Well no expert here but I can tell ya what Ive learnt so far. Let the girls mature before you start raping them. Removing lower laterals to early will slow growth greatly. As they mature remove lowers first, moving towards the canopy I remove the inner shoots on the laterals leaving the top 4-5" alone at all times. As the plant gets taller that 4-5" zone moves up and you start removing inners again. A week before flower (7-10 days) top and clean off any laterials that you suspect will not reach the canopy. Clean off any inner shoots remaining below the 4-5" zone and whala thats it. Only remove what is necessary from that point.

My girls all get a lollipop so there is no name calling in my house!

Well DB. I started shavin' on Lovins' advice. I started taken em up lil by lil and now 4-5 grows in I kinda have an idea where I wanna end up at. And I keep taken the lil popcorn that grows down below off all the way through the grow, makes for good juicin'.

Thanks SirG, Nutty. If you two aren't experts here I don't know who is!

Sir Ganga, your description is clear and simple to follow; I hope I can duplicate even close to what you've achieved with your grows.


Nutogrow, I'll be ripping the lower growth for juicing as well. I had vegged a few extra plants in my current grow batch, to use as juicing material. Decided earlier today to crack more beans right away (instead of scheduling it for the end of the current batch's harvest time) to produce more green-stuff once what I have growing atm runs out. These new ones will be White Widow and a couple WW crosses I just harvested. From what I've read about high CBD strains, WW can be a decent med strain.

Doobie I kind of look at it like this. If you are gonna run quite a few plants and don't plan on topping any of 'em then I like to only keep about 3 nodes ( sometimes 4 if that node is coming in) at the most going into flower and groom accordingly after they stretch.

If you plan on some HST and/or LST I would highly suggest you start topping early like the second node on seeds or the first node of new growth on a clone. After you top or FIM you will get at least 2 tops and these are gonna make all your branches so it doesn't make any sense to wait to start your HST imho. I like to clear what's under the HST after I have a few nodes up top as like Sir Ganga says sometimes they will want to stall on you some if you start taking off too early. Depending on what kind of light you have will tell you how much of a sweet spot you want to keep those branches in as the smaller the light the weaker it will want to penetrate so it won't get down to far through thick foliage. I try to aim for about a 8 inch window or so with my 600 and just trim accordingly. I wait until I have a few nodes after the top or FIM and then clear out the node below the top nad whatever branches that won't stretch which you will tell and I like to take the first 2 nodes closest to the stalk off as well. Practice makes perfect and some strains branch much better than others so knowing how the strain will act to your training will tell you how much to leave on going into flower but you'll get the hang of it

Good post Lovin'. Stright from the leg shavin king. And thanks for talkin' me into tryin' that. My yeild is as good or better and trim time has been cut in half.

What Nuto said. One problem I face is a lack of experience with a given strain, as I tend to grow new stuff every run. However I definitely will be trying this out on my current batch - flipped them last week, and have started to remove bottom growth (to be used for juicing). I do FIM/top most of my girls, so I'll take your advice and shave them a little higher up...

I tend to veg my girls longer than most folks. As I need to collect fresh leaf material almost daily, I'll be shaving each plant one after the other, as opposed to all at once. I expect this to take ten to fourteen days. Do you see any problems with this plan ?

If and when I get my grubbies on a few high CBD strains, I will be growing them all the time, so will develop a better handle on when and how much to shave. Should be fun!

Thanks for the help guys.
Cheers

here's a video I saw a long time ago that helped me out some in terms of when to start training and I don't always top them like this but I do the branches that start to grow faster than the others so the others can catch up or sometimes I'll supercrop it if the spacing goes big on a couple nodes and give it a knuckle but check it out when you can it's real quick


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNuanYP7sb8



I like to first start cleaning up when I have a 4-5 nodes on my branches after topping and then I'll usually clean up the bottom node (one below my first top/FIM) and the first node after the topping if it doesn't seem to want to stretch but I never take off more than 40% of it's leaves at one time but once I have trimmed the legs once I usually go back every 10 days or so (in veg and every 7 days in flower until I don't need to anymore) and cut away the underbrush that won't make it and clean up the those 2 nodes closest to the stalk and stuff like that. Sounds like a plan if you start shaving them ladies and they'll love you for it

Looks like we need a crown for Lovin' the Lollipop King

Thanks for the advice McL, I've printed your post (actually this thread) to add to my notes.

P.S. Thanks for the link bro

Well for good reason...you ever seen his old ladies legs! Practice makes perfect

Now I know y'all fellas must be high saying that and that would make you Sir Ganga the Lollipop Ninja as your training looks great buddy