How can I improve horizontal growth? -first grow, not too much light, manual watering, no nutrients added yet

Hi friend, For what I know Amnesia strains are mostly sativa descendant. This means they have naturally bigger spacing between nodes so more vertical. You'd like it to get bushier... best way would be to do some topping which is cutting the top shoot and LST. This will make the two below develop as top shoots and LST makes the plant bushier like in a SCROG. Leaving some tutorials on training plants. Read all, I've had ;) https://www.growweedeasy.com/slt-selective-light-training-superangryguy https://www.growweedeasy.com/cannabis-plant-training https://www.growweedeasy.com/7-cannabis-plant-training-mistakes Also a base nutrient like BioBizz Biogrow and some algae extracts like Alg-a-mic provided as vegetative booster can increase foliage and vegetative growth in general.

top it or 'train' it... which simply means bending it to break 'apical dominance' whatever growth node is the highest will take the lion's share of resources and therefore fastest growth. Bending a growth node down will stall it... the resources will be spent elsewhere. there's not much you can do in low light though... it will continue to stretch more than normal as it tries to reach more intense light that does not exist. you need roughly a minimum of 21DLI to grow a marijuana plant. Reference a chart and guesstimate what you are providing with other resources.. .you can even get this info for the sun by region and time of year. hopefully, the 6-7 hours of sun is the more intense part of day. I have a shaded/obstructed backyars.. i got about 6-8 hous of sun each day. i'm in a northern latitude, just south of Canada. It was not enough to properly grow the plants... the buds were larfy and twiggy. The plants stretched more than they should. in that context, there was nothing i could do to improve it without adding artificial light outdoors... so, it could be impossible to do what you want... time will tell... see how it goes. You probably need a light to augment the sun, though. Even a cheapie 25w grow light could help... but i'd recommend 100-ish USD$ at an entry range. xs-1000, xs-1500 are two decent, fairly low-priced units that are only 100-150w. 2 small plants or 1 plant would be fine under them. they can cover a bit more than a 2'x2' space... and with autoflowers 50% more space than for photoperiods. check out some apogee instrument videos on youtube... they show some inexpensive led lights in the 25w range that can work well. these are much cheaper options but plenty to augment the sun, i think.... at least achieve some minimum amount of daily light (DLI - daily light integral)

I would highly suggest not to remove any leaves, this will just reduce your plants capacity to produce energy, thereby reducing its ability to make new growth. Small pots limit growth, so transplanting into bigger pots (drefinitely not clear plastic ones) will give them more root room and encourage growth, but in reality, more light = more growth. If they are behind glass during the day, sunlight will be highly diminished, which also limits growth.

You definitely need to try bending them over. Typically I pull my autoflower plants over around 6-7 inches in height sometimes as high as 8 or 9 with minimum pruning. Pruning autos is high stress training. Bending them and manipulating the height is known as Low Stress Training. I highly reccomend both. I have never had an issue pruning an auto I just take 1-3 leafs at a time and give her time to recover. Hope this helps!!!!!!!!

They're always going to grow vertically - but you can help them spread out with some LST. They make LST clips which are a thing of joy - reusable plastic things that put a 90-degree bend in your stem (stems must be pliable!). Those are what I use - but I also use simple strips of fabric that I loop over the stems and pull down & attach to my fabric pots... other people will use a soft garden wire. Good luck!