What's everyone's technique for raping plants before flowering begins? For me, I veg my clones and then rape them (bottom 4 branches I cut on 45degree angle) on the 3rd week right when I trip them (12/12). I also do one last rape on week 5 (2nd week into flower) to clean up the bottom and will take off 1-3 of the branches and loose leaves so that all the nutrients are focused on the buds that are making (colas mostly). anyone else rape their plants?
Raping? I have to admit in all my years of smoking, and the 3 months or so growing, I've never heard of anyone raping their plants. Perhaps you can give a little description of exactly what you mean by raping and we can point you in the right direction as far as verbiage is concerned. Unless, of course, that is you actually have attempted sexual intercourse with your unwilling plants. Or, I suppose there's always the off possibility that "raping" has another definition that I am unaware of. I really hope it's the latter of the two if either.
You forced it to flower, it didn't want to do it, wtf rape ur plants..what kind of weird term is that for??
Pruning the plants is what I mean. I cut the lower 4 branches off to send all nutrients to the colas.
Thats what I thought stealing a crop or something, I top once maybe twice and thats all leave the lowers man it can yield almost the same as colas. If you grow just staright colas its 1 big bud per plant which is still nice, but not like 12 shoots putting out 12 nice big buds.
There are so many problems with that. First, those bottom branches have the biggest fan leaves that are on your plants. Those fan leaves act like solar panels and absorb sun for your buds to grow bigger and denser. Cutting off those leaves means your plants are getting less light, therefore your buds are growing slower. Also, cutting off those branches stresses them out and stunts their growth in that way as well. And lastly, those branches will have buds on them themselves, so when you cut off your bottom branches your losing potential buds also. Cutting them off during veg makes even less sense. If your plant is growing, why would you cut off what it worked so hard at to grow already?? Also, those branches you cut off during veg have the potential to have even bigger buds than the branches you cut off during fllowering! I cant think of a single way that cutting branches off of your plant will benefit you. Ive heard of people cutting off all of the fan leaves a couple weeks before they harvest to make their buds ripen quicker, but Ive never heard anyone say cutting off lower branches on your plant will help them flower. Women dont like to be raped, your plants are ladies, why would they want to be raped? By cutting off all of those branches I bet you are "raping" your yield to the tune of about a 50% loss.
Throughout my plant's growth, after about 2 months growth, I took two of the lower branches to make cuttings from. A month later I took another branch to clone. Finally, this past month, I took another lower branch to clone and also smoke. I have read where people trim the lower branches because they only make pop-corn buds, not the big fat things that folks post pictures of.