I was curious what the feelings are on pruning using a trellis net to LST. Specifically during flower. I know that you can open the plant up more and have more bud sites, but also you can have more energy focused on prime colas. Hopefully some experienced insight will help me decide what to do with my 2 week flowering ladies.
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I personally have heavily defoliated my ladies at 2 weeks and at 4 weeks several times, noticed no adverse affects and certainly focused more energy where it needed to be placed as well as allowing the light to further penetrate throughout the canopy, and I also utilize my net for LST all throughout flower tucking and weaving throughout, as well as eliminating the lower 1-1&1/2 ft of my plants in the early stages
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I don’t know about a net but I trim off the bottom third including small branches and clean up the canopy of anything that looks cluttered. The goal is smaller numbers of medium to big colas instead of opening up budsites for larf.
All the best.
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I trim off every fan leaf with a stem on day one and day 21 of flower.
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So I guess the net is fairly high above the plants so they grow through it during the stretch?
Do you defoliate much during veg Qtip?
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Yea, I’m always trying to flatten the canopy, open up bud sites and increase air flow. Every time I’ve done an extreme defoliation where I thought I went too far the plant always comes back well.
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Yeah it seems the way to go for plant health and those larf buts are a pain in the ass.
How long have you been employing this technique?
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I also defoliate the day I flip and about 3 weeks later during flower. Plants will put vegetative growth on for 3-4 weeks into flower so there’s no need to worry almost whatsoever about not having enough leaves to catch light or something.
Let me see if I can find some naked pics of the girls quick…
3/11
3/14
Already flowering as you can see, pretty sure that was my 3rd week one, the last of the two that I do usually
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I did my first tent grow without really pruning anything about three years ago. The fight with mites and humidity was brutal and keeping things thinner with leaves helps prevent both. Since then I have been pruning some in veg and the two major flower prunes. The technique of pruning twice that @TestOfOath and I are talking about is called “schwazzing”
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Schwazzing is an extreme defoliation. Where essentially every single leaf is stripped and you are left with pots full of sticks essentially. Day one and 21 are pretty widely accepted time frames no matter what defoliation method you use.
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Here’s how much I take off mine on day 1 and 21
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