Pruning in flower?

I’m 65 days into my first grow, week 3 of flower (yes very long veg!), and the buds are developing nicely:




My pruning approach in veg was to remove a handful of nodes/fan leaves from under the canopy every day or so. I’m wondering what the correct pruning technique is in flower? So far I’ve supercropped the stretchy colas, but I’m concerned about bud rot with the density of the new growth, would removing fan (sugar?) leaves be a good idea? Outside humidity is 85% :roll_eyes:. At what point should I start keeping the trimmings for edibles?

3 Likes

There’s lots of light and air through there, looks good from the side view. See right through it. I wouldnt remove any more now. Nice grow setup too!
I’d keep trimmings when they leave sticky on your fingers. When the stuff will be all over the buds and leaves. My guess is much later.

3 Likes

If youre in the 80s like the temp says then your target VPD would be between 70% and 80% humidity. Good airflow and youre good! Nice grow.

3 Likes

A lot of people, me included, do a defoliation session on days 21 and 42 of flower. The way your girls are lollipopped you probably won’t have to do much, if any, defoliation going forward. If any leaves are blocking light or airflow and can’t be tucked then remove em. Otherwise take another look in three weeks and see if any leaves need to go. Ladies are looking good btw.

4 Likes

The humidity inside the grow space is what needs to be managed. Temps and humidity are interrelated. You want lower humidity during flower

I usually veg for 56 - 70 days (8 - 10 weeks) but I also do a lot of training / manifold

10 Likes

Thank you all for your input, I seem to be at a VPD of 1.2 at the moment (temps range from 72 - 82, RH from 55-70%). I’ve added a fan under the canopy for circulation

@beardless That chart is a great resource, thanks!

3 Likes

Update on my flower tent, I have two 3 gals still to flip :grimacing:


All 3 of these are grown from ILGM white window (fem) seeds. They are looking wildly different!

3 Likes

Any roots coming through the soil bag?

Yeah, one or two roots through the 3ga, already in week 2 of flower. I had a bunch of tap roots under the 10 gal, but a dry spell killed them off


basically this but more

1 Like

I had very different/same plants once and treated them the same except the one I had in a tall narrow pot of heavier soil yellowd more and grew wider and shorter, which effect of the tall narrow pot I don’t know, interesting though.
Pretty cool the roots coming through like that

Between the pot size, grow medium (white pot is coco, 10gal is soil) and fluctuating environmentals its a bit of a crap shoot figuring out what happened.

PS: flowering is going pretty good!




5 Likes

It is going good! Healthy looking plants :+1:

Looks like getting your next grow ready, three big pots filled? What they gonna be

Yip, I have 2x 30s and 1x Earthbox prepped and ready in the other half of the 4x8.

I’ve popped a bunch of seeds and I’m hoping the flower tent will empty out at about the right time for this batch before they outgrow my 5x2 veg tent

Seeds this round:
3x Orange Cookie Chem BX fem (Freeworld genetics)
6x Undercaker regular (Darkhorse genetics)
16x random ‘Safari mix’ pack regular (Mandela seeds)
1x zkittlez auto freebie

I have some Covert genetics and about 100 seeds from Europe arriving soon (Black Friday got me good). I’m going to run a higher number of smaller plants this time around to cut veg time from 8 to 4 weeks. I’m thinking I can fit 18 plants in the 4x8. I have automatic watering so filling it up isn’t an issue for access

1 Like

Here is a photo I took now, pretty good growth in a week since the last photo

5 Likes

What did you plant in the top of your new soil? And why? And what’s with the hey? Your grow looks great how did it turn out? Check out my grow! Happy Holidays sir.

1 Like

@JayDawg Happy holidays!

The straw acts like mulch; it keeps the top layer of soil moist to increase the root zone area and also reduce evaporation (i.e. less humidity in the tent).

The 30 gals are still empty for now, I have another round of plants about 3 weeks from flower. I’ve had issues balancing watering to both small and large pots at the same time with my irrigation system, so I may move the soil to many 3 gal pots rather than run 3-4 plants per 30 gal. It’ll also help with balancing the canopy

I’m watching the trichs on my oldest, she’s 10 weeks into flower and just about done

My first northern lights plant turned out to be quite the stretcher and she is super frosty already. She’s going to have a great yield.

The rest of them are coming along, I’ve dropped the lights a bit to avoid more foxtailing, and reduced water and nutes because they aren’t drinking as much in late flower, they just need to hurry up and ripen already

Your grow is looking great! Definitely a happy lady lol. Just a heads up, she may be a bit nitrogen deficient from the pictures. I’ve noticed mine do that if I switch to flower time nutes too early - they need Nitrogen to fuel the stretch. I hit them with a water-soluble N, something like fish powder. Just my 2c.

4 Likes

Final update for this grow. I chopped 3 plants, on Dec 24th and Jan 8th


The rest of my first run are doing well, maybe 2-3 more weeks



My 5x mini monster-cropped 1gal clones are loving life:

The next round is coming along too:


43 plants total at the moment :neutral_face:

5 Likes

Congrats!..been watching some of your grow over on the journal side. You have got quite the farm going

1 Like