New Grower Over stuffed tent

[mo beans]

Hi all! I’m about 5 weeks into my first ever grow and starting to hit the point where I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s a 3x3x6 tent with a Mars hydro 300w light and ac infinity exhaust fan/controller/carbon filter. The girls are Amsterdam marijuana seeds ak47, carmelicious, and supreme autos in 5 gallon fabric pots with half n half ocean forest and happy frog. Watering with half RO half tap with ph lowered to 6.5. Started adding botanicare easy compost tea at 1/4 the recommended dose every other watering. Now things are getting crowded and I could use some moral support as I figure out how to finish this out

 

[mo beans]

 

[mo beans]

So, the ak and carmel were supposed to top out around 70 and supreme at 100. The smallest is now at 90cm and the biggest is back down to about 100 after I super cropped it last night. I had a minor split when I did it and have her taped up with some masking tape since I didn’t have any plumbers or gardeners on hand. Hopefully that’ll be good enough. Anyways, now I’m trying to figure out how to decide what and how much I need to prune since they are all continuing to bush out and hit the walls and each other. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Rasterman]

That's a tough problem to have.

 

[mo beans]

That's a tough problem to have.

It’s a good problem, but one I’m just not sure how to deal with. I’ve grown and bred heirloom tomatoes for years and until the last few days I was following my local hippies advice and growing them like maters. I really don’t want to get this far and end up with mold

 

[Rasterman]

I wanted to give you advice but you'll have to take it with a grain of salt because I've only been growing a little over a year. It looked to me like you had enough extra room to at least separate the pots a little bit. But I must be misinterpreting the picture.

I would look into lollipopping first, then removing all the fan leaves that contact the other plants as much as you can. Then install an oscillating fan and hope for the best. You'll probably be ok - those plants look very happy.

I've never gone into flower with a tent that crowded, but my veg tent is always badly crowded lol. Here's what I've learned (and I'm only saying this because I learned it the hard way) - a single plant in the largest pot you can fit (within reason) should yield you more than a few crowded plants.

 

[mo beans]

 

[mo beans]

@Rasterman thanks for the advice! I’m really happy with how the girls have grown too. the empty space is where the oscillating tower fan was I’ve added two 6” fans today. One pointing down and another upwards in the center. They have good power so a couple more are on order now.
I tried to plan…and here we are

 

[mo beans]

Happily, the super cropped stem seems to have survived. I included the low side pic to see if there are ideas to prune more. I’ve already taken the obvious fan leaves but still need to decide whether to crop the entire branches that are going wide and hitting the tent or the the other plants. I don’t have a par meter, but have done the whole grow at full power with the light all the way up and little Carmel showed some very minor light stress in weeks 2&3 so I suspect that it’s sufficient to flower well below the canopy.

 

[Bob's Auto's]

Hey buddy,

First off I wanted to welcome you to AFN
Second, Put a trellis over those plants and spread out the tops so you get an even canopy. Then as @Rasterman suggested start by pulling those leaves under the canopy which don't get any light. This will free up some space and let air underneath so everything stays nice and dry.
Please do check your humidity meter as the plants are in full growth at the moment and are probably drinking like a fish.

Regards,

Bob