Jack Herer First Grow. Nervous to lollipop?

[picklesrskankin]

Filahbidah

[picklesrskankin]

Because of all the stress, note down somewhere that you are not really on day 15 of flower now. Looking at your pictures you are now at least a week behind that schedule, maybe more. It looks from this last picture like you are just about a week into flower and the stretch is about to start now that the plants are getting over their multiple shocks. Keep us posted.

I'll mark it down in today's log. I honestly didn't realise they would stretch so high. Lookin forward to how it's supposed to look within the next few days. Either way, I'm learning. I'll have some more pics up in a few days. Thanks for the reminder on that.

[picklesrskankin]

This would be the start of day 20, or 13.. Still a little confused now. Only about the time I need to start adding my fosfor+ to the nute mix. I'm happy with the way they are turning out.
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[EvilCartman]

This would be the start of day 20, or 13.. Still a little confused now. Only about the time I need to start adding my fosfor+ to the nute mix. I'm happy with the way they are turning out.

Well, I've grown JH a couple times. Looking at the pics, if I had to guess, I'd say they look about 2-weeks in. You may have stunted the stretch right out of them. You probably did yourself a favor, looks pretty busy in there.

[emilya]

Well, I've grown JH a couple times. Looking at the pics, if I had to guess, I'd say they look about 2-weeks in. You may have stunted the stretch right out of them. You probably did yourself a favor, looks pretty busy in there.

I concur... looks like the 2nd week of flower to me. As soon as the vertical growth stops, call it the 18th day and go with it. At the end it doesnt matter so much the actual age anyway, you will be looking at the trichomes to see when it is done.

[emilya]

The proper time to lollypop is the subject of this message.

I have been thinking about this a lot since making this series of posts with you and wanted to share something that I have recently learned in my tent. Prior to this, if you has asked me if you should trim fan leaves and clean up under the canopy after flower has started, I would have said no. I would have based my answer on needing to keep from stressing the girls and probably would have been quite adamant in my answer.

Today I realized that I had found an exception to what I thought was a rule. My room was getting a bit crowded. Although trimmed before they went into the flowering tent 4 weeks ago, massive side growth had occurred under the canopy and was dying off due to a lack of light. Some of this, especially in the back of the room was getting out of hand, being hard to reach, and I had been relying on my 2 oscillating fans in the room to keep mold issues down. Things were remaining dry underneath, but I started to notice that one of the girls was yelling at me... fan leaves were curling up and dying at the canopy level! This was not good, and I suspected that I may have a mold problem, so I went to work.

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Luckily, this was not mold, it was just the plants trying as hard as they could to get rid of these now inefficient and unneeded fan leaves. My general rule is that if something is in the way and the plants want it gone, it will turn brown and fall off. This works pretty well in nature, but not in our tents. hmmm.

The problem here is that inside of our tents, we are missing out on a very vital component that in nature, allows the plants to cast off these larger leaves, and essentially lollypop themselves as we near the middle of the flowering period. That vital component is random and sometimes violent wind. The larger fan leaves naturally collect much more of that violent wind when it happens, and they are removed as needed.


In our tents we create breezes, but it is a regular and repetitive movement, and not nearly as violent as sometimes happens in nature. Sometimes we have to help our plants out when things get overcrowded. So today I did just that. I cleaned out under the canopy quite thoroughly and removed all of the largest fan leaves, especially any that were beginning to turn. I have always thought it better to not shock the girls when in flower, but today I drastically broke my pattern and went crazy with the scissors. All that is left now are the buds that I expect to make it to harvest with a decent size. Airflow and light penetration is better than I have ever achieved at this point, and I pray that the girls will forgive me for this one morning of a thousand cuts and will now concentrate all of their energy right where I want it. I do believe that something important has just made it's way into my head here, but of course I could have just killed them all too. I will keep you posted and here are the pictures:

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[painretreat]

The proper time to lollypop is the subject of this message.

I drastically broke my pattern and went crazy with the scissors.
will forgive me for this one morning of a thousand cuts and
will now concentrate all of their energy right where I want it. I do believe that something important has just made it's way into my head here, but of course I could have just killed them all too. I will keep you posted and here are the pictures:

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Holy Edward scissorhands... experiment with the whole crop? Looks like lollipop'd. Next time, cut smoke cut...crop? Looks like lollipop'd. Next time, cut smoke cut...
lol, should be interesting.:jointsmile: along for the show!

[Esteban1]

One word......Inspirational!

Sic Semper Tyrannus

:s4:

[picklesrskankin]

Seeing you lop off all that on some really nice looking plants makes me have a little more faith in my decision to cut off just a little a week ago. I hope yours turns out to be a good decision, because that will answer my question with proven results. It would be great to get a few updates. I'm heading into the end of week 3 now(day 18 ), and finally starting to see some great results. Alot of the lower branches with popcorn buds on them are starting to die off. So if this works as well as we all hope, I'll jump on that idea and get rid of a few more branches/fan leaves.

[emilya]

Seeing you lop off all that on some really nice looking plants makes me have a little more faith in my decision to cut off just a little a week ago. I hope yours turns out to be a good decision, because that will answer my question with proven results. It would be great to get a few updates. I'm heading into the end of week 3 now(day 18 ), and finally starting to see some great results. Alot of the lower branches with popcorn buds on them are starting to die off. So if this works as well as we all hope, I'll jump on that idea and get rid of a few more branches/fan leaves.

Let me throw in a word of caution, along the lines of what PR was getting at above. It is very dangerous to do something like this to your entire crop. I took a big chance that I might loose an entire 3 months of work with what I did yesterday, although I was fairly confident that I could get away with it. Upon checking this morning, all is OK and everyone is reaching up to the lights.

Let me further explain what justified my actions, because as a general rule it is NOT a good idea to stress your girls like this.

Some people do this in stages too, thinking that a few small things now and then is not as stressful. They will take off leaves here and there, a few each day when necessary. I decided to do it all at once, on one day only and then totally leave them alone from that point on. I am betting that they will recover from this assault because of where I am in the grow.

I am at that point in flower (around the 5 week point) where the buds are fairly well developed and we are about to go to the home stretch and add weight to these buds. This is the point where all of us see the lower fan leaves yellowing or even turning brown and falling off. The plant is shifting its resources up to the buds at this point and shutting down the processes that are no longer necessary for vegetative type growth. Before now, those large fan leaves were serving a purpose, supporting new bud growth, but now they are just blocking light and air flow. I became the big storm that removed them.

Some of my plants may react negatively to this and believing that it is now the end of their world, will attempt to hermaphrodite in order to continue the species. I will be watching for this and will pick off nanners if I see them, but at this point in the grow I am not too worried about it. There are roughly 4 weeks left in this grow. By the time a nanner was able to develop enough to produce pollen at this point, there would not be enough time to pollinate a bud and develop seeds before harvest. Also, since the girls are now very bare underneath the active buds, it will be an easy matter to see any hermaphroditic growth before it becomes an issue.

I will stress here however, that what I did with this experiment may not be suited to a novice or casual grower who does not have the time or experience to get in there and spend some extra time knowing their plants. I will NOT recommend this technique to the typical medial grower... your meds are simply too important to risk.