New Grower How to keep plants short?

[Fabolous]

Hey guys,

ATM I'm doing my first grow ever in a tent measuring 40x40x120cm with a 150HPS lamp in a cooltube. I planted 4 auto ak47 seeds at the 11th of july so they're about to finish week 8 and are looking really good

One (of many) problems that i've encountered is that they all grew taller than I expected. The seed bank said 50-60cm and they're all around 70-80cm tall now. This forced me to rebuild the setup I had and put the fan and carbon filter outside of the tent to make room for the cooltube, ending up with about 15cm of maximum space between the top buds and the HPS lamp.

In the next grow I plan to use bigger pots, which will reduce growing space with another 5 cm, and grow 1 kush van stitch, 1 sour diesel haze and 1 critical rapido. According to seed bank info all these will grow around 50-70cm tall which is perfectly fine by me, but from what i've read on this forum that's not always reality.

So what I need is tips on how to grow these strains without having to worry about the ladies getting out of control and burning themselves. I really don't have anywhere else to have them than in this tent. Always keeping the light as close as possible? LSTing the heck out of them for the first weeks, will that help to dramatically reduce size? Reducing the light cycle, will that effect length?

Also I use Gold Label Nutrients which have the same nutrients for veg and flower (Soil A & B) but with some PK and MG additives for flowering.

 

[wazzaaap]

Reducing the light cycle .. that will effect length, i think that's the answer
what's the cycle u use?

 

[gtron]

Low Stress Training, also known as LST or to the more crass of us Bondage.
Just tie the branches you see growing a little too fast down. I use really long pipe cleaners, but I have also hung fishing weights on them to pull them down gently.
There are any number of methods u can use to hold the branches down.
Good luck.

 

[MrMcbud]

There are many ways to skin a cat.
LST,topping,supercropping,scrog.
these should shed some light
https://www.autoflower.org/f5/lst-hub-7811.html
Not autoflower,but still applicable
http://www.hydrocanna.com/indoor-growing/6427-lbhs-scrog-tutorial.html
and finally
https://www.autoflower.org/f2/topping-autoflowers-10123.html

 

[Fabolous]

Reducing the light cycle .. that will effect length, i think that's the answer
what's the cycle u use?

I started out with 20/4 and switched to 18/6 when they grew out of control and forced me to re-arrange the ventilation.

While on the light cycle topic - say you start out with 12/12 or 16/8 for the first 5-6 week, would it be possible to change to 20/4 when they've stopped stretching to give more energy to the bud producing phase? Will autoflowering strains get heavily confused if you change light cycle in that direction?

 

[agito]

buy a smaller auto plenty about blue mystic bettys shortstuff/lr1 etc..

i doubt they would get confused first 2 weeks will stunt there growth the most

bigger pots will make them grow larger

 

[Muddy]

Sounds like you may have stretched them a bit too much in veg. Next grow, keep your light a bit closer. I normally shoot for node spacing of about 1" and will raise or lower my lights accordingly to maintain that spacing. Can you post some pictures of the plants?

 

[kpex]

More powerful lighting will keep them from stretching.

But also - smaller pots and LST'ing.....

 

[stylez]

LSTing is the way I go. Tie branches down gently to holes that I put in the sides of the pots. I tie them with hemp string. I had a Mi5 that was less than 8 inches tall that I chopped this week. If you wanna see how short she was there are pics in the indoor section. One Love and keep it growing.