Hey all, first time trying indoors and autos. Here are my ywo girls currently. Both 33 days from seed. White Widow on the left and Northern Lights on the right.
The white widow has been sluggish but looks healthy, i was able do a small amount of LST on her. The Lights took off and is now super bushy. Im worried about trying to LST her due to the stem thickness, so far ive been following the leave it alone technique. Both are producing pistils now.
Ive read so many conflicting things on trimming autos so i thought id reach out for some wisdom. Thanks in advance!
I grow autos and I lollipop the bottom 1/3 every time and defol when I feel the need. I’m not a topper much though. I have but auto’s finish typically fast anyways so I don’t worry about ceiling space. I limit most of my lst to pulling outer branches down and away from the center stalk with garden wire and office clips to the containers edges.
Thanks for the input. There’s already the leaves i want to remove in me head, Ive been pondering this for a few days. Do I need to worry about the fact they are going into preflower? I read if you do trim autos it’s either early veg or late flower. Cheers!
Sometimes if im a little worried about a slow growing i will just tuck leafs. Like literally fold it up and stuff it down into the plant any way you can get it so its never actually plucked but it no longer really doing anything.
If done daily you can keep a plant very level.
If the main top gets to far you can “pony tail” it for a few days and it will slow while all the sides shoot up.
I do like @MidwestGuy said and defoliate anything blocking light or airflow. In addition to that I do a good bit of defoliating on days 21 and 42 of flower. I think autos can handle more stress than they get credit for.
Autos are tough! A lot tougher than people think. I Defoliate on and off the whole time. Pulling leaves that cover up other bud sights. And leaves that are laying on each other. Or pushed up against other foliage. Keeping air flow and light penetration are my top goals when defoliating. But i also top my autos! Keeps me from having to train them! They just kind of bush out on there own when you top at the right time.
That’s a tough question. I run autos all the time, I’ve let one go with minimal training and then I’ve beat the living hell out of most of them.
My experience is watch the plant and see how much she can take. I always top mine and see what happens. You can look here Woodrow’s Room! - #3 by Dankloud
I will defoliate anything that shades lower site.
I will also lollipop as best as I can
@Antipop i grow autos and I am going to give one of my ladies a trim today for the reasons others quoted. You can expect that the will go into a mild shock and not do much or see much growth for a few days after. As a rule of thumb I trim between 20%-30% to limit the amount of shock the plant will go through. I’ll post pics shortly.
Thank you all for the advice! I did some trimming last night, pulled off alot more than I thought I would. Going to give her a few days and see how she handles it then go from there.
Similar to what a couple members stated above, by seeing others’ auto grows and my my experiences, more and more my opinion is that autos can handle more than what is often stated about them.
I tend to be conservative, afraid that I’ll hurt them, but so far I haven’t. I’ve topped several autos without problems. I recently read about if/when to prune and defol, and of course read conflicting info, again. So, I used info, experiences, and common sense and then lightly/moderately pruned off future bottom larf on my current auto in early flower. Did it hurt my plant? Hardly! It’s been taking off and doing great.
So it seems from what I’m learning, just don’t go overboard and try not to break stuff - since autos have such a short veg period, they don’t have much time to grow back too much foliage or heal broken stems before they flower. But topping and reasonable pruning/defol - go for it.
Did another trim last night, still looking healthy but the pistil growth is sluggish compared to my runt White Widow (stage left) who decided it’s time to put on a show.
I took mostly from the bottom and middle but she want to be a bush apparently. I plan to wait and see from here on out and hope she starts popping soon.
Figured i’d ask in this thread since you guys have been so helpful. Came home and found super tiny white specs on the leaves. My first thought was spider mites but see no evidence of bugs or webbing under the leaves. Thoughts?
Had to zoom in pretty close so they show up in the pic.
So, I used info, experiences, and common sense and then lightly/moderately pruned off future bottom larf on my current auto in early flower. Did it hurt my plant? Hardly! It’s been taking off and doing great.
