Two Grows In One: Defoliation vs No Defoliation & Skunk #1 x Blue Dream Feminized Cross

CigNv

Well-Known Member
Two grows in one - Defoliation vs no defoliation and Skunk #1 x Blue Dream feminized cross.


Defoliation vs no defoliation


This grow will simply compare a heavy defoliation vs no defoliation and how it affects harvest in my grow environment.
This will be in soil with Mega Crop as the only fertilizer.
Light will be 2 Mars Hydro TSL 2000 QB in a 2x4 Mars Hydro tent.
Standard circulation fans and filter
Seeds will be Blue Dream feminized Cali Line from Garden of Green and are regular photoperiods
All will be started in paper towel and then placed directly in a square 5 gallon pot after they pop.
Training will simply be a couple of toppings. I will top all of them at the same nodes and at the same time, likely after the 4th node. Nodes 1 and 2 will be removed.
Veg will be about 4-6 weeks from seed
I will try to remove no leaves other than what is needed for training during veg and will be the same on each until flower. I would like them to get about as even a start as possible.

At start of flower
Plant One. Remove all bud sites and fan leaves on lower half
Plant Two. Remove all bud sites and fan leaves except for last two fan leaves and 4 main bud sites
Plant three. Do nothing
Plant four. Do nothing

At 3-4 weeks flower when stretch looks mostly done
Plant One. Trim yellowing fan leaves and fan leaves blocking large amounts of light
Plant Two. Do nothing
Plant Three. Do nothing
Plant Four. Remove large fan leaves blocking light, any yellowing fan leaves, and small bud sites not getting light.


Skunk #1 x Blue Dream feminized cross

Light will be 2 Mars Hydro SP 250 in a 2x4 Mars Hydro tent.

In my other 2x4 tent I will be doing a run of 4 Skunk #1 and 4 Blue Dream, both from 420newguy. Goal with these will be to make a feminized cross. Since there will be so many in relatively small space I will likely not veg them any longer than 4 weeks if that long. At about 2 weeks old a branch on each will be selected and marked to be turned with colloidal silver. After collecting pollen the branch will be removed. I will likely only pollinate the best one from each group with pollen from the other group unless I see a pheno I would like to keep going. In that case it will likely be bred to itself.

I will likely be putting the seeds in water tomorrow evening.
 
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I hope I get some feminized seeds out of this as well. I have been successful before, but started applying the colloidal when they started flowering, so ended up having to let the pollinated buds go a lot longer to make sure I got viable seeds. After these grows I will be doing some test runs to see how these and my last feminized attempt worked out.
 
The 5th Blue Dream from NewGuy popped and none of the Skunk #1 did, so I planted that one and placed 5 more Skunk in paper towel. If non of these pop I will drop 5 of the other Skunk #1 I have.

The GoG Blue Dream are starting to pop out of the soil.

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Will be fun to watch :passitleft:

I still couldn't defoliate any of my plants the way I want. However, my blooming BG41 is defoliated on first and third weeks of flowering. Eventhough I defoliated her hard, she managed to produce lots of new leaves in like two or three days. Very agressive vegger. I hope she will grow buds in such agressive way too. I might consider defoliating one more time between days 42-44 but not sure yet. I got a great amount of light in that tent and lower nugs are also bulking up very fast.
 
I did something similar about 2 months ago. I defoliated 1 plant the 1st week of flower & the other plant at 3 weeks of flower. Both were Critical 2.0 in DWC. The plant I defoliated at 1 week came out way smaller then the one I did at 3 weeks. So I'm kind of wondering if the timing of the defol makes a difference or if it was just a fluke.
 
I did something similar about 2 months ago. I defoliated 1 plant the 1st week of flower & the other plant at 3 weeks of flower. Both were Critical 2.0 in DWC. The plant I defoliated at 1 week came out way smaller then the one I did at 3 weeks. So I'm kind of wondering if the timing of the defol makes a difference or if it was just a fluke.

If you defoliated hard on the first week, that might slowed the stretch down a little bit. That must be the reason for the difference in plant size brother. Still, there can be other factors.

I am defoliating to expose bud sites to light and wind. If you trim the lower parts of your plants, that will also give great results alone but heavy defoliation time must be decided by looking into your plant. I defoliated very lightly on week one to promote the stretch and went pretty heavy on the third week. That seems to work great but I am not totally sure about the third defoliation yet.

Since I also supercropped lots of branches, I am leaving her alone for a while but as I said, my plant is trying to produce some fine nugs on relatively lower tops and that made me think about a third defoliation. However, every fan leave that you strip from a main top must have a negative effect on that cola. This is a matter of compromise and like I said, it should depend on the plant characteristics and how much you can interpret by observing these :passitleft:
 
Pretty big difference in the 2 plants I did. 1st pic is the one that was small. Already chopped that one. 2nd pic of the bigger plant was taken the same day as 1st pic. 3rd pic is how she looked a few days ago. Getting chopped soon. Almost there.
But you can see the size difference in the 1st 2 pics.
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Pretty big difference in the 2 plants I did. 1st pic is the one that was small. Already chopped that one. 2nd pic of the bigger plant was taken the same day as 1st pic. 3rd pic is how she looked a few days ago. Getting chopped soon. Almost there.
But you can see the size difference in the 1st 2 pics.
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I was growing two Exodus Cheese Autos like 100000 years ago. Seeds from the same 3-pack. Plants turned out very different with the exact same conditions. Smoke was similar but one of them was significantly bigger and the other one had denser buds.

If your plants are grown from the seed, then it is possible for you to have different phenos but if these were grown from clones, the difference is most likely to be caused by an early heavy defoliation, which may have stunned the stretch. Did you defoliate heavy on week 1?
 
Thanks for joining along and sharing your defoliation or not experiences! The more info gathered can help spread light on what works and what doesn't. Keep it coming! Major factors are grow and pheno differences, it is hard to separate them out. Even with clones it can be hard to eliminate all the variables that make different plants grow at a different rate effecting final yield.

Sadly I just had one of the GoG Blue Dream harden off and die so now only have three of them that popped at the same time. Now need to decide if I want to just eliminate one of them and run this with 3 pants, Or switch the grower. It looks like all 5 of the New420guy Blue dream are popping, so maybe I will switch and run the defoliation comparison with 4 of those and move the GoG Blue Dream over to the feminization cross tent.

Also, the other 5 Skunk #1 from New420guy did not pop yet, so I will likely be dropping my other Skunk #1 seeds for the cross. Not total unexpected, the grower did say that these were old stock seeds so the germination rate is expected to be pretty low.
 
Thanks for joining along and sharing your defoliation or not experiences! The more info gathered can help spread light on what works and what doesn't. Keep it coming! Major factors are grow and pheno differences, it is hard to separate them out. Even with clones it can be hard to eliminate all the variables that make different plants grow at a different rate effecting final yield.

Sadly I just had one of the GoG Blue Dream harden off and die so now only have three of them that popped at the same time. Now need to decide if I want to just eliminate one of them and run this with 3 pants, Or switch the grower. It looks like all 5 of the New420guy Blue dream are popping, so maybe I will switch and run the defoliation comparison with 4 of those and move the GoG Blue Dream over to the feminization cross tent.

Also, the other 5 Skunk #1 from New420guy did not pop yet, so I will likely be dropping my other Skunk #1 seeds for the cross. Not total unexpected, the grower did say that these were old stock seeds so the germination rate is expected to be pretty low.

This was a pic from an undercurrent DWC grow a while back. I didn't defol..... Nightmare trimming, and the yield suffered :Namaste:
 
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