When to remove bottom growth?

Hey everyone, long time no see! DO-doo-do! I've got a question! Due to circumstances including overcrowding, high heat, low water...and also fimmed plants are seriously stretched. Now, I'm doing pretty well but I can see that the bottoms of the plants are not getting ANY light and I'm surmising this is a total waste of the plant's energy. I'm three weeks into flowering. My strains say that they will mature 7-9 weeks (but I have dual light which seems to finish them a bit faster). When should I go ahead and clear away those popcorn buds and tiny leaves?


I'd also like to mention, in my opinion, don't ever FIM your plants unless you know for a fact that that strain likes it. It makes for thin wispy wimpy plants. I'm clearing my signature about fimming, I hate it.


:jointsmile: Bree

You can clean up the scraggly undergrowth any time.
I'd do it earlier rather than later though.
It will help air flow, save energy, direct energy to upper buds, and make trimming quicker.

really? ive got loads of undergrowth that get not one lumen of light, but ive heard not to snippity snip because it stresses the plant out.

im on week 4, have you ever snipped this late?

There's a difference between removing fan leaves and taking off low spindly branches.
I've never done it that late- I often re-pot at about week 2 or 3 of flower and do it then if I see crap under there.
The low growth has a very very low concentration of hormones in it anyway so it's like the plant isn't as aware of their removal as it would be if you took off a vigorous terminal shoot high on the plant- you know what I'm saying? It's like those low bits are nearly dormant because of the apical dominance effect, adn only really come to life if the higher parts of the plant are removed, or if they get enough light to start growing.

Oh edit- just be sure to take off only the stuff that's pretty obviously pale/spindly/stunted/sickly.

I took off the bottom 1\3 of my plants due to crowding when I was several weeks into flowering, don't think it was as far as week four though. I try to get all that taken care of in the first week-two of flowering... this is the time when the plant stretches the most so it's easier to figure out what needs to go at that point. Best of luck