Led grown - plants too bushy - defoliating

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

I'm growing under led and growing some really nice looking plants out in search of a few mother plants. I have grown a lot of plants, but never defoliated them much. Led plants grow so lush and so bushy, like cmh plants do.

I have recently been looking at grow journals where heavy defoliating seems to have worked great. I'm thinking of trying this to increase yields, air flow and for ease of trimming lower buds. My yields are good already, but trimming loads of popcorn buds and loose and fluffy buds that are really almost a waste of time and it makes trimming a long winded unpleasant experience. I have got decent yields from the top buds in my current style of growing.

I have recently switched to led from hps and would like to use the light better by lighting up the whole plant, instead of having it shaded for the entire grow. I do lollipop the plants, but not as extreme as others do. Ideally I want 2-2.5ft high plants with many tops, but thinned out so light can get to everywhere.

I'm a week into 12/12, so tonight i'm going pinch off lots of fan leaves.

I'm growing 2 x Cindy, 1 C99, 1 white Siberian, 1 pineapple express#2, 1 kandy kush and 1 blue cheese. Each plant has it's own 3ft x 3ft tent. Each tent has between 2 and 3 leds in each. I have full coverage in every tent. I don't want to waste light. Nice to have rock hard tops, but I want solid nugz everywhere.

Any tips on defoliating from you 'heavy defoliators' please?

Boatguy · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
I'm growing under led and growing some really nice looking plants out in search of a few mother plants. I have grown a lot of plants, but never defoliated them much. Led plants grow so lush and so bushy, like cmh plants do.

I have recently been looking at grow journals where heavy defoliating seems to have worked great. I'm thinking of trying this to increase yields, air flow and for ease of trimming lower buds. My yields are good already, but trimming loads of popcorn buds and loose and fluffy buds that are really almost a waste of time and it makes trimming a long winded unpleasant experience. I have got decent yields from the top buds in my current style of growing.

I have recently switched to led from hps and would like to use the light better by lighting up the whole plant, instead of having it shaded for the entire grow. I do lollipop the plants, but not as extreme as others do. Ideally I want 2-2.5ft high plants with many tops, but thinned out so light can get to everywhere.

I'm a week into 12/12, so tonight i'm going pinch off lots of fan leaves.

I'm growing 2 x Cindy, 1 C99, 1 white Siberian, 1 pineapple express#2, 1 kandy kush and 1 blue cheese. Each plant has it's own 3ft x 3ft tent. Each tent has between 2 and 3 leds in each. I have full coverage in every tent. I don't want to waste light. Nice to have rock hard tops, but I want solid nugz everywhere.

Any tips on defoliating from you 'heavy defoliators' please?

Canopy management like a scrog would probably give you the biggest gains.
Already in flower... Nevermind

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

I have used the scrog method before. It's a great way to grow. This round though I'm just shooting for a few decent mother plants. Some of the plants I'm growing would work great in a scrog. I don't want to veg for ages. That is the down side of scrogging.

I'm switching to hempy buckets with coco next grow. I'm taking clones now. Already got a blue cheese mother plant, a white siberian and pineapple express#2.

TreeFarmerCharlie · Apr 5, 2020

How are you going to have mother plants without vegging for ages? That’s kid of the definition of a mother plant, isn’t it?

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

TreeFarmerCharlie said:
How are you going to have mother plants without vegging for ages? That’s kid of the definition of a mother plant, isn’t it?

I have an 8th tent with a t5 and an led. Going to keep bonsai mothers in there in soil, then clone straight into root riot cubes.

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

TreeFarmerCharlie said:
How are you going to have mother plants without vegging for ages? That’s kid of the definition of a mother plant, isn’t it?

Vegging for ages is how long you veg for. A mother plant is a plant that is just kept healthy and alive for the pure purpose of cloning it. I will root prune it and repot it every so often.

jondamon · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
Vegging for ages is how long you veg for. A mother plant is a plant that is just kept healthy and alive for the pure purpose of cloning it. I will root prune it and repot it every so often.

Not necessarily.

a new clone can be kept as a mother if the mother has out grown your area.

I used to veg a plant purely for clones to flower.

take 10-20 clones. Once rooted keep one as the mother and run the rest SOG until flowering is finished.

take more clones from the clone left as a mother and go again keeping one back each time to replace the previous one.

saint0192 · Apr 5, 2020

jondamon said:
Not necessarily.

a new clone can be kept as a mother if the mother has out grown your area.

I used to veg a plant purely for clones to flower.

take 10-20 clones. Once rooted keep one as the mother and run the rest SOG until flowering is finished.

take more clones from the clone left as a mother and go again keeping one back each time to replace the previous one.

I haven't started cloning yet this go round but this is what my plan is, I had great success with this when I used to grow years ago, I kept the plants going for about a year (maybe a bit more) each before starting from seed again. I did this on a smaller scale in my much smaller grow at the time though. I never noticed a drop in potency while running this system.

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

I was under the impression that the more you clone them and use the clones as the new mother, the weaker the plant gets. I wanted to keep the 1st clone as a mother plant to avoid this.

jondamon · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
I was under the impression that the more you clone them and use the clones as the new mother, the weaker the plant gets. I wanted to keep the 1st clone as a mother plant to avoid this.

I didn’t notice a drop in potency at all in over a year of doing it this way.

granted there may be some truth to what you’re saying over maybe 10 years but I haven’t seen any degradation in potency in 12 months of running the same clone of a clone of a clone.

