1 week into the 12/12 hour cycle. should i?

i am about 1 week into the 12/12 hour cycle of my first scene. should i be pruning or thinning leaves on the lower parts of the plant at this point? does most or all of the useful production take place in the top canopy? should the watering schedule/method change during this period?


thanks so much for your help and this forum!!!

ebX

 

Don't prune or thin anything. Unless that is you want to take some cuttings for clones. As soon as the plant shows it sex you can take cuttings from the lower parts of your plant. Otherwise the more foliage it has the greater capacity for overall growth it has. I only remove leaves when they actually fall off. When you finally harvest your plant you remove all the large colas at the top then if the plant is left a few days you can get another mini harvest from the remaining buds that are now receiving the light. Water as required same as in veg.

 

Not pruning? You are a madman lol. Right before flower it's a good idea to prune and tie your branches so that sun can penetrate the foliage to the whole lady. To each his own.

Your methods should change when your plants say so. You gotta pay attention to em, most people let the soil dry out a bit before watering again.

 

Heard this said before. I agree with tieing the branches but not the pruning. Its an ongoing argument heard meangreen say dont prune as every leaf adds to overall growing power but have also read people who swear by pruning. Overall I have read more reports saying don't prune so I stick to this. Its like a lot of growing techniques people have there own preferences, experiment try pruning one see what you think then make your own decision as what to do on your next grow. If you do decide to prune whatever you do don't go mad. Personally I would let it grow. If fan leaves are blocking lower buds, bend them out of the way some people use paperclips or you can buy specilised ties. My favorite training technique is to have a net about a foot and a half above the plants as they grow carefully bend them weaving them in and out of the net.This way the whole plant gets light. When they start flowering properly let them grow straight up. All you we have then is a sea of nice colas.

 

I like to prune just because it allows more of the nutrients to be spread to the areas that matter...eliminates some of the riff-raff

Not too much pruning though.

 

has anyone just continued the vegatative stage and turned the leaves into hash, or is that not practical, because you can put hash on a pin under glass and it's pretty nice.

 

Yep,

Males, fan leaves, trimmings. To the bubble bags they can go. Though unless you press it a pipe would work well (after drying of course).

-Bill

 

Alpha, not from the veggie state. The THC and cannaboids don't really develop until flowering. I'm betting you might get something, but not much quantiy or quality.

 

Well my man,

FWIW you can from the veggie state dry and process. Depending on the volume and strain itself (if its bad its bad) you would be suprised at what you would receive. People pull and dump the males but now you know what they can be used for. Even the seemingly dreaded male fan leaves have some content. Dry some fan leaves as a test - you might have to roll a fattie.

But still flowering is where the big time resin production kicks in. A bag run through trimmings alone will produce ALOT more.

Not that I have done that It is illegal and I never advocate breaking the law.

-Bill

 

Nope,
Leaves serve 2 main purposes:
-collecting light energy which is the engine that powers photosynthesis
and
-acting as a storehouse for nutrients. Fan leaves especially store nutrients during veg that the plant needs during flowering. As the nutrients in the leaves are used up, they yellow, wither and die.
If you remove green healthy leaves, simply adding more nutrients to make up for what the leaves contain doesn't make up for the lost nutrients, since what's stored in the leaves has already been processed by the plant into a usable form.

I've done side-by-side comparisons. Plants from the same donor, identical soil, nutrients, etc., 1 with leaves removed, 1 left unmolested.

The unmolested plant yielded a bit more weed (about 10%) and the buds tasted better.

 

Hi RD,

I think IWIWAH (hee hee) was referring to pruning the lower branches off to allow for more vigorous growth on the main or upper limbs.

I agree with you though and I like the looks of a larger fuller beauty

-BIll

 

I havn't tried this myself, but would it be possible to trim off just the budsite? im sure it would require a steril and very sharp blade. by just cutting away some of the lowwer sites and leaving their leave's you might be directing more nutrients to the upper sites.

 

Interesting concept. But I think what would happen if you did that:
It would be time-consuming and you'd need a sharp eye to remove just the budsites
and 1 false move and you might trigger the plant to grow 2 new branches from each cut, robbing the plant of bud-producing energy.
If you want to remove part of the plant, use a clean sharp razor blade and remove the ENTIRE BRANCH, at the meristem. This will prevent the plant from trying to repair the damage and keep pumping energy to the existing branches.
There is a method I call "single stalk" that involves cutting off ALL side branches to concentrate the yield to the main cola. It's not applicable to all strains.

 

Every time you cut a plant, it has to heal, which takes time and energy.
Even removing an almost dead leaf will cause a healing process.
For pruning to be effective you will be damaging the plant so much it will be stunted for longer than the benefit you gain. You can expect 1 to 2 weeks for the plant to just recover and resume full production again.
If the lower leaves/branches on the plant weren't useful to it, it wouldn't grow them there or they would die and fall off on their own.

This can be proven with inadequate lighting. The plant will be stringy and sparse, because it would gain no benefit from growing more leaves.