hellow GC. I just started flowering my first scrog and i have been training the plants for about a week now. Anyways i think there is too many leaves in the canopy because in some spots there are like 3 leaves smashingh up against eachother. My question is should i cut these leaves off?
It's a big debate. The thing is this.... More leaves=your plant can do more of the whole "changing light to energy" thing because it's gettin more light through having more surface area. By that logic, you wouldn't trim any, because you want all the energy you can get. BUT THEN..... There's the possibility of getting too much humidity in your space if your plants get bushy and run out of places to go. Smooshed together plants w/ high levels of humidity in the middle of them = increased possibility of mold. MOLD BAD!!! By that logic, since you hate mold, you'd wanna cut em all off and eliminate the chance. 0% humidity is your goal in your holy crusade against mold....as you wildly go chopping leaves w/ a machete. But I don't think that's a good idea either. Some people wait till they fall off on their own. Some people pluck em as soon as they start to yellow. Some crazy fuckers chop them all off the top parts to let light through to the middle parts of the plant. I'd say, if you're gonna take some leaves for some reason, do it because they're making your humidity too high, and when deciding which ones to chop take them from places where you know more light will get through.
it kinda sounds like you might have vegged for too long if you're already completely completely out of room. those plants aren't done growing yet! The general rule of thumb with many types of growing is no cutting leaves. especially during flowering. but with scrog cutting a few leaves isn't too big of a deal. just don't go crazy and remember that you can always just reposition the leaf instead of cutting it, even using twisty ties to influence the direction of the anticipated new growth. but if you have leaves directly blocking buds, then snipping those is probably okay.
yes you are right. i waited to long to flower. The funn thing is though when i flowered them they were only about 7'' tall and had 8 leaves. My brother took pics on his phone and we noticed that my plants grew over 5 times as big as when they were in veg.
no, never cut healthy leaves, it takes work for the plant to grow them, and leaves an entry route for bacteria and disease when you cut a plants skin, just like cutting your own. If they don't get sun, the plants will cannabalize the nutrients out of the leaves, and they'll turn yellow and dry and fall off by themselves in the wind.