Too Bushy?

[Bigmama]

Hi Friends, I'm very very new to growing. This is my second plant and I feel like there are way too many leaves and bud shoots on this plant. I see pictures of young plants that are groomed down to just a few main branches with very few leaves with all the energy focused apparently on the buds. My plant looks like a bush! I removed allot of the veg from the lower branches, the plant is fairly flat on top with many many small buds growing but its just a mass of leaves. This is a northern lights plant almost two months old. I'm so tempted to just deforest the thing leaving just the larger branches and buds but I don't want to stunt growth with all the trimming now that its flowering . Maybe I'll just let this mass of leaves and buds grow and experiment with the other smaller plant, really trimming it down to some main stalks and see what happens.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Canuck147]

Nice bush - don't cut any branches or bud sites - I would trim some more of the interior leaves - not as many as you are talking about cuz you still want enough of these small sugar factories producing energy for the bud sites to grow as big as they can. Lollipop it now and you'll stunt her growth considerably.

[Joker]

I agree with canuck147 I would just trim some of the interior fan leaves to let more light reach the lower bud sites.

[Iammygod]

At the age your plant currently is, she can grow more leaves collecting the light. REMOVE (all) top LEAVES preventing light reaching suger leaves on buds behind without letting the light to pass through the canopy and keep the light level at 50-75k lux. Keep removing leaves slowly, one by one, bigger before big all around to reach main stems. DON'T TAKE TOO MUCH.

what is the volume of the pot?
The pot your plant is growing in sounds too small to me. As your plant grows, roots grow either if they have room to grow. Nutrient and water/oxygen requirement of the plant also increases as plant grows. Roots absorb majority of water and nutrient requirements of the plant. SMALL POT PREVENTS ROOTS TO GROW.

LESS ROOT, LESS YEILD.

[Bigmama]

5 Gallon bucket believe it or not.

[Bigmama]

Thanks for the the feedback, I pulled off quite a few of the largest leaves at the top and yes, it really exposed all the buds in the undergrowth. The plant looks better meaning all the main growth areas, the branches with the buds seem to have room now to fill out. I didn't top this plant I just FIMd it then bent over the main stock. I understand I need to be patient, experiment, try different things, top don't top, just train the plants, etc. If I had a large grow area I would have 10 plants and do 10 different thing to learn what works best for my environment, unfortunately I can only do one or two at a time so its going to take years to be able to see the results of many different growing techniques. Which is why I ask these basic questions, Thanks all!! love you guys!

[gbauto]

Is this an Auto? I read 2 months old and I see that the plant is in flower.
I feel that how and when to defoliate depends on whether it's a photo or auto.

[Bigmama]

Auto Flower

[gbauto]

My experience with autos has given me erratic results. Some have been vigorous enough to do some basic defoliation and training while others didn't like ANY training. I'd just do a light defo where leaves are blocking flower sites and hope for the best.

[Redwasp]

I would have just made sure that all bid sites were open to the light and it had good airflow. The plant looked well groomed to me. Maybe as said above open up airflow to the center of the plant.

And I treat my autos and photos the same now pretty much. You are just training the autos faster than the photos. If you have a slow growing auto just leave it alone. But for most autos you can train them, top them, defol them if you want etc. But I'm not big Into defoliating. I just prune my plants opening up bid sites and airways.