First Time Growing - Advice Welcome

Here is a question about this sour Diesel plant....she has about 50 bud sites now and i was looking to see if i should trim the bottom follage off her. She will be hitting week 2 of flowering tomorrow. I see how guys lollipop the plant and looking to see if now is the right time to do that to increase my yield from her? She is exactly 29'' tall. currently LST the highest steams and now have a distance of 9inches from tip of leaf to led. No more room to move light so im pinned now and using those tactics to work it out.


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Here is my SD, you can see lower sites still matured. I do not trim at all.

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Lower sites

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Other growers will trim leaves but not cut stems off lower 1/3 of plant to have more energy for top flower sites. Not my style but their plants do very well too.

Cheers

Sent from my SPH-L720T using 420
 
That foliage is not the type you trim. That is actually very precious stuff. Later in boom there is some you can remove but removing any of that will slow down time to harvest.

As far s topping goes...

It all depends on your space. I typically like to top the plant at 5 nodes. You have about 15 it looks like. Sooner that is topped the easier it is.

There are a few reasons for doing this. The most important one is trying to make a canopy. You want all the flowers to be at the same height. You want the light to reach them evenly so they ripen evenly and the whole plant is ready at once.


If you make a tall plant then the light will be hitting the top flowers with different intensity then the bottom flowers. Then you have a plant that you will want to harvest twice and that takes extra weeks. If the whole plant is ready at once then you harvest it and move on.

So each time you top the arm starts to put the energy into branches coming out of other nodes.

So if you top at 4 nodes you get 8 arms which trains out well in a circle. And depending on the grow space you keep training those 8 out until you have the space right then grow up. I top at 5 because often the first set slow. Optionally at that point you can top until the canopy is even and ready for bloom. Stretch can be done in that last part where you are topping it to make it even. But it is nice to be able to put the plant under the light in a way that gets even distribution of light to the nodes.

After you have established the canopy then you can do a final cleaning of the underbrush or Lollipop.

Removing leaves that are under the canopy does not help anything but does force unnecessary healing to occur. They will come off easily when the plant is done reabsorbing the nutes. In general you do not want to remove leaves until they have been reabsorbed with the exception of a few times in bloom. There are instances in veg where it is okay but you didn't train it flat to have such problems. Since you grew it without training you can simple tuck fan leaves behind lower branches for best results. If the lower branches can't hold the fan leaf down it isn't ready.
 
Maybe this picture will help you to see how I've done my "LST", i've topped my plants @3rd or @4th node, dont know now, but I've did it early, as I was not sure when to do this, but I left some space for my mistakes:}

This is same plant. This is day one of LST.
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2 weeks later. I've topped this plant once again it is visible on some tops :>
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Ok much props to VI for coming through with a stellar explanation. Seriously that has made a lot of things clear to me. I did however top her at the 5th node and then maybe one or two after that I dont remember bc i was sure if i was suppose to. See where the black zip tie is that where she splits into two. zip tie was for support on a branch I banged into and damage but she recovered.


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That is fine. More important is just making sure no new flowers pop up down there below the canopy and steal nutes from above to make a garbage popcorn flower.

But I wouldn't focus too much on this right now. You didn't train them out in they way that a lot of things matter. the light will have deep penetration so you should be fine.


here...420 Magazine's Plant Of The Month - March 2016
(if you go to the top and click on the link 420 lounge you can go to contests)

Last months Plant of the month contest. At the end on nearly the last page he posted his training pics showing how he did it and he kept it very close to the ground.
 
update: Clones are doing well and going to be grown in 5g pots with FF Ocean Forest mix. recent pic of them before putting them into solo cups coming soon.

These two plants where started the same time. The one on the left is Sour Diesel and the one on the right is AK-47. I fixed my issue when the 2x2 space the sour is in now was to small for both. My tent has a partican which i just removed and took out the tray to give me more space. Its funny how many more buds are on the sour plant then on the AK.


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Thats the little AK standing 21'' tall about 2 weeks into flowering.

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Taking her sweet time ?

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How far away do i have to keep my LED's from the plants when flowering. Mine are really getting close now.
 
