just water for the last week or two depending on how they look. It's good stuff but I've needed to add magnesium to a couple strains that were showing deficiencies using it. You can use a bamboo skewer to poke down into the root ball to aerate it. Go all the way down to the bottom of the pot I do it every time I water about 8-10 times. It won't hurt the roots.

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I know flip time is different for every plant, but when should I flip. This plant has pretty fat leaves, it has stayed short and stocky for a while, I'm on week 6 like you can see in the picture. Do I just wait until it's big enough, is there a rough time you could give me like week 9, week 10? or does it just depend? I am only now starting to see some pistils, maybe like 3 on the main head, and the new heads from the LST I did still aren't producing any yet.

It all depends on you, your strain and the growing height limits you have. It can grow 1.5-3 times in height when you flip, that's known as the stretch. If you're in a tent and it's 6' tall you need to take into account the height of the plant when it's done stretching as far as how much room you have in the tent. You need room above your lights for heat disapation, then you have the light hanging hardware, then there's the distance that the lights need to be above the plants which can be from 12-36" depending on the type and intensity. In my 80" tent I can't really grow above 48" tall so I have to flip most indica plants at 24" above ground to keep them below that as indica's don't stretch as much as sativa's. Sativa's can stretch 3x their height at flip so if it's a real sativa I'll flip at like 12" or so. If you give me some measurements like plant height, total height including the pot, tent size or room size and the light distance you are supposed to have I can give you an idea of when you need to flip to prevent over growing the space. The choice then is up to you. The strain is also important but since it's random you'll just have to guess it's a hybrid and use a stretch of 2x as a best guess.

FirstCavApache64 said:

It all depends on you, your strain and the growing height limits you have. It can grow 1.5-3 times in height when you flip, that's known as the stretch. If you're in a tent and it's 6' tall you need to take into account the height of the plant when it's done stretching as far as how much room you have in the tent. You need room above your lights for heat disapation, then you have the light hanging hardware, then there's the distance that the lights need to be above the plants which can be from 12-36" depending on the type and intensity. In my 80" tent I can't really grow above 48" tall so I have to flip most indica plants at 24" above ground to keep them below that as indica's don't stretch as much as sativa's. Sativa's can stretch 3x their height at flip so if it's a real sativa I'll flip at like 12" or so. If you give me some measurements like plant height, total height including the pot, tent size or room size and the light distance you are supposed to have I can give you an idea of when you need to flip to prevent over growing the space. The choice then is up to you. The strain is also important but since it's random you'll just have to guess it's a hybrid and use a stretch of 2x as a best guess.

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I first off wanna say thank you, you and everyone have been very helpful I appreciate it.
As far as measurements, I have a pretty small tent, I'm running a 3.5x3.5x4.5 feet. So basically only 4 and half feet in height, and if we are taking into account room for heat and lighting I truly only have like 3.5-4 feet at the most for room, sucks I know but sadly I'm on a budget for now. As far as plant height, including the pot, It is almost at 2 ft, just under bc of the LST I did. I have about 16 inches between the light and the top of the plant, with a decent amount of room to pull the light up. I guess I should start thinking about making the flip, but do you think that my plant is currently healthy enough to do that? Should I give it a week or so? If I started the flip tomorrow would that be a problem? Ill include a picture, and hopefully this can help with some size refrence.

I get you with the budget, I'm a disabled veteran and I Gerry rig most of my stuff. My tent is many years old and has plenty of duct tape. I'd try to work on her for a week and then flip for sure since you don't know the genetics. If it's an indica it might not stretch hardly at all, if it's a sativa she could be up in the ceiling. You're going to find out in the first two weeks of flower. How are your temps and humidity doing? Both during lights on and off? I see the towel hanging so I'm guessing you're trying to improve humidity with that. You should try to save up and get a humidifier to out just outside the tent by the intake opening. It's a big help with the veg and early flower stage. Try to read up on VPD for cannabis when you get the chance, it will teach you a lot about why temp and humidity are so important for the plants to grow healthy and quickly. There's a lot of good info on the web, a quick Google search can find you tons of reading. I'm glad to help, I'm still learning after 6 years of trial and error but I do okay with my little tent. I just grow for medical and do mainly heavy indica strains for pain but I do some auto flowers too for variety.

Thank you for your service. My temp during the day is usually between 75-80 degrees, and at night it usually is around 65-70. Humidity is constantly between 43-50. Also I have the humidifier, just couldn't get it in the picture. Is that ok?

That's not bad, it's a little low for veg stage but pretty close. Are you using led lights? I like temps up around 77-80 if possible with LEDs and humidity 50-55 minimum during veg. Check this site out for a good resource on VPD.

Just plug in your temp and humidity and adjust the leaf temp to be within about 3 degrees of the air temperature and that's close enough to get it in the ball park. I use a temp gun to scan my leaf surface area to get the temperature. There's three different Target areas for VPD, early germination, veg. And flower basically. Each one has its own range of targets to shoot for. Keeping your environment in range really helps the plants remain stress free and grow quickly. Here's my girls now. I grow 100% organic with just powdered amendments I add every two weeks. Other than that it's just plain water. Super easy and I don't have to ph the water ever.