It’s been quite a little ride with these girls. I ALMOST wish they were autos so I could be done with the experiment within a month instead of 3-4 more months, however I’ll be happy I did by then as I have a lot of room to grow so to speak, and room for error/fix time :).
As if I couldn’t do more harm, I got two more plants and almost fukt my whole experiment up and had to start over if I didn’t catch it within a few hours of when I did.
I’ve now burnt them, drowned them, over/underwatered them, light too close/far, too much and not enough food.. I think the only thing I’ve done right without breaking anything is the low stress training. Amazing how strong yet delicate these girls are. 20yrs ago growing weed was a lot more set and forget just water (it’s a damn weed, it’s supposed to be hard to kill and get rid of, shit grows through cracks in concrete).
Anyway, they survived, and all this stress is prepping the shape/size/strength that I want for the plant for its flowering stage. Shorter vs taller, and a sea of green in my tent with even colas not competing for the light too much.
Chopping and hacking at the leaves was more stress, some by design others by virtue of still being waterlogged and starting to catch all kinds of potential diseases/mold/etc so instead of light defoliation they got hacked good – which will result in energy re-distribution (and re-leafing) once they heal (again :(().
Feel free to continue the debate on whether shwazing/constant extreme defoliation stress is good for the plant or if you are on team “leave the leaves alone”. OR in between where you only defoliate twice at the typical knows pre/post flower times (preflip/21daysAfter)..
The way I see it, once you have a really strong root zone, the leaves aren’t nearly as important until flowering. Loading the plants roots and even killing the leaves via foliar spraying them with nutes, all gives the base of the plants stock, branches, and bud site bases, a lot of overdrive strength.
They are radiating with hulk like veins and flow, the leaves repopulate fast, and you get an explosion of nodes/width/branch strength as the light soaks the base and important joints a lot more. The vegetation cycle should be maximized to the extreme as once she flips to flower it’s just shaping and scrogging vs defoliating or supercropping/topping more.
All in all this is a really fun project bring out my youthful days again, and I think my pop would be proud and probably growing his own if he was still here. Amazing therapy for me, amazing seeing shit thrive vs die in my current phase of life after last years losses. Thank you Cannabis gods for blessing me with strong plants that are proving hard to kill lol.
#GrowingWeedWithMagnets #Pineappleexpressgrow #LowStressTraining
