Is this preflowering?

[olegren]

I don’t know if you mentioned how old she is, but I may have missed it. Clearly, if she is flowering at that size, something went awry. Either she is flowering prematurely, or her veg growth was stunted and is flowering is on time. In either case, you grow her out, and sit back and smoke the hell out of that joint! It may be the best weed you smoked. You can correct the environment issue for the next plant! Cheers!

Hey, thanks! She was on day 24 when I posted this. Flower seems premature; but pre-flower seems par for the course. I was alarmed because I just never encountered the stretch that others describe. However, I think I have traced this to my lighting method. I am trying to do a little LST on her now to encourage some of those lower sites to grow out.

Before Buying my Autocobs and Quantum boards, I loved the 24/7 light schedule. My old led lights that had 3 watt and 5 watt diodes loved it. I felt I finished a little sooner with a little bigger harvest. I changed to 20/4 light schedule with the Autocobs and Quantun boards.

Thanks. I have been thinking about this as well. I have seen a few others indicate that staggering light a bit and adding some darkness encourages some stretch. LST'ing this little stub is nerve-wracking and complicated, so I'd like to see them get taller. I have also noticed that both plants seem to have their own cycles despite the 24/0 schedule. One will grow during (my) day, and the other grows overnight. They clearly get their fill after some period of time and then are basically done for the day. Might as well save some electricity, so I think I will give this a shot.

Takeaways
All told, I think I brought this on by not understanding light. There were times, in her first several weeks, when I lowered lights thinking maybe she was growing slow because she wasn't getting enough. I had my QB on its lowest setting about 10-12" above her. This was around 400ppfd. She probably didn't stretch because why would she? Plenty of light right there.

In retrospect, that seems silly. I now understand that a plant will stretch when it wants more light (I guess I assumed this was only seedlings -- and inherently something you do not want -- early on), so I'll set a minimum height around 18".

When the plant starts stretching, I will take that cue to raise the lights' intensity a bit. I think I will also start doing a 20/4 schedule to see if a little dark period helps them as well.

Thank you all again for sharing your wisdom with me. Makes this journey feel a little more like an art than a science sometimes.