Hi
I’m new so forgive stupid questions please. My second grow (but first indoor and first auto).
The girl below is a GG4 auto from ILGM in a 2x4 tent. It is literally wall to wall. Coco+perlite with a halo feeder. Jacks 321 nutes (plus epsom salt, silica).
My concern is that is is so thick that the buds aren’t getting light. I have done some defoliating along the way. Everything below the SCROG net was removed plus many other fan leaves along the grow.
I’m starting the 5th week since early onset of flower.
Question - Do I need to do some major defoliation (again)?
Should I be concerned that the buds won’t get big and dense with so much foliage and lack of light down inside the plant. Seems like thousands of buds.
Buds (flower calyxes) don’t need or use light and are only 5% as efficient at photosynthesis as leaves are. The leaves will manufacture the nutrients that the plant needs and shuttles those nutrients (sugars) where they are needed within the plant (including flower) via the stem system.
Defoliate as necessary to ensure good airflow within the canopy.
I can’t help but feel the airflow is ok (but I’m a novice). I have (3) 6” AC Infinity oscillating fans. One of the 3 is below the SCROG blowing up. Plus I have a 6” ACI exhaust fan.
No mold. My dehumidifier is set 50% and tent set to 65 degrees.
The first part of your response sounds like I don’t need to be worried that the lower or interior buds can’t get direct light. If I’m understanding correctly that’s good.
You could remove some of those leaves but I would not go all Edward Scissor Hands on them. They need the leaves to provide the nutrients that plants need to make big buds.
You just want to get good air flow. Fans can provide the required air flow. Many very good growers remove a lot of leaves. I remove as few as I can get away with.
My understanding is plants will quite producing leaves somewhere around week 5-6 of flower. I can see in the top pic there’s leaves with long stems that appears to be attached to growth that can sustain itself. With a plant at that stage I like to trim from the bottom up meaning looking up into the plant where you can better see the thick areas. If in doubt leave them there for a bit longer.
I found it my limited experience that defoliating autos really shocks them and can stop the growing for at least a week, but yet their clock will still keep ticking. I took more than 10% off of one and it ended up turning her me on me out of revenge!
Oh! Hermie is a slang term for Hermaphrodite. Good article (of many) here.
Cannabis reacts to stress and other things by turning a female into BOTH a female and male, thus makes seeds in the buds-just as if it was fertilized/pollinated.
For sinsemilla (all female) this is undesirable, and interestingly there are good reasons for the plant to do so-again, in certain conditions/situations…
Normally, you want your females far away from males, and making buds-not seeds. But when you stress her out (too much), she turns Hermie on you, and where you would see flowers, you see seeds. As you’ll read, these are legit seeds (sex undetermined), and the rest of the bud on a hermie is 100% cannabis.
I pushed it, removing too many fan leaves at once-even though they had no green in them! My Bad™. I just put all hermie seeds in a jar… Who knows?!
