To trim or not to trim. ThT is the question

Continuing the discussion from Broken main stem northern lights autoflower:




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Those are some gorgeous plants :blush: most would advise to take everything off a third of the way up the plant at like two weeks into flower. Please correct me if I’m wrong. :v:

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Most important is to raise up shorty so its height is more even with the taller one. You can remove some of lower leaves if air flow is an issue. Nothing drastic though since they are autos.

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Adding on to @beardless not to go too drastic. Do not remove more than 30% of fan leaves. You can clean the bottom 1/3 as @Flitme stated.

I just defoliated these this past weekend. Here is a before and after. I could have went deeper on the trim but I do not want to shock my plants too much. I will trim again in another 3 weeks.


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IMO the only reason to remove leaves at this point is for the health of the plant. At plus 3 weeks in flower it would be good to remove the lower 1/3 of the plant material as the plant won’t produce good flower down low.

You need to be mindful of leaf removal as the leaves produce the sugars needed for flower production. Remove too many and yields will suffer.

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Thank you. They are my first two ever. Trying to maintain 5.8 Ph and between 8-900 ppm with FF Tiger bloom and big bloom. Should I increase PPM or keep it at 8-900?

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32x32 tent. I would not want another one in there. The Bluberry is shorter than the Northern Lights and a little farther into flower. I may run out of vertical space if NL doesn’t stop reaching.
Light is bloom plus BP1000.

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Auto or photo? Autos seem to tolerate high salt levels poorly while photos could probably bump up in flower to 1,100 ppm or so.

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Amen brother

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I grew BB autos a couple years ago. Very nice flowers. I don’t think they grew to be much over 18 -20" tall. I also grew NL but they were photos.

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Look great. Dont be afraid to supercrop that tall main if needed. She will stop…sides will try to replace her. Will even right out. I do so little training amymore a tall top always gets the bend treatment.

Supercrop?

Will the autos short growing cycle be affected by cutting the main stem

These are both autos

Supercropping is a high stress training technique where you crush the stem and bend it 90. Ideally this is done during late veg but is also used to get control of run away growth during the stretch / early flower.
Exhibit A

Resulting knuckles formed from the plant repairing itself

I think that the NL has stoppped stretching. I think I will raise the BB to be the same height as the NL. and see what happens. Thank you for the information

For what it’s worth, I only supercrop up until 1 week into bloom. Usually just once and very early.

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Mostly I tuck and try to keep the plant below the net, but sometimes they get way from me so supercropping stretched branches works great. It works better early but I did these after the stretch was done around 3 weeks into flower and it was fine. The bud sites that usually grow into a stacked cola just grow upwards and maybe even produce a bit more but that’s debatable. However it keeps the canopy more even. If I paid better attention to them I could keep them even all along but i get lazy.
Supercropping has never ruined a plant for me. Cannabis will take a lot of abuse.

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So this plant is in bloom you have stapled down ?

Running out of height in my tent @beardless @Storm tried the supcrop on the northern lights and brought shorty up a bit. Live and learn. With the height of the hydroponic buckets, the 63” tent is too short by the time you install the filter,pump circulator fan. This is a one plant space IMHO.



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