Should i be trimming anything off the girl on the left? She is getting so big and approaching week 3 of bloom.
 
update coming up on week 3 of flowering......CLones are in solo now as well. How long should I let a clone veg before sending her into flowering?


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Ak-47 moved into 5g dwc by herself from her on out.

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Her Flowering..."ak"
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Sour Diesel just has soooo many bud sites its nearly double the AK.

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Sour Diesel Has Big Buds already nicely formed with white hairs.

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More pics with lights off....Why are some of the fan leaf steams a dark red in color. Its only a few here and there and i was just curious as to what that might be.

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Purple fan leave stems don't matter with your grow medium. Plants look very happy and healthy.

Cheers

Sent from my SPH-L720T using 420
 
thank you millertm, i been treating them like my babies from seed. =)
I see you grew some soud diesel and id love to pick your brain about this strain and what tips you might have for growing her. Im going to read your journal now about it.
 
Update:

Clones are now in solo cups for the next week or two then being moved into 4g pots. Im using Fox Farm Ocean forest mix as this is the first time im growing in soil. The are going to be three AK-47 and one Sour Diesel. The have there own tent that is a milliard 3x3x72. I learned from my first grow that you always need that extra space vertically so i went with a taller tent this time. These clones will veg under my mars hydro reflector under both veg and bloom setting on. After they are switched to the 4g pots they will be veg and bloom under 2 mars 300 lights for a total of a true 280w for this grow. I know its now a lot but i have seen good results with that amount of watts per sq ft.

These clones have been topped at the 5th node and I will top a few more times this time around now that i know what im doing. I will really pay special attention to topping the AK bc she is bushy and not what Im seeing as a big yielder. I mean compared to the Sour plant she is a mini plant with a few bud sites. The sour has buds blasting through ever its really amazing. So these guys will be my second go and they are all clones from these plants i started from seed so thats pretty cool. No need to buy seeds in 5 packs anymore lol....


I been looking around to see if i should be removing the lower part of the sour plant. It has growth that at this point just looks very far behind the other buds. Is this the lower area people (lollipop) remove to move more energy to the upper buds?


When do i add the molasses to the mix I think thats towards the end about 2 weeks out from harvest? Anyone know anything about this method?



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Hey man thanks. im so new at this but i'm going to say it...
Yep im so green with all this hahaha LOL
:laughtwo:
 
Molasses is used primarily for 2 things.

One is for helping beneficial bacteria breed. that is something that is done through the entire grow depending on how you are managing you microbes.


The second reason is what you are asking about and that is to aid in some issues that happen when the fan leaves start shutting down and there is not as much photosynthesis going on. After it breaks down into amino acids and some other stuff it it helps both with uptake of nutes but also provides a free source of sugars. So as the Fan leaves stop producing them you can add some through the roots to aid in growth. It doesn't help for that until the plant stops developing fan leaves.

To do that correctly there is a process you want to go through to break it down first. You don't just add molasses to water and you don't just add any type of molasses to water.

There are stickies here on this website that explain all of this. Start in the everything you need to know thread in the FAQ. Then in there it is all just links to great threads hit Ctrl-F to do a search and type in molasses. You will probably find something.
 
Ok so yesterday was a water change day. So I finally got my kool bloom and added it mid week last week but this will be the first week with it. I also only added 3ml of molasses to 5g of dwc system and another 5ml to the bigger dwc. I heated up a small cup of water then mixed the molasses into that then into on gallon so it mixes well that way. So im adding my regular nutes and set up everything and go downstairs to notice i had a package delivered. Look what just came in, yep diamond nectar from GH. So i read the bottle and just throw in half the recommended dose since i already put half the dose of molasses i should be fine. Im waiting for lights on to see really how they are doing since being in the new solution and 3 new components.


Sneak peak of sour diesel. lights off

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Looks great, my Sour D is amazing smoke.

Cheers

Sent from my SPH-L720T using 420
 
This is my first time growing so i have no idea how things act or what not...
 
My Sour that was cut a few weeks back.

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Good smoke. What nutes are you using?

Cheers

Sent from my SPH-L720T using 420
 
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