subd my friend,
i had some problems with the compost i bought, i bought a different brand and it caused me major problems, seedlings kept dying and i thought it was me over or under watering so then i transplanted i older plant into a bigger pot and into the new compost and all the leaves started getting rusty spots on them then they turned into claws and curled down like cats claws, so i found out the compost i was using had way to much nitrogen in it and was possible to low ph, so swapped back to a cheaper brand i was all ready using and it solved all my problems, so my problem was the compost, seems it was not suitable for these plants,
i might pick up some air pots as they seem to give great results,
now for defoliation, i learned about this from bassman with my first journal, i tried it and it worked well, but i have found some strains do not respond well to this at all, mainly sativas or 80%sativa and 20%indica, these seem to get badly stunted when i used this method,
i found that its best to not touch the plants for the 10 to 14 days before flipping lights 12-12, then dont touch them till they have finished their stretch, then defol after they have finished stretching, its also best to remove the leaves in one go instead of a few each day, removing a few each day will really stunt growth,
when you remove the leaves the plant goes into repair mode and focusses on replacing what its lost, this slows growth for anything up to 10 days, but usually around 4 to 7days, after this the plants grow again with more growth than before due to the plant forcing more growth into the smaller leaves, plus your opening the plant up to let more light in,
so i usually defol a few weeks into veg, then about 2 to 3 weeks after flipping lights to 12-12, then the last time i defol is 2 weeks to 20 days before harvest, remove any leaves with 3inch stem or just under and this i find does force the plant to put more growth into the buds, again this is from my own experience and im no expert, but some plants respond well and some dont, so its best to see how they react after first defol,
another method i use and works well is using pipe cleaners, i pull the plant open using pipe cleaners so every node is getting light,i use this method on all my plants and it works well, it also keeps them bushy, im probably telling you stuff your all ready know but just having a quick flick through these journals to try and get caught up,
another tip to get bigger buds is to remove all the lower node growth, basically anything that will end up as popcorn buds, these are all using up nutes and the plant is wasting energy growing these lower nodes that are not getting much light, so its best to strip the leaves and short branches off the bottom of the branches, doing this makes the plant focus its growth onto the main buds and the buds that are getting light, so anything that is below the canopy and is barely getting any light just remove these and either bin them or use them as clones, you want the plant naked below the waste or canopy, anything on the inside of the plant at the bottom not getting light is just wasting energy, remove these branches and focus all the plants energy on the main bud sites, this is why sog grows do well as all side growth is removed and they just have the main stem and 2 small side branches, ill try and find a pic of my 2ltr dwc hempie, the main bud was the size of a 2ltr pop bottle, it was tough cutting all the branches off but the results i got show it was worth it,
