How on earth do I prune/defoliate this ~50 day old auto?

Or take care of it, at all. I tried late (and incredibly mild) LST as a bored experiment but I have no idea what to do now, particularly re: improving airflow. I have never had this shape of cannabis plant in my home and it’s intimidating.

If this were your plant—what would you do from here? Any and all advice/critique is greatly appreciated!

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Dive into it. Clear out the useless inside first. Small branches going nowhere. Small leaves. Once cleaned in there migrate out. Lower leaves not getting light. Lower branches going nowhere. Migrate up. Inner leaves going nowhere. Keep a solid smooth canopy of mature leaves. Airflow will be good. Energy directed out of center up to flowers. Good solar panels still there. Soldier on. Just what i would do. Nothing crazy to leaves getting light. Tuck some if feel getting thin instead of prune.

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Welcome to the community ! It will be fine to take a few leafs as @Storm mentioned
I would start first around the bottom of the plant closest to the pot and clean up That will allow easy access for watering and feeding. A little better light penetration and air flow.That’s the name of the game. Also.
Good practice to start pulling and spreading and the limbs out :v:

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Plants look kinda dry. When did you water last and how much ?
Good advice above.

I’d wait till the upper leaves were standing back up before I’d prune or train them.
Just my .02.
:v:

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Good advice above so I will just say that in the world of cannabis growing that you have a good problem. For an autoflower that plant looks fantastic. So many will begin flowering at day 21 to 28 and stay small, but you yours is turning into a monster. What a great problem to have.
Welcome to the forum and hope you stay and grow with us here. Its a great community with some really good growers. I went from a total hack to an accomplished novice with help from here.

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Welcome to the group of awesome people. Plant is a very nice plant. If it was me I would gently pull some limbs down and tie them. LST will help improve your air flow and light coverage. Your well on your way to a nice harvest. As said above it does look a little droopy and needs watering. Happy growing my friend

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I would start from pruning her leaves that toward central of plant and selective trim where it crowded. Mostly from bottom part leave that get shaded.

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I’ve learned a bunch from @Oldguy @kellydans @Spiney_norman @Storm
Not to step on toes, but take it easy on how much you take off. Autos are very finicky. Some you can beat the hell out of, some don’t respond so easily.

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Here is something I do to my autos when they get crazy. I run dowel rods through the top of the pot so I can open the canopy. I use pipe cleaners to pull them down to the rod, sometimes it’s a slow go.
I will also pinch the rod with clippers to create an anchor point so the tie does not slip on the rod.



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Nice thick colas on that one brother. :clap::clap:
Very nice.
:v:

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Oh yeah very nice, spread those limbs out for maximum light penetration equals long large colas.

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Thank you so much (to everyone) for your help!! This is clearly such a wonderful community, I feel very supported in my time of need. Like, really.

I probably didn’t do it right, but I cut a good number of leaves and spread the branches out. The air flow is definitely way better, I can actually feel fan air pass through and can see through it now. I know I likely wasn’t aggressive enough, but I was too scared to cut small branches that have bud sites. Which ones am I supposed to sacrifice? I also tried tucking a lot of leaves instead of chopping.

If you have any other tips, would love to hear them. Otherwise, figured yall deserved an update pic and my thanks!

(To everyone who mentioned watering, I took the first pic immediately after watering so it didn’t have time to uptake. My excuse now is that it’s about to be watering time lol.)

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She will line out as she flowers. Now you can see what is what.

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She looks a lot better. I would give her a week or so and remove more of the lower leaves that are mostly shaded or big leaves that are shading newer growth spots. Some of those smaller buds will never amount to much, but I would leave them as “taster” buds.

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Another, more experienced, member made a point in another thread about how removal of the large fans reduces humidity in the space, reducing humidity in the canopy, reducing the incidence of bud rot. Food for Thought

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