Pre-flower trim? - Assistance needed

[Erhnmb]

Hey all. Long time lerker, first time poster.

Background info. All soil, fox farm ocean forest cut with light warrior (working my way to Subcool's super soil mix, its still cooking)

Veg is in a sealed box 4ftx4ftx2ft under t5 HO with 4 AgroMax Pure PAR veg bulbs. 3rd run with t5, first with these bulbs.

Flower is in another room under 1000w HPS. Generic, $150 bulb and ballist set on sale (I know... Working on upgrading it lol)

The strain I'm growing is... I don't know what it is. Some bag seeds I grew and cloned from. I like to call it "redheaded Mexican ditch weed" its actually not bad once I got the hang of growing.

So... being my first run with these t5 bulbs. I've hit a snag I didn't expect. The plants LOVE them. There is too much growth. The nodes are ridiculously close. As in, branchs in the middle of the plant are maybe 1\2 in apart off the stem. Those have their own branches that are maybe an inch and a half long with 3 nodes. Its awesome. They look like you could make micro clones from them. You can't even see through the plants. And oh how the mites love to hide in them...

This was never this much growth with the bulbs that came with the fixture.

I've got the mites under control but I don't know what to expect in flowering with this much foliage. My other runs, I only removed what the plant was finished with.

So my very long drawn out question is: How much should I trim away before I move them to flower, if any? I live in Washington State, so rain and moisture is always an issue regardless of the season. I don't want my buds to rott. I will post some pictures later for a better idea of what I'm talking about. How do you guys manicure your plants prior to flowering of you have to much growth?

I plan to start flowering next week.
Thanks in advance.

 

[MassMedMan]

I veg with a t5 set up and they help make some nice plants. It all depends on what type of plant you want to end up with, to grow. Personally, i like bushes not trees and i don't want a lot of lower flower sites. I like to veg for three months and all that time I'm talking 30% of the plant itself, and then once big enough, each branch itself is trimmed/supercropped. I shoot for 8-12 main branches.

So, my advice to you is to give her a cut. Well first figure what you want in flower. Do have room for her to double or maybe triple in height? If not maybe think about topping her. Then thin the branches, get airflow in all that area where buds will soon be. And create space for each branch/bud imagine the plant it's going to be then train it accordingly in veg. I work on my plants much more in veg then flower. Once they go to flower it's set it and forget it

The light you have even being, generic, is still going to get light down low. But, that lower stuff is typically fluff/popcorn. So taking that lower stuff off in veg will give you bigger and better flowers up top. No matter what plant you're growing, and it'll help airflow.

Assuming you get the rest correct

Good luck, post pictures!

 

[Erhnmb]

Sorry for the delayed reply. Thank you for the info. It became a moot point. I went out to take some pictures and discovered my mite problem came back with a vengeance. So i had to trim quite a bit. But its ok, it forced me to find a better mite solution. I found something called GreenClean or something like that. Works awesome.

Thanks again for the info. Im still new enough that im not sure what i want in flower lol. i can go tall but not really too wide without plants interfering with each other. Ill keep poking around and maybe do some one way and some another to experiment with my setup and whats a viable option. So far the few runs i have done, the outcome has been different each time. One run turned some dense frosty buds, another it was super frosty but fluffy. Same plants, same lights and soil, different outcome. I think temp had a part to play but we'll see i guess.

Thanks again for the info.