If you ever need an explanation Payton just ask
I seem to be able to understand all American accents, even deep south rednecks. I watch a lot of Discovery channel so I can even understand the swamp dudes who shoot alligators
GrannyT, the roots you see are my seedlings, I've not done a clone yet as I've only got one dome. I'll be doing some in a couple of weeks I think. With the defol all you do is cut the leaf stem at the base but not any growth shoots near it, these are bud sites so are very important. You can see from the plants this week that only the weak pheno tangerine didn't respond too well, it's done it no harm but I expected to get big bushy branches. The reason I did the defol so heavily on the two tangerines is they are a very short & bushy strain. My plan with these is to keep them nice & low but maximise the bud sites. I'm constantly training the branches down to keep the top level & trying to allow light to the branches. Just remember with any training, the highest point is the dominant part of the plant. It will always feed & grow this 1st. The strong pheno Tangerine responded beautifully to the defol, here's a couple of pictures of two separate branches which I'm pulling down.
As you can see they no longer looks like your average branch but more like a bush. The Toxic is a different beast all together but I'm still using a similar technique this time with selective defol. The plant is taller & more spread out so I'm mainly just training it's twin tops & any side branches that get higher than the others. The selective defol is to allow light to the branches to increase bud sites. The structure of the plant means each branch only needs defol on one side as the other side the leafs aren't shading anything but the fan leaves from the branch to its left. I'm also pinching the tops on all three plants which aids bud site development. To explain pinching is pretty straightforward, all I do is squeeze the stem just underneath the end shoot to crush it, this sends a signal to the plant which stunts its growth & in turn, it concentrates building on what is below it. Basically with any defol it depends on the shape & structure of your plant & what you wish to do with it. It's the same with topping, mine all got topped at slightly different times which was dictated on how they grew & how I wanted them to grow. You can top a plant very early at the 2nd node if you wish or the 15th, it makes no difference, you can even top your branches if you like. Every time you top a branch it sends out two shoots instead of one.I like to look at my plants natural growth before doing anything, so it's usually around the 4th or 5th nodes when it starts to take shape. I then use a mixture of the above techniques to sculpt them into my desired shape & structure.If you need any advice, post pictures of your plants on here & I'll tell you what I'd do. Did I waffle too much
