anotherfrigginnewbie
New member
Hey everyone, I've been working on growing my first autoflower plant. I haven't seen many mentions of trimming/pruning autoflowering plants during their vegetative stage, so I wanted to see what everyone thinks. Please chime in if you can, especially if you have grown autoflower varieties before. And ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY if you have grown autoflowers and have pruned them and have results you can elaborate on.
As I said, this is my first autoflower grow. I'm growing one feminized, autoflowering Jock Horror plant that I got from Nirvana. I haven't been able to find any grow journals on this strain and it's pretty frustrating! LOL but you can't always get what you want, so yeah... I'm asking you guys here :big-smile:! I'm currently 23 days into my grow, counting from when I went from "dry seed" to "wet seed". My plant is looking great so far (if I do say so myself), and I'm using LST to keep it shorter. I'm planning on tying the main stem down along the ring of my bucket lid, and I've done one tie-down already. I'm planning on doing the second tie-down tomorrow or Saturday, depending on her height in the morning. But on my plant, I've got a pretty short bush so far, with quite a bit of undergrowth that is getting limited light. I know that with photoperiod plants, I would prune away a lot of this undergrowth, but since this is an autoflower, I don't want to stunt its growth or to somehow shock it or hurt it in any way. As you'll see from the pictures, I have a few sets of leaves down at the bottom of the plant that have nutrient deficiency spots. This happened when I was feeding it at 1/4 strength of GH Flora standard feeding schedule, but when I did my week 2 reservoir change, I moved up to 1/2 strength nutrients, and she's loving it. So should I trim away any of this undergrowth? If so, how much do I cut away? I'm kind of assuming that I can cut away the few leaves that have nutrient def. spots and not have any real problems from doing so. But as you can see, there's actually a big fan leaf towards the bottom that was pushed against the lid of the reservoir. This leaf has bent itself around the twisty-tie, so it can get better light. If it's working to get more light, it can't be completely useless... Right? I know that I've rambled on for quite a while so far, but I'd really appreciate your opinions on how I should proceed. My "bottom line" thought on my own situation is that I can't really "hurt" the plant by NOT trimming anything away, so I'm pretty OK with just letting it grow naturally (plus a spiral LST backbone, as I move forward) and see what I get in the end... But if trimming her up will help me substantially grow my yield, then I want to know now, while I can still do something about it.
Just an FYI, my grow setup includes:
400W COB LED Roleadro light
20"-32"-62" no-name tent.
Bubbleponics DWC in a 5 gallon bucket (water pump removed after roots touch water for 3 days)
2 port air pump with 2 medium air stones in a single bucket
General Hydroponics Flora Trio (1/2 strength), GH CalMag, GH Rapid Rooter (1/2 strength), HydroGuard, and GH Down as needed
Exhaust fan and carbon air filter
As I said, this is my first autoflower grow. I'm growing one feminized, autoflowering Jock Horror plant that I got from Nirvana. I haven't been able to find any grow journals on this strain and it's pretty frustrating! LOL but you can't always get what you want, so yeah... I'm asking you guys here :big-smile:! I'm currently 23 days into my grow, counting from when I went from "dry seed" to "wet seed". My plant is looking great so far (if I do say so myself), and I'm using LST to keep it shorter. I'm planning on tying the main stem down along the ring of my bucket lid, and I've done one tie-down already. I'm planning on doing the second tie-down tomorrow or Saturday, depending on her height in the morning. But on my plant, I've got a pretty short bush so far, with quite a bit of undergrowth that is getting limited light. I know that with photoperiod plants, I would prune away a lot of this undergrowth, but since this is an autoflower, I don't want to stunt its growth or to somehow shock it or hurt it in any way. As you'll see from the pictures, I have a few sets of leaves down at the bottom of the plant that have nutrient deficiency spots. This happened when I was feeding it at 1/4 strength of GH Flora standard feeding schedule, but when I did my week 2 reservoir change, I moved up to 1/2 strength nutrients, and she's loving it. So should I trim away any of this undergrowth? If so, how much do I cut away? I'm kind of assuming that I can cut away the few leaves that have nutrient def. spots and not have any real problems from doing so. But as you can see, there's actually a big fan leaf towards the bottom that was pushed against the lid of the reservoir. This leaf has bent itself around the twisty-tie, so it can get better light. If it's working to get more light, it can't be completely useless... Right? I know that I've rambled on for quite a while so far, but I'd really appreciate your opinions on how I should proceed. My "bottom line" thought on my own situation is that I can't really "hurt" the plant by NOT trimming anything away, so I'm pretty OK with just letting it grow naturally (plus a spiral LST backbone, as I move forward) and see what I get in the end... But if trimming her up will help me substantially grow my yield, then I want to know now, while I can still do something about it.
Just an FYI, my grow setup includes:
400W COB LED Roleadro light
20"-32"-62" no-name tent.
Bubbleponics DWC in a 5 gallon bucket (water pump removed after roots touch water for 3 days)
2 port air pump with 2 medium air stones in a single bucket
General Hydroponics Flora Trio (1/2 strength), GH CalMag, GH Rapid Rooter (1/2 strength), HydroGuard, and GH Down as needed
Exhaust fan and carbon air filter
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