my very recent harvest (1st one, yay!) left me with a huge pile of, shall i say, less than desirable buds to trim up. i had 4 plants in a 600W hps tent that i did no training or pruning on whatsoever. needless to say, i had a good amount of actual bud, but alas, very few good sized colas. tons and tons and tons of shake, a lot of it not even worth trimming up in the slightest. :angry7: needless to say, i'm going to have some amazing butter in a couple of weeks, because of all the 'dippin dot' sized shit i pulled off the stem. how would i prune my new grow i just started so that i don't have all this piddly underbelly shit? GTWT :XXhippylove:
remove the lower branches or use a training method, the problem relates to the inverse square rule when dealing with penetration, simply put those lower branches just arent getting enough light.
I like to trim the bottom branches that arn't going to produce much but pop corn. I think it helps produce bigger main colas. Plus you need a strain that will produce big buds. Good luck -Bud
You could avoid pruning by tying your branches down using the LST method: By the way, I mean no disrespect to nobogart, but I think it has very little to do with the inverse square rule. I think you have much much more light being blocked by the upper leaves and branches than you lose from the bottom of the plant being a foot or two further away from the light than the top.
So true. 1/2 the distance is 4x the light, not 2x. More of the plant closer to the light means more overall light to the plant. Light spreads over a surface. Think of a pyramid. The light is at the top, your plants at the bottom. If you cut the pyramid in 1/2 from top to bottom, that inner square will be 1/4 the size of the pyramids base, which means the same light at 1/2 the distance is 4x weaker at 2x the distance. It does have to do with this law, if your cutting a higher fan leaf than the bud site its shading, the fan leaf is getting more light than the bud site would, so cutting it is not beneficial.
makes sense. i already pulled off the first couple layers of bud shoots from the bottom when i transplanted, glad to know that's what i needed to do, not just some impulsive maneuver on my part cause i just spent 4 hrs trimming stupid shake! my other tent i started at the same time I am jogging, wanted to do something different and kinda compare tent results..... How do I know what strains make bigger buds? Besides trial and error, obviously? thanks guys! GTWT :XXhippylove:
Good strain. LST + super cropping + removing lower crap branches = monster colas I wish I had a pic of the most recently pulled dabney. Weighed in at 9 ounces. It was a monster. Some plants grown using a combination of LST/SC/pruning.
I dont like those little bitty buds, either. I prefer strains that tend to naturally produce one or two colas. For me, White Widow and AK47 have been "naturals". Either way, tho, I dont trim until about week 3 of flowering, because IF you trim while vegging, every cut you make will produce MORE colas, not fewer! So, dont trim at all until after your males have shown and then examine your females closely. Leave the fan leaves on, but carefully cut off those little side branches (the ones you would cut for clones, if you were making clones) as well as any shorties that wont reach the light, anyway. Leave one, two or maybe three colas, free of side branches. Now your buds will be forced to appear on those remaining few colas. They dont have any little side branches to grow those little, piss-ant buds ON. Believe me, this will make a huge difference! You will have two or three gigundus buds per plant, instead of piles of those little pop-corny things. I like a bud I have to bend in half just to get it into the mason jar! Plus, the only work you have to do after harvest is trim off the fan leaves. The rest is ALL bud. Dixie