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

I plan to keep my mothers for longer than a year. Having 7 flowering tents with 1 plant in each makes this system quite easy. Only need one or 2 clones from each mother.
My Pineapple Express#2 plant looks really nice and the 1st 3 clones to show roots were all from that plant. Took 4 clones from each. She's a keeper. lol

jondamon · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
I plan to keep my mothers for longer than a year. Having 7 flowering tents with 1 plant in each makes this system quite easy. Only need one or 2 clones from each mother.
My Pineapple Express#2 plant looks really nice and the 1st 3 clones to show roots were all from that plant. Took 4 clones from each. She's a keeper. lol

Have you flowered out the PE#2? As this will be the only real indication that’s its keeper material.

saint0192 · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
I was under the impression that the more you clone them and use the clones as the new mother, the weaker the plant gets. I wanted to keep the 1st clone as a mother plant to avoid this.

It is my belief that the amount of stress from cloning (or really any stress) causes drop in potency, if you have a solid cloning technique and the plants don't stress, this drop should be negligible over a year to a year and a half.

When I grew years ago, my cloning technique (after many, many failures) was to flush the plant for a couple days before taking cuttings, then cut the clone off with scissors, then trim with a sterilized exacto blade to a 45 degree angle, and scrape the bottom inch or so of the stem, with only 2 leaves left, and then soak in water for 1/2 day or so, then place directly into my home-built bubble cloner, I did this with and without rooting hormone with great results. I always had root bumps within a week and the clones were ready to transplant into vegetative lighting about a week later. The bubble cloner had a fairly big dome to keep humidity naturally high and the leaves never drooped (the first sign of stress). I would start the clones big distance from the veg light for a couple days, slowly moving them closer until they start to grow faster. Two days or so after flushing and taking cuttings, the mother plant would be ready to go into flowering regimen.

However, I have friends that swear by keeping the one mother plants and cloning only from the original. What works for you is what's important. If you have the room to keep the one mother plant, it is a safe option as long as you can keep the mother from getting too big too fast.

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

jondamon said:
Have you flowered out the PE#2? As this will be the only real indication that’s its keeper material.

No, but she is in flowering now. I'll take some photo's later. Lights are coming on at 7pm UK time, so will get them on here this evening.

jondamon · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
No, but she is in flowering now. I'll take some photo's later. Lights are coming on at 7pm UK time, so will get them on here this evening.

Nice. Mine switch on at 8pm. Oh wait not tonight they don’t. I chopped last night and I’ll be trimming tonight. Lol. U.K. here too.

Pics from last night. Trimmed up 2 small ones got about another 7 stems to do tonight but they’re bigger :wall:

I hate trimming lol.

only one plant hanging in there only grew 2 this time around and one was an auto that finished a couple of weeks ago

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

saint0192 said:
It is my belief that the amount of stress from cloning (or really any stress) causes drop in potency, if you have a solid cloning technique and the plants don't stress, this drop should be negligible over a year to a year and a half.

When I grew years ago, my cloning technique (after many, many failures) was to flush the plant for a couple days before taking cuttings, then cut the clone off with scissors, then trim with a sterilized exacto blade to a 45 degree angle, and scrape the bottom inch or so of the stem, with only 2 leaves left, and then soak in water for 1/2 day or so, then place directly into my home-built bubble cloner, I did this with and without rooting hormone with great results. I always had root bumps within a week and the clones were ready to transplant into vegetative lighting about a week later. The bubble cloner had a fairly big dome to keep humidity naturally high and the leaves never drooped (the first sign of stress). I would start the clones big distance from the veg light for a couple days, slowly moving them closer until they start to grow faster. Two days or so after flushing and taking cuttings, the mother plant would be ready to go into flowering regimen.

However, I have friends that swear by keeping the one mother plants and cloning only from the original. What works for you is what's important. If you have the room to keep the one mother plant, it is a safe option as long as you can keep the mother from getting too big too fast.

Sounds like a nice cloning system you have going.

I just use rooting gel and root riot cubes. Soaked in root stimulator at ph6. They 1st start showing roots after 5 days. 8-9 days for the stragglers.

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

They look really good. Excellent drying technique btw.

jondamon · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
Sounds like a nice cloning system you have going.

I just use rooting gel and root riot cubes. Soaked in root stimulator at ph6. They 1st start showing roots after 5 days. 8-9 days for the stragglers.

I used to use the chocolate sundae pots from ASDA they have a little lid etc which makes it a great humidity trap and the added bonus of you can see when the roots begin.

all I used to do was drop the sundae cup into a pot when the roots started to show to stop algae growth etc.

jondamon · Apr 5, 2020

Fevs. said:
They look really good. Excellent drying technique btw.

I’m fortunate enough to have a concealed walk way down to my walk in closet it approx 10ft long and 3.5ft wide and it holds all my equipment and my ballast etc etc.

The walk in closet has a light tight door but the walk way has no lighting anyway.

Fevs. · Apr 5, 2020

jondamon said:
I used to use the chocolate sundae pots from ASDA they have a little lid etc which makes it a great humidity trap and the added bonus of you can see when the roots begin.

all I used to do was drop the sundae cup into a pot when the roots started to show to stop algae growth etc.

For humidty I use a propagator, but for autoflowers when I start them in final pots I use the plastic ball that the lindt easter eggs go in. They click in half and are perfect humidity domes.

Led grown - plants too bushy - defoliating

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