Thanks to everyone for hanging in there - Hopefully I'm back on track.
A special hello to my nephew who has been lurking out there somewhere and who has decided to give 'Uncle's" method a try. Hey Bud!
When I left off we had gotten your plant up to 6 weeks of age and had already completed the majority of your plants training.
In weeks six and seven of your plants life you are going to have some major choices to make.
First is going to be - "Should I super-crop?" IF you do decide to super-crop your plants, it's perfectly fine and will work great with this method; NOW is the time. DO NOT wait until your plant has begun flowering to start super-cropping! Why? I find that by the time a plant has entered flowering and any stretch at all has occurred many, many strains will have developed hollow branches and super-cropping at this stage could be VERY problematic for your grow.
I don't always super-crop my plants, in fact if I were to total super-crops to number of grows I would say its pretty darn close to 50/50. My reason for super-cropping or not can be variable - Is the strain known to have 'larfy' buds? Are leaf nodes close or far apart, - I find super-cropping more effective on plants whose nodes are a bit more spaced out. If leaf nodes are close you have a much higher chance of your buds becoming a substantial bud packet all on their own without super-cropping. If you've never super-cropped your plants before, please look up here on GWE how to super-crop properly, but I will tell you, the first time I super-cropped a plant it was the scariest thing I've ever done. Don't have a heart attack, if done properly you're really not killing your plant, though when you see all those branches laying over your first reaction is likely to be "OMG! What have I done!"
The next VERY important choices your going to have to make is which branches to leave, and which ones to remove. As
oldjarhead100 questioned "Is their a point when more top bud sites decreases the size of the buds themselves,"? And the answer to that question is a resounding YES. As was shown before, as long as your plant is in veg mode, it is creating more flowering branches. You are going to have to choose which of your growing flowing tips are doing the best and have the best chance of growing to the top of the canopy. If there's no chance or less chance than another go ahead and remove the growing tip/branch. In the long run all crowded or covered growths will do nothing but pull the juice away from your flowers.
If you let your plants go until the end of week 8 without culling any branches your plant would have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 growth tips. The problem with this is, there is NO WAY you can effectively spread your plant out or remove enough leaves (without damaging your harvest) to fully utilize these growths unless you are planning on doing a SCROG grow, which honestly, you should have been planning long before this point. I find that between 40-50 flowering branches is the maximum amount of 'flowering tips' that will give you the largest harvest with the least amount of work and will produce 11-22 ounces per plant.
A post I made some time ago pretty much sums up my growing philosophy:
"I truly believe there is not a photo strain out there that couldn't benefit from a good manifold (but that's just me.) I have found that growing 'technique' is on equal PAR with lighting (pun intended) ANY usable product from a grow is a victory and one that should be celebrated with a good dream cloud, but, we are ALL here because we want to do better and want others to do better too."
Happy Pharming!
and remember -
"... don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate,
It may have a new perspective
On a different day-
And if you don't give up, and don't give in,
You may just be okay!'
(Thanks to Mike and the Mechanics)
Questions? Comments?
