Timing pruning stress

How long after topping do people wait before defoliating under the canopy (scrog). I’ve had my fill of hermies and don’t want to stress these ones into turning on me.

Maybe some of the experts can chime in on that subject, I never heard of hermie because of topping or LST, only if you have disruptions in your lighting, light leaks, or weak lighting. But I am here to learn like you so let’s see what the ILGM community says.

If you just topped, I’m assuming your plant is still pretty young. I wouldn’t defoliate anything until your plants get into your scrog net.

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I topped late . It’s going to be a half a$$ scrog due to not having all the veg time I’d like . More for support for this grow

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Your plant has some nice structure to spread the canopy without a SCROG. I would get those big fan out of the way and then clear the tops. I will manage tops and cut them to cause spread from the center outwards and continue to clear. Sometimes I do a lot of clearing while others I don’t. The exposure of the tops is very important though. The buds need direct light to mature properly. Here’s my 36” gold leaf. Not very defoliate below, but lots of tops almost at equal heights like you want. If I were to do this grow again I would have done a massive defoliation right before flower. I did yeild 15 oz from 2 plants so I was not dissatisfied, but the foliage did pull from the full size of the buds and hid parts of the lower bud of each cola.

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Are you Scrogging that monster? Or letting it go on it’s own?

Was harvested back in December. She stayed like that.

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I’m paranoid that the branches will break late in flower. I’ve had only one grow that made it to finish and it was scrogged.

I have 3 going now. This one has a similar canopy as the first . The third one is the mailman’s lol taller and skinnier

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Use some armor Sl in your feed. This will stiffen up the branches. I have only accidentally ripped the branches off the main stem, but branches can be bent and still grow. Plants can take a lot of abuse.

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If you break off a branch you can always clone it! I snapped one branch off the main stem by accident and cloned it all. I believe silica will make the plant a lot stronger and resistant to breaking to a extent.

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I’ve had some hybrids with more Sativa really run vertically very fast so sometimes it’s tough to get them to dome out. I’ve played with FIM’ing as well (partial cutting the lead bud) to promote horizontal spread, but allows the lead to continue to grow. Hasn’t really worked well for me. Topping really stops the vertical and promotes lower spread and new growth from below. DWC grows fast so this isn’t an exact science for me.

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I never heard of adding silica. I just read up on it and I will def try it. Do you think it’s to late to make a difference now? I’m about to flip to 12/12 in a week. I use the AN ph perfect line. They have a product called rhino skin. Would this be comparable to silica? And will silica interfere with the self adjusting ph properties of the ph perfect line?

Hey @Watt-Sun I use the whole advanced nutrients line so, yes sir, the rhino skin is what you want. So all of the additives are compatible with the ph perfect solution. They actually recommend you use them all together. So It doesn’t mess with the ph. But I feed every week because 7 days is just how long the ph perfect guarantees to keep the ph stable. Also on the advanced nutrients feeding chart it says to use it as soon as you flip to flower and throughout the whole bloom cycle, which will make the branches stronger to hold the heavy buds it’s going to grow. So you will certainly benefit from it. You can use it during veg if you want to as well. I’ve tried it and the plant got pretty hard. I would recommend you don’t use a lot during veg though because it really makes the branches stiff. I do a lot of tucking in the scrog so I don’t use it until flower. It all depends on your grow style I think. You just have to be very careful with the tucking and tying. Hope this helps and if you need to know anything else feel free to ask.
Lastly,

Here is a pic of strawberry cough approaching week 8 of flower.

Happy growing :seedling:

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