Too much foliage

This is something i have no experience with:

I have a group of ladies growing outside in the sun. They have been on the verge of flowering for about a month now. This has caused them to become very leafy.
The growth between the nodes has stretched between 1-2 inches and the plants are heavy Indica (GDP). So they are stout and so bush that in places they look like balls of leaves. I know the resulting bud will be a bit on the leafy side, but i am wondering if there is something to do to get some sun into the insides of these girls so at least some buds can maximize their potential. I have pruned the bottom 1/3 of a few of them. I did this to focus the energy on the tops and to just clean them up a little.

Because of the short and stocky stature, they are impossible to bend open with out snapping branches. Any ideas?

You'll have to spread them gently then. Train the newest growth gently with soft yarn, before it gets woody. Once a stiff plant gets woody, you can easily split the branches from the main stem by yanking too hard.

they have about 4-5 woody arms on them. the arms are not all that close but because of all the 1-2 inch growth in the nodes and the abundance of leaves it all looks close together. Since i cant bend the arms, and the new growth is only 1-2 inches between the nodes, every node, should i prune out some of these nodes to get some light into the plant? and also to focus energy to the parts that receive sun? This inner node growth is too small to train, and there are too many of them.

The guidelines for pruning almost all types of bushes are basically the same:
First, prune judiciously when the plant is getting ready to flower. Don't take off the prime growing tips! But beyond that, these are parts you can take off:

-Low growth that is weak and gets no light
-Growth crowding the center of the plant- as long as it does not support a primary growing tip- leave those be
- The weaker of any pair of branches when a pair is crossing or rubbing. If both support a primary tip, just try to spread them apart as best you can.

Do all your pruning ASAP, because it's just about flower time, babee!

Thanks for the guidelines.

Funny because i know the urgency and was out there and did half of them...then i thought, I better go and see if an expert disagrees with what i am doing.

So thanks for the quick response Stinky...back to the scissors.

One more thing i forgot to mention is that all the leaves are now 3 fingered. I have grown both strains before and never encountered the three fingers. I believe it is due to stress? I think i read that somewhere...
Otherwise they look a nice healthy shade of darker green...usually my plants are a little more yellow at this point...

Will the three fingers ever revert back to 5-7-9? Will this have a detrimental effect on overall production? I am guessing...no...yes...please tell me i'm wrong! :cool:

There is a progression of leaf blade numbers throughout the plant's life.
When very young, it goes 1-3-5-7-9-up to 13 (most I've seen personally).
When vegging and mature, in good health, the plant will show the greatest number of leaf blades that its strain can produce. Some strains make only 3, tops!
When flowering, which is the end of the plant's life cycle, it starts to drop again. The last leaves the plant will ever produce are back to a single blade sticking out from amongst the calyxes.
Should you decide to re-veg the plant, it will shoot out long, skinny, unserrated, single-blade leaves that are usually called 'stress leaves'. As it becomes healthy again, it will go back up as if it were a seedling- 3, then 5, and so on.
A very stressed plant will show FEWER than the appropriate # of leaf blades for its strain and life stage.
Hope that helps!

That is a very helpful explanation. Thanks for typing that out. I do believe that the plants will be OK. They are just a bit confused whether or not to flower. Of course I will leave it up to them...:thumbsup: