Uh, looks nice.
Are you gonna prune them at all?
They were defoliated at day 1 and day 21 of flower.
I know everyone has their own school of thought and there’s more than one way to grow the plant as well.
I hold to the thought that unless there’s a specific reason to remove a fan leaf, you’re only wasting the energy it has currently spent to make it. Some of the reasons include, air flow, decaying, or light penetration if you have a lower powered light.
A leaf doesn’t absorb all the light that it hits it, so using the inverse square law, you can get really deep canopy penetration with a powerful light higher up. So my situation doesn’t require as much canopy penetration defoliation.
Now, for one more point, if a bud site is covered by a leaf, it naturally knows it needs to stretch to reach the light, and removing that leaf tells that bud site it’s accomplished that and leaves it lower, so it’s harder to get an even canopy when you indiscriminately remove leafs.
Ive seen that most people that require canopy defoliations are the ones with these 100w stick 4” away quantum boards, inverse square law gives them now grow depth.
Oh no, not “defoliation”, pruning.
As in, Pruning branches so the rest have more space. I don’t really prune leaves that much unless they’re on a branch I’m cutting anyway.
That being said, if you’ve defoliated twice, then you may have actually overdone it a bit, depending on the strain, as what I’ve found is that a badly timed / too strong defoliation does is it retards the growthspurt meant for buds and instead focuses a bit on “re-leaving”, as in growing new leafs and making the old ones bigger. I might be wrong, but I get that feeling because it looks like it for the general feel. Like you seem to have plenty of light, but there’s still not that many actual bud buds, just sort of a mix between really large sugar leaves and buddish mix. It might be a growth characteristic as well, but oftentimes it is something to do with the growth conditions.
But… that’s… you’re not getting a lot of penetration through that thicket, I don’t think, so the lower branches will be doing popcorn buds. Even with a 600HPS that would be quite hard. Anyway, pruning is much less to do with light power for me than it is about just getting the plants evenly in the space, but also, very importantly, air flow. We want good airflow among the buds.
What I do is I let them grow pretty unlimited for a few weeks, while bending the occasional branch this way and other that (one really doesn’t require screens for scrogging, I just supercrop with my thumb and forefinger, gently, without breaking the stem but changing it’s direction). Then some days / a week before starting flowering I prune the lower branches and some of the small side branches depending on how high they reach. Then I end up something like this, although this is a very casual and not well maintained grow I’ve done super-lazily
The last picture is from early/mid flower. Now I had already harvested about half, I’m still in the middle of harvesting these, so the second last picture from the tent is half harvested, but I think it shows… something. I could’ve utilised the space even better (you filled out yours better than I did this), but, well I hope you see something I’m talking about.
What’d you think of the purples I got into them? This strain doesn’t produce much purple unless you can get it cold during flowering. Which is nice, because there were just the suitable temps outside for the past month that I could have my window open and have it be like ~13-15C in my growroom at night.
Anyway, great looking grow, prolly just a way more indica-type growing properties in your strain.
As in, Pruning branches so the rest have more space. I don’t really prune leaves that much unless they’re on a branch I’m cutting anyway.
They have plenty of room.
That being said, if you’ve defoliated twice, then you may have actually overdone it a bit, depending on the strain, as what I’ve found is that a badly timed / too strong defoliation does is it retards the growthspurt meant for buds and instead focuses a bit on “re-leaving”, as in growing new leafs and making the old ones bigger. I might be wrong, but I get that feeling because it looks like it for the general feel. Like you seem to have plenty of light, but there’s still not that many actual bud buds, just sort of a mix between really large sugar leaves and buddish mix. It might be a growth characteristic as well, but oftentimes it is something to do with the growth conditions.
Yeah… I’m just gonna bounce from this convo… two defoliations at day 1 and day 21 is pretty standard and there’s plenty of bud sites, you seem to be wanting an argument and I’m not going to oblige. Go back through my post history before making these wild assumptions that are obviously not even close to hitting the mark.
They have plenty of room.
Don’t be offended for me sharing some tips you may or may not agree with.
I’ve grown weed for 20 years. You’re 30 days into flower and already it’s way too crowded there. Now I remember the “yeah but more is more, right” mental model, but you’ll only get a tent full of loose bud-like grass with that style. Do you have a RH meter, because I can bet my left nut you’re not even close to 40-50%, which is optimal for flowering. There’s zero room for them to perspire. Even the “buds” you have above the canopy behind there are more than 50% leaves. Look at my pictures. It’s buds. That last picture is from roughly around the same stage you’re in.
