PRUNING to increase upper bud yield??

Discussion in 'Growing Marijuana Indoors' started by Parkoursome, Apr 3, 2013.

  1. Okay so I've been watching alot of tutorials, and Im wondering if cutting off the lower branches (just the really low ones) to increase the buds on top, here check out this picture:
     

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  2. might help but this far into flowering it also may have a negative effect. wait for someone with more experience to respond before cutting anything. maybe some leaves but i don't thing you want cut branches off. can you add a supplemental cfl or 2?
     
  3. the leaves are what makes your plant grow.
     
  4. The upper branches have plenty of leaves, I'm talking about the lowest 3
    Branches on the bottom, the 3 small sites are like a quarter the size
     
  5. And also I am growing with flourecents, so I don't know if they can provide enough energy to literally 20 bud sights
     
  6. Cut any leaves that aren't able to get much light. The under canopy
     
  7. quoting fellow cultivator budman4420 "i dont believe this is true whatsoever, there is a reason people lollipop their plants, its to get more direct light/energy to the stem (or budsites), the plant gets new growth wherever the light goes, leaves are irrelevant. Yes they HELP photosynthesis and things like that, but definately not required, defoliating your plants is a tried and tested method. JS"
     
  8. just thinking that cutting lower branches this late would decrease overall yield or have some negative effect. could be wrong. defoliating would allow light to get to lower bud sites
     
  9. Don't take anything off the plant it's way too far along to be taking off branches. You won't help the tops you'll only lose the bottoms. If you have time in my journal I do a ton of training fimming and topping. You should swing by and check it out. Might give you ideas for the future
     
  10. lol...some people man!
     

  11. I don't know if you've notice guys. But in a plants early development when you remove the fan leaf. No branch grows. Don't remove leafs. In veg you wanna grow as many leafs and branches a possible
    As a matter of fact I have a seedling I'm gonna remove fans from just to show you that it fucks the whole plant up. I think it's time for a side by side
    Two plants same strain one with fans removed one keeps em.
     

  12. well if you wanna take off the powerhouse of the plant then go right ahead.
     

  13. There's a reason people feed there plants straight urine also. It's called confusion. Nah I'm not knocking people I'm just saying. I personally am trying to get it to grow more foliage not see what I can cut off
     
  14. eh..id leave it as is, if it were a bigger plant id say take the smaller branches off of the bottom, even at this point in flower. if you were to remove them in this case you could slow the growth down quite a bit. once a plant gets pretty big, taking the lower branches helps with airflow and wont waste as much energy growing "crap" that doesnt get much light, and can increase growth/yield. in your case that lower growth is keeping your plant growing at a good pace, remove it and you wont have enough leaf surface area left over to accommodate for what you take off. just my 2c
     

  15. During veg this makes sense, during flower you aren't growing the plant for the leaves, you are growing the plant for the bud. So I don't have to explain I'll give it to ED.

    Ed Rosenthal: Most of the yield of buds is going to be harvested from the top of the canopy, where the light is most intense. This should be the main area of the plant that is pampered.
    Once light hits a bud, leaf or any non-reflective surface, its energy is absorbed. For this reason light can penetrate only 10-12 inches into the canopy. If the canopy is filled with vegetation, any vegetation beneath that area is in shadow and is not expected to yield very much.
    There are techniques to increase yield in this situation: first, remove any fan leaves that are blocking light getting to buds. Don't pick fan leaves that are not blocking light because they are factories converting light to sugars, which the plants use for energy and growth.
    If there is open space in the canopy, tie, bend, or stake branches so that they occupy the area.
    Remove understory underdeveloped branches, leaves and small flowers. They are wasting the plant's energy that will be better used in the action areas.
    Another technique is to supply side lighting to the understory using either fluorescents or HPS lamps. Fluorescent tubes or compact fluorescents (CFLs) can be placed around or even inside the garden, and sometimes between the plants to light the lower buds.
    Harvest the garden in stages. Sometimes only the top portion of the bud is mature. Harvest the ripe part, but let the lower portion stay on the plant for a few more days. As the lower portion of the bud matures, the top portion of the understory, below the bud where the medium sized but immature buds are, starts to receive more light and responds with additional growth and maturation. Within three to five days the lower bud matures and is harvested. This leaves the understory completely exposed to light. It will mature in another five to seven days.
     
  16. Also you will not lose yield by trimming leaves, that is just silly. Maybe if you trimmed them all off your plant. Your plant will start to kill off her own leaves as the end of flowering hits, they will start to yellow and die as the plant fully matures anyways.
     

  17. it goes both ways... you have to have leaves on the plant for it to produce buds at all...remove them all and im sure no buds will form. if you take a large percentage of the leaves even in flower, it can/will slow the growth of the buds. so you have to keep that in mind when you are just chopping away the lower growth.. if its the majority of your plant...dont chop it. if you have a large enough plant, then taking the smaller buds and lower growth will not slow it down, since there is enough foliage left that is still getting light.
     
  18. #19 strawberrywidow, Apr 4, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 4, 2013
    I would argue that you can chop all the leaves off but I wouldn't recommend it. It will still grow buds as the buds still do take in energy and I have seen someone chop almost all the leaves off before and the plant did fine.

    Again I wouldn't chop off all the leaves they are still important. Chopping off lower growth will divert that energy to the top of the plant. You will not face a negative impact on your yield if you chop off the lower growth that looks useless. You can harvest the plant one part at a time as the plant will still live if you chop of the mature buds and leave the immature buds to continue to ripen whilst getting more light.



    I recommend chopping off your lower foilage OP on the very bottom especially if it is yellowing. Any fan leaves that are shadding bud growth I would also chop. You shouldn't chop more than 10-15% of your fan leaves/useless growth, if I had to guess at the picture. I would then harvest the plant one portion at a time making sure all the buds were ripe.
     
  19. haha there are some crazy people on this thread. pick up any basic biology book and it will explain very plainly that the fan leaves collect light energy, it's called photosynthesis, it's this process that the plant can make food for itself to grow more plant. when flowering this equates to bud. bud is the reproductive organs, photosynthesis is extremely low in these parts, it is their job to produce seeds, not to produce food. bud is a major strain on resources, fan leaves make these resources

    if you cut the fan leaves off the plant will survive but it will struggle. this is all fact. my opinion is this crazy idea that plants grow better without its leaves came about from people seeing spurts of growth after cutting leaves off, however these growth spurts would happen anyway, and even bigger if the leaves were left on there

    if the plant grew better without leaves do you really think it would of invested so much energy growing them in the first place? and what exactly do you think the job is that the fan leaves do? they collect light energy, expell water and oxygen and bring in carbon dioxide. without the fan leaves the plant will not be able to function properly

    have a look at my white widow grow, as an experiment I plucked the fan leaves from an average budding plant. they are now ready for harvest and the one that had its fan leaves removed, although did its best to grow them back looks pathetic. bud production was massively slower than the rest, it's wispy, under developed and leafy
     
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