Some regeneration questions

I'm looking to get some opinions on the below questions, preferably from growers that used the regeneration technique.

1. So, from what I understand regenerating a marijuana plant goes something like this: you chop the top 2/3 or 3/4 of the plant and leave the rest untouched, flip the lights and the nutrients back to veg cycle, and from the few buds you leave on the lower 1/3 of the plant will regrow new leafs and such. You reveg it and then flower again.

But, let's say you have some plants from which you remove all the buds without cutting the branches, stems and leafs. You just trim the buds off the plant, leaving the rest of the plant intact. And leave the lights on a 12/12 cycle. What happens? Will the plant continue to produce new flowers? Is it really neccesary to chop everything from the top 2/3 of the plant?

So, I guess what I'm asking is, can you have a perpetual flowering without choping the plant, but only trimming the buds off?


2. If you can have a perpetual flowering without choping any part of the plant besides the buds: how many leafs can you cut off the plant (to make butter for edibles) so the plant does not die and continue to produce flowers? What would you say is the minimum percentage of leafs that you need to leave on for the plant to survive? 10%? 20%? 30%? Do the remaining leafs have to be equally distributed along the plant or they can be left only on the bottom third of the plant?

3. How fast will you know that a plant will die if you cut to many leafs off it?

I'm asking this because I want to make a little experiment. I want to take a plant from my current grow (I'm in the 5th week of flowering), trim all the buds from it without cutting the stem and branches, AND ALSO cut about 80%-90% of the leafs. And I want to do this about 2 weeks before harvesting the rest of the plants to see if this plant dies or not. Are 2 weeks a sufficient amount of time to see it this plant will live or die?

Anybody? Any opinions?

I just recently revegged a purple kush plant. I am not gonna go through answering all of your questions, but instead I will just tell you what I did for a successful reveg.

I harvested my plant, removing 90% of the plant material, leaving only 2 small branches that had a couple popcorn buds and like 6 fan leaves the size of a half doller.

My plant was originally in a 2 gallon potter. I prepared a 3 gallon pot, putting a 6 inch layer of hot soil (happy frog) in it. I then removed the plant from the 2 gallon pot, knocked any loose soil from the root ball, and pruned a bit of the root mass, then place it in the 3gallon pot. I filled the remaining gaps with more happy frog.

I then did a light water, as your plant will not be very thursty at first during the transition and I did not want to drown the roots. I just gave her 2 solo cups full of ph'd water, only watering the outside ring of the soil.

I then put her under low lighting conditions and waited very patiently. She probably took 15-20 days before I seen any new sign of growth and she became thirsty requiring regular watering.

Once she bagan showing life, she took off and was a healthy 18" tall bush with multiple tops within 2 weeks of that. I took clines and she is now 20 days in flower and is growing more vigorously then her first run.

Hoped this helps, goodluck!

When I'm preparing to re-grow a favorite I plan on leaving a double-handful of greenery around the base of the plant. I harvest most all the buds except for a few scrawny ones near the bottom. I cut the plant in half, not removing 2/3, that's too much. If a plant is 4 feet high and 3 feet wide I would expect it to be half that size after the first harvest. I harvest as described, then throw her back into the veg room at 20/4 lighting.

Things to remember about choosing a plant to re-grow - 1. Re-grows veg faster the second time around. If I vegged a plant 5 weeks I would expect that time to drop to 3 1/2 to 4 weeks to re-veg. 2. Re-grows flower faster too. I figure on at least a week less time to finish with the re-grow. 3. Buds on the re-grow will be smaller but much more numerous as a re-grow. Every place you remove a bud at first harvest will grow 2 buds at the same site as a re-grow. Which means that some phenotypes (plant shape/size) are better suited for re-growing than others. Tall gawky plants will look better when re-grown, but some types just don't re-grow well. I am a big Blueberry Gum fan but the plant shape is short and super-bushy with a ton of smaller nugs. When I tried re-growing the BG did have a zillion bud sites but the buds were so small the second harvest took 3 times as long. Might not seem important now, but harvesting 2-3 plants a week can be time consuming, especially when spending hours huddled over a small plant. Look for plants that have large buds and colas for re-growing.

Good luck, BigSteve.

PS -- a few years ago I posted pix of a plant that I was re-growing. Included pix of before harvesting and immediately after trimming for a re-grow. I don't know how to find it, but if you can I was told it helped some folks a lot.