I was just trying to help out a fellow weeder, and ofc I’m not telling you to do anything. Since this hobby isn’t hasn’t been legal for most of the world for a long time, there’s still a lot of “ghetto-science” around it, which is why I feel it’s good to share tips and styles, as you never know what you might learn from another.
You’re clearly not willing to learn anything though. I’ve known a few growers like that. Usually their stuff was pretty much sugary leaves and some small bits of bud, and tasted horrible (they usually omitted flushing and overfed in flowering, which affects the smoke just… so horribly.)
It looks like 50% leafs because it has large leafs, which has nothing to do with pruning or defoliation.
They’re just leggy plants. They grew over 36” from being 6” tall.
And for what it’s worth, with testing becoming easier and cheaper, people have been testing lower bud sits and canopy bud sites. Lowers test for 20% more THC, which makes sense since light degrades THC, so there’s more evidence to keeping a tighter canopy with penetration.
Should I have trimmed more, probably, is it doing anything detrimental like you said, nope. Just need to watch for mold.
I also did more or less worse than this last grow
They’re fine.because it has large leafs, which has nothing to do with pruning or defoliation.
But that’s what I’m trying to talk about; I am pretty sure, through my own experience (and all the discussions on forums ofc) on this, that it does. When you defoliate too radically, the plant will try to recompensate, That recompensation will stall new growth of buds and instead focus on building the “energy reserves” in the leaves. This is why the leaves on the buds will start to grow out of proportion, as yours have. That doesn’t always happen, if you can properly manage RH and temp, as the plant won’t be trying to create more leaves to cope. Yours is quite full though, so the RH must be up, so the plant is trying to perspire a lot, as more area is required for perspiration the higher the RH is. So it’s focusing on making bigger leaves.
Really not the best comparison, but think of what an dog starts looking like when it gets too hot; the tongue lolls out, they pant, go near their face and it’s almost steamy. That’s more or less what those plants are doing. This might also all be solved without changing anything else you’ve done except get a dehumidifier to keep the RH lower if you want to pack it that tight. I still don’t know whether I’m right about the RH issue, maybe you do have dry air and it’s not too high, but I somehow seriously doubt yours is under 70%. Do you have a humidity meter? (I don’t, most times. I get the cheaper ones and then they eventually break, but since I’m pretty accustomed to how I grow with this setup, I don’t really need one to guesttimate accurately enough.)
If the RH is kept at proper levels, then you introduce more defoliation.
They’re all fine, more or less. It looks good. Not great, but not bad. I’m not badmouthing you or your grows, I’m trying to give you hints I think might improve your grows, which I think is what all growers aspire to. (Well, except when we get lazy and aspire to see what is the least amount of work for something that is still within acceptable margins. Those margins do get higher though, but I digress).
Popcorn buds are nice, especially for exctracts. I personally keep them all to myself while selling the prettier top buds. People who buy are after the aesthetic, I just want nice smoke.
Anyway, no offense meant by any of it.
I just miss r/druggardening
But that’s what I’m trying to talk about; I am pretty sure, through my own experience (and all the discussions on forums ofc) on this, that it does. When you defoliate too radically, the plant will try to recompensate, That recompensation will stall new growth of buds and instead focus on building the “energy reserves” in the leaves. This is why the leaves on the buds will start to grow out of proportion, as yours have. That doesn’t always happen, if you can properly manage RH and temp, as the plant won’t be trying to create more leaves to cope. Yours is quite full though, so the RH must be up, so the plant is trying to perspire a lot, as more area is required for perspiration the higher the RH is. So it’s focusing on making bigger leaves
I’ve never heard of this before, hydro and aeroponics grow larger leaves due to a variety of reasons, and they create MORE leaves, not larger leaves when you stress them to that degree, but they will also likely herm at that point too. And I didn’t even take off 10% of the canopy, so I don’t know why you would think this could be an overdefoliation, people have taken 50% off and nothing, but 30% is the rule of thumb.
My humdifier turns off at 50 rh and the fan kicks on when the rh gets over 55. I’ve got 2 fans, one above and below canopy. It is really dry here, usually don’t need to worry about over humidity. I still fill it every day if I feel like it.
The first image also makes it look darker down there than it is, can I remove more, yes, is it detrimental, no but mold is always a risk, did I remove too much, no. I would love to be able to do more tucking though, pushing the fan leaves down would make a world of difference in appearances I would imagine. From what I’ve seen heard, is when the bracts aren’t swollen is when you should maybe start worrying you’re doing too much.