How to Avoid Cannabis Plant Stretching

Cannabis plant stretching is basically the growing vertically of cannabis plants during the early flowering stages, which is seen in a lot of sativa and sativa dominant hybrid plants. This is something that usually is seen during your third or the fourth week, and some may even grow a bit longer. 

This is something a lot of cultivars try to avoid all the time, since this can definitely cause issues with growing in certain media, but also makes the plants spindly and tall, reduces production, and they will then outgrow the area, and their buds will start to be airy in terms of growth, so it’ll spoil all of the plants that are there, and also will not create a good, even canopy, and you won’t be able to get the most efficient growth possible. 

It's a nightmare when this happens, and you’ll then have to adjust your entire space for flowering to accommodate all of this, and it may cause a harvest, but it’s usually worthless. How do you fix this though? How do you keep this reasonable, especially during those first few weeks, so that they don’t do that. 

First, consider genetics. 

You want to choose ones that are good for your space to grow.  Indica plants will not stretch as much, with the exception of the OG Kush, which is a stretchy cultivar, since this is something that has specific genetics to this. 

Choose ones with a shorter  veg period 

This may seem obvious, but if you want to make sure that your plants don’t stretch, you’ll want to choose one that has a veg period that’s a little bit longer.  Those that have an 18/6 schedule, and then moved to a 12/12, it will start to flower.  You want to go for shorter vegetative periods, since this offers more room int eh ten to go upwards, so that you don’t have to worry about the plant stretching as much. 

Think about Temperature 

Usually, most growers will use HPS lamps when flowering, since they are a part of the warm light levels of colors, which means that they’re more red, and they mimic autumnal light colors in order to help with flowering. 

However, this does also induce the action of stretching in many cannabis cultivars. You should try to continue to use metal halide kinds of lamps to help with vegetative growth over the next couple weeks of flowering. You should try to go for blue light spectrums, to help with better internode spaces, and also to reduce stretching while also keeping the plants at logical height levels. Usually, after a few weeks of the 12/12 types of lighting, you want to then change the MH to HPS in order to continue the correct flowering. You can also use LED lamps of a variable spectrum to save you a bit of headache as well. 

Look at temperatures 

Finally, you want to make sure that you are not giving them too cold of a temperature.  You want to try to make sure that the growing temperature isn’t too much between daytime and nighttime. This is because it will cause the plant to create gibberellin, which means that it will stretch a lot more. 

Usually, research says that the stretching takes place mostly in the first couple hours of the morning, so if you reduce the temperature a little bit for a few hours during daybreak, and also reduce it just a little bit at night, it can help with this. It can also be fixed with cold dump to help keep things cold and stop the stretch. 

Is CBD Safe for kids?

Some children have conditions and they may wonder if CBD is safe for them to use. Here, we’ll go over whether it’s safe for children to use, and some of the conditions surrounding this as well. 

CBD for Kids

There are a few reasons for people to consider using CBD to help kids.  There are some studies that have looked at this. First and foremost, anxiety is something that does have CBD as a possible way to treat the condition.  There is some studies that noticed that if you do take CBD to help with this, do be mindful of other treatments as well. 

Right now, there is some research that says that anxiety can be treated with this, but the ADHD research for CBD is very sparse, and it’s not conclusive. Right now, there is no major difference between those who used it, and those who did not. However, for epilepsy, it does help, and it can help possibly improve some of the treatment—resisting conditions, and it can definitely improve a lot of this.  There were some results which did show that there was a difference between those who had CBD and those who don’t, and it also did have less adverse results as well. 

So is it Safe for Kids? 

This is something that we can’t totally answer, simply because of the lack of research related to CBD. On the outside, it seems safe enough, in that it has a good safety profile for a child, and even the WHO does say that it does have minimal risk factors in this. However, there is some research which came out recently that noticed that CBD does have a link directly to an enzyme count that’s higher within the liver, and this is preliminary research, and was conducted on some of animal subjects rather than actually on human people that participated in this. 

It’s something that doesn’t really have a human base to it, but it’s still something to be a little bit cautious about. However, but also keep in mind that it is random in the way that it’s used, and it’s best if you stay cautious of this, since this is something that’s still being studied. It’s best to ensure that there isn’t any breastfeeding occurring if you take this, and if you’re pregnant you should also not worry all that much about taking this, since it can impact the child. 

You also should not give this to infants and babies, since there are effects which are unknown in this. However, there are some CBD medications that are actually safe for kids to use.  Epidolex, which is CBD-based, is authorized in many countries to help with the treatment of different epilepsy conditions, especially if the child is drug-resistant in their condition itself. 

So there might be a few instances where you can use this for the treatment of their condition, but it’s best if you do discuss this with a doctor before you jump into using this. They can help you figure out the right thing to use, and from there, you can always try it as well to see if there is anything else which might help. 

While CBD is something tons of adults absolutely love, there are a lot of concerns about giving it to kids, simply because there isn’t a ton of information on this. It’s very important that for those who do use CBD for kids tat they do the research necessary, and also to look at some of the other aspects that go along with this as well.