Super dense - Short plant - Should I trim fan leaves?

[motobri]

Howday, thanks in advance for your enlightenment!

Strain - Fem White Widow
# of Plants - 1
Grow Type - Soil
Grow Stage - Flower (week 3)
Bucket Size - 5.5 Gallon
Lights - (1) 96x3W LED + 2@2' T5 HO Side Lights
Nutrients - FF Trio, Open Sesame, Silica, CalMag
Medium - 30% Perlite Organic potting soil
PH - 5.5-6.5
RH - 30% to 55%
Room Temperature - 55 - 70
Room Square Footage - 20"x30"
Pests - None Known

Question! this mainlined 8 cola White Widow girl just started her 3rd week of flower, and is so dense I'm wondering if it's ok to trim some of her fans that are blocking bud sites. For reference, this is a 20"x 30" x 36" High footprint sitting under a 96x3w LED with t5 side lighting. She's in a 7 g smart pot folded down to maintain a lower profile, so using ~5 gal. I need to keep her as low as possible so the LED does not burn her later on.

 

[Rifleman]

Healthy looking plant. Try tucking leaves out of the way before you start cutting on her.

 

[rillos]

on your plant. As rifleman said, tuck as much as you can. If you must to keep air flow take from the bottom, but right now I wouldn't mess with it.

 

[motobri]

Thanks boys! It's good to hear you think she's healthy. My first grow had too many plants, too high for the size of my cab, and not nearly enough airflow. This, my 2nd grow, i added a 6" hurricane to keep airflow high, a 5 gallon swamp cooler, side lighting, and keep the cab to a single mainlined plant. I'll add pics of the trunk when i think of it - it's like a tree trunk, amazed at how thick it is this early in the life of the plant.

I tucked all the leaves I could to expose more buds to the light. I'd imagine I just need to keep doing this throughout the grow.

 

[DrMed]

If you discriminate you could remove a few. Nebula Haze is a real fan OD defoliation and she is quite successful. You might also consider trimming your fan leaves to about half their size. Another pro recommends trimming with caution.

 

[DrMed]

By the way, Great plant. Whatever you are doing is good, stay with it.

 

[veinz]

 

[motobri]

So I tucked a bunch of leaves out of the way on the 9th, then did some VERY mild defoliating and some significant LST. Took a pic this morning and i have to say the girl is responding well to everything I've given her thus far.

Could not be happier

 

[DrMed]

She is beautiful

 

[SquareHead]

Gorgeous!

 

[motobri]

So I have only given her 1 week of Cha-Ching salts, and would love to pull some more resins out if possible before I start flushing. I don't want to push for too long though. any advice on when to start thinking about harvest based on the pics below?

Again, thanks in advance for everyones help in ensuring a successful grow!

No Flash:

Flash:

 

[McSmokin]

Do you have a scope to look at the trichromes? Check them out, most people recommend a 100x. When you see roughly all of the trichs cloud up, and about half of them turn amber, you chop em' down. Those pistols are nice and red, so I'd guess it would be sometime relatively soon.

Delicious looking flowers, bro. I'm salivating a little bit. Beautiful. Have you put a SCROG screen into consideration for one of your future grows? I'm trying that in a couple weeks since I have such bushy plants myself.

Enjoy that smoke bro!

 

[Castor27]

she is perty!

 

[motobri]

thanks, man. I've really enjoyed learning some of the finer points of growing successfully in a small cabinet. I don't smoke a ton, so the yield for this one plant will easily last me until next harvest.

I built a screen for a SCROG setup but have not used it yet. I may try it next grow. I did LST the shit out of this plant to make sure colas were spaced well. What would scrog'ing the plant do differently??

I picked up a usb scope! So nice! I still don't see any amber trichs so i'd say i have at least 2-3 more weeks, no?

Thanks again for the compliments and great advice.

 

[veinz]

nice pictures, if you want amber you'll have to wait a little bit more
now hold on just a little more.....
microscope pictures you have to love them

 

[motobri]

so my trichs are not amber yet, but a decent percentage are cloudy...I have changed lighting schedule to 10/14 over the past 2 weeks, and have been watering only, no nutes the last 1.5 weeks.

The leaves are drying up, and the flowers seem very dry as well. is this normal?

 

[Lazarus13]

I have heard that some widows don't amber up. Couple journals i read had quite a few stories of "i waited and waited for ambers and they just never came." "i waited and they went cloudy then started wilting."
Pretty sure that's how i remember reading it. lol my memory sometimes.some say they get some amber, some a lot. Dunno. Different strokes for different phenos.
Update how it goes. I'm interested.

 

[Lazarus13]

P.S. where did you get your widow? What genetics, if you know. Thanks