If you have a bud covered by a leaf, the trichomes will not develop anywhere remotely near their potential on that shaded part of it. Same thing if you have a bud sideways or laying horizontally on a screen, the bottom half of it will not get crystally like the top, if the top is getting good light.

I remove about 80% of my leaves during flowering. It results in a huge increase in quality, and a nice increase in yield. But this is with my current setup, not everyone else's setups.

To do this properly, I do not reduce my overall plant surface area exposed to light, except in very late flowering. All I'm doing is giving the light a more 3 dimensional surface to hit. (So you do NOT get a net reduction in photosynthesis for the majority of flowering.) In other words, you're letting the light get down into the canopy, not just hit the top. I feel like I Have to do this, I could post a pic of my canopy 3 weeks into flowering under my 600s, you can't even see more than a couple inches into it, until I start pulling leaves. Left alone, it gets ridiculously far from ideal in a hurry.

I don't ever remove leaves in veg, but then again, I don't veg under my flowering lights.


But with all this stuff, I'm under sun pulse halides, flourescents are a totally different game. They don't have the UV, they don't have anywhere near the intensity, they're not going to develop the trichomes the same way, they don't have the heat, they don't have the penetration, etc. If I were to do a grow with fourescents, my entire strategy would be different. Instead of trying to do a deep, 3 dimensional canopy that the light could shine into, I'd try to do a thin sea of green, I guess like you're doing, NScooknet. I'd try to get all the buds to evenly form and pop up right under the lights, and just remove leaves that blocked them directly. I probably would end up removing only a tiny percentage of the leaf mass I currently do.

But what if you don't have alot of horizontal space?

My grow is only 3ft by 4 feet by 5 feet high, very tight space.

Would you still top knowing this or leave them as is??

5 feet? Yeah, top at least twice I would say, maybe three times, you want many shorter colas than a few tall ones in that situation.

For example, my plants, which I top twice and grow in 1.5 gallon pots (smaller than recommended, but it works for me), usually end up about 3 feet tall, including the 9" tall pot. Add another 18" for space between my 400W HID and the tops of the plants, and another 1 foot to accommodate the HID fixture/reflector, and we're at 5.5 feet already.

Edit: Oh, right, you're growing under fluorescents. Slash that 18". Maybe topping twice would be enough.

OK, I topped 'em.

If you still want to flower soon I wouldn't top them any more. You're looking at another 10 days to get nice bud sites on the top now.

Pick a few of your best plants and use a few of those lower branches to clone with. Maybe get a decent mom to get cuttings from and grow a crop of girls only next round.

Thanks for the reply Labrat

So are you saying I should wait another 10 days now before switching to flowering to let it veg longer and get some growth and to recover before switching over to flowering??

I guess if I'd known I should have topped them i would have done it a week ago or so, I just wasn't sure about trimming them.

I've already cut 2 lower branches and am waiting to see if the clones take root or not, it's my 1st time doing that, so we'll see what happens.

I was thinking of switching over to flowering tomorrow, but if you think I should wait, just let me know!

I'd wait until the growing tips are popping up at least but I'm not positive it will make a big difference.

A little extra veg time won't hurt your yield tho but you'll be getting taller plants.

I've always waited so I have no personal experience of the outcome.

I can tell you what happens if you do it 10 days *after* flowering, you get no colas, just nuggets on the budding sites you left behind.

I didn't realise you wanted to flower so soon, or I would have remembered what LabRat said about needing some growing time after topping, I think he's right.

You got that right Spectral. Cut tips off after flipping if you want nubs! lol

Another week or so and the nest sets of branches will catch up closer to the tops and he'll have 4 or maybe even 6 nice tops on each plant.

As an aside NS, you'll likely be pulling out some males so I wouldn't worry about having enough horizontal space unless they are all females. Now that would be a good problem to have.

I don't mind waiting, as long as they don't veg too long and get too big, they really are growing fast!

So should I wait until I can actually see a definite "split" of branches on the top and for the lower branches to catch up to the to before switching over to flowering then?