I know nothing about pruning, also known as trimming leaves before buds come in. does anyone have any advice, because ive heard it can make a good difference, especially with bushy indica plants. help please. does trimming certain leaves hurt the plant...help if u know please.
Trimming or 'grooming' your lady is somewhat of an art. I have learned through years of 'hit and miss' by trimming here and there and seeing what affects it had on the plant. For bushy indica's such as you mentioned, I usually strive to allow as much light penetration into the plant's top and mid sections. This means I normally will remove all the 'popcorn buds' near the bottom of the plant and any really short branches which simply wont make it up to the light. If you examine photo's of others grows you'll notice a theme with most - the bottom of the plant is bare branches, middle is where the buds/leaves really begin and the top is just drooping with heavy buds. Try to copy it. Some refuse to trim anything...others clip there's like she's got lice... I shoot for the middle road. Just experiment with it... best way to learn.
the above advice is very good. i would add that you don't want to take off too many fan leaves, plants need them. another good saying is, if you can't tuck it, pluck it.
aight thanks man, good info to kno, so i dont have to really worry about any plant die-age from cutting the wrong leaf right also should i wait until it starts flowering or whenever
I'm no pro so take this as my 2cents. I have grown a few plants and they all general share the same basic properties. Let your vegetative stage continue without any trimming (unless, of course, your plant is out of control). This is the "charging up" stage before your plant switches all its energy into forming juicy flowers. All the nutrients/energy stored in the leaves will drain out into the bud...which is actually visible (as you get closer to harvesting, the leaves tend to exhaust themselves and change color while the buds explode with goodness). No, you won't have to worry about your plant dying from pruning. It may show signs of slow growth for a few days after trimming, but this is a resilient plant so as long as you moderately trim, you will be fine.
Just use good judgment. You won't kill her by removing the leaves, but if you remove to many you could slow growth. -C
if leaves show sign of deficiency(browning, scorched,yellow or generally unhealthy) should they be removed even if there is quite a lot ?
Not always. If you have leaves showing signs of poor health, those same leaves will be the ones to tell you if you're correcting the problem or not depending on your chosen coarse of remedy/s. Don't get me wrong. Dead leaves or almost dead leaves can/should be removed. But if a large portion of your plant has unhealthy leaves, chopping them all off will certainly not speed its' recovery. I always take the least invasive measures when and where possible. Drastic measures should always be a last resort. Just my $.02.
thanks man. i had a nice super bushy happy plant. then a ph probelm encountered and it started looking shitty fast! its at my buddys house and he took off all the major fan leaves bcuz they all looked like shit. and a lot of the littler leaves were removed as well. its like 2 ft tall in veg under a 125 cfl in a 2.5 gallon bucket(miracle grow organic soil). i was thinking about watering with some b1 transplanting it into a soilless mix so we can keep a closer eye on the ph, nutreints, ect. we super cropd some branches when the plant started to come back. what do you think, too much stress ?
If you ask me, stressing a plant must be done with great caution. By adding different types of stresses together (ie. PH issues, nute issues, light, heat etc.) you're only compounding the stress the plant endures. Try to remand the stress to one type or another. That's my $.02.
yeah forsure i could have figured so much but what the hell. you think it will noticeably affect yield?
"Affect yield". Yes, most likely. "Noticeably", that's hard to say. Unless you have a sister and they're both clones, you'll only be guessing as to the extent of your loss of yield. The proof is in the pudding. Which is why you need at least one twin sister-clone as a control group.
for now ive only taken pics of the deficiency to see wtf was wrong with it posted in the sick plants section.. but soon enough i'll have good ones