Third week of flowering - Do I prune some more?

[Old Salt]

The Details:
Strain: CKS Crown Royale (70% Indica)
# of Plants: 4 (approx 8 colas / plant)
Grow Type: Coco Cuir
Grow Stage: Flowering (Day 103 of Grow / Day 20 of Flowering)
Grow Cage Size: 3.8 US gal / 14.5l (1" [2.5cm] cage mesh / 2" [5cm] screen mesh)
Lights: (300W Actual) King X6 Dimmable 1800W COB LED Grow Light
Nutrients:

• General Hydronponics at 25% label strength
• Flora Trio + CaliMagic, Floralicious Plus, Liquid KoolBloom

Medium: 70% Coco Cuir 30% Perlite
PPM: 560
PH: 6.0 ± 0.07
RH: 60% to 70%
Solution Temperature: 19°C /' 66.2°F
Tent Temperature: 70 to 84
Tent Size: 8sq ft (2' x 4' x 5' / 120cm x 60cm x 150cm)
Pests: None Known

Images:

Day 103 of Grow / Day 20 of Flowering

Day 103 of Grow / Day 20 of Flowering (Top View)​

Questions:

• Should I trim out some of the fan leaves? If so, roughly what percentage of them should go?
• How is my internode spacing? Would more light tighten them up?

 

[Shawnyboy]

The Details:
Strain: CKS Crown Royale (70% Indica)
# of Plants: 4 (approx 8 colas / plant)
Grow Type: Coco Cuir
Grow Stage: Flowering (Day 103 of Grow / Day 20 of Flowering)
Grow Cage Size: 3.8 US gal / 14.5l (1" [2.5cm] cage mesh / 2" [5cm] screen mesh)
Lights: (300W Actual) King X6 Dimmable 1800W COB LED Grow Light
Nutrients:

• General Hydronponics at 25% label strength
• Flora Trio + CaliMagic, Floralicious Plus, Liquid KoolBloom

Medium: 70% Coco Cuir 30% Perlite
PPM: 560
PH: 6.0 ± 0.07
RH: 60% to 70%
Solution Temperature: 19°C /' 66.2°F
Tent Temperature: 70 to 84
Tent Size: 8sq ft (2' x 4' x 5' / 120cm x 60cm x 150cm)
Pests: None Known

Images:

Day 103 of Grow / Day 20 of Flowering

Day 103 of Grow / Day 20 of Flowering (Top View)​

Questions:

• Should I trim out some of the fan leaves? If so, roughly what percentage of them should go?
• How is my internode spacing? Would more light tighten them up?

Is that a scrog? You got quite a bit of stretch

 

[Old Salt]

Is that a scrog? You got quite a bit of stretch

It wasn't supposed to be. I can raise and lower the screen. It was meant as a grow-through to provide support for the colas. Some of the colas are too low to raise it up.

 

[Shawnyboy]

It wasn't supposed to be. I can raise and lower the screen. It was meant as a grow-through to provide support for the colas. Some of the colas are too low to raise it up.

Oh alright. Your canopy is a little uneven. So the taller stuff is robbing light from the shorter ones. If you can tie down your taller ones to get a nice flat canopy. Optimal for light. You can defoliate some to allow for deeper light penetration. Just don't go crazy, a little at a time. Don't wanna shock the plants and slow down bud development. After I defoliate I give them a little superthrive

 

[vyserage]

I have found great results in heavily defoliate on day 21 of flower, then after a few days just clip off fan leaves that are blocking light, here and there. Like a leaf or 2 per plant every couple of days. What's most important at flowering point is getting light as far down as u can. This trick made my 'experimental' plant give 20 more grams, now I'm applying this trick to all 6 plants this grow. If you can get away with bending the fan leaf under/around, even better but if it keeps falling back into place and blocking light for nodes below it, might as well chop it! You can also just cut fingers off of the fan leaf to allow light through the missing fingers.

Also, dont be afraid to bend the shit out of all the tall cola's to bring them down to the same level as your lowest cola's! This is a smart thing to do as then you can lower your light closer to the canopy for an even light bath. I just bent 3 of my plants cola's down below my other 3 plants (3 of my plants are more stretch strain vs the other 3 that are smaller bush strain so i had no choice if i wanted an even canopy). Here is a picture, but i say i 'bent' them but thats not really the case, i actually just pulled the nodes completely downwards and tied them, you can bend or tie but i prefer to now tie if i can get away with it as its no stress to your plant (as far as i know) vs bending that most definitely stresses your plant and it needs a day or 2 of recovery, or something like that lol. Doing so also gives your lower nodes the time they need to come up to the top of canopy and become big bud!

In this pic below, its for comparison to show you how much taller this plant in the middle front is compared to the the ones on the side of it that are clearly smaller. BTW i have 6 cola's per plant by topping twice and keeping the stem's directly below what i topped so i have 2 natural cola's and 4 cola's from topping.

See on this one below how i just grabbed the entire cola and pulled it down then tied some garden string to the 3gal pot? Easy peazy, you can even see some of its nodes that i had to bend off to the side else they would be taller than the rest of plant.

EDIT: this is 1 day later exactly, as you can see they are already perking back upwards and are gonna continue to grow upwards while also letting the lower nodes catch up, yay for top canopy bud :3 After the 3 week stretch ill also go in and clip off any very tiny nodes that i know wont ever reach up to the top or atleast near the top, these are known as 'suckers' because they steal nutrients that could otherwise be going to top canopy buds and they only ever amount to 'popcorn' bud (tiny buds).

1 day later:

I hope this helps you with idea's or figuring out what you want to do/how to do it. My plants are now on day 52 of VEG. I'll be defoliating them somewhat heavily tomorrow (day 53 so it has until day 60 to recover/bush back up a bit before flower begins, then 21 days into flower and ill go and heavily defoliate once more, from that point onwards ill just clip leaf's every day or every other day so that light is always or mostly hitting majority of my nodes.

 

[KingJoe83]

Try to make sure that that middle is open you want all new bud growth branches to hit light .

Also once stretch is over you can rose lights a bit higher this will help with coverage and help make this bottom
Buds even as tops there is a science behind this I found out the other day . Defoil here and there or big defoil after stretch I always think. I want my Fans on there too sgrech is done those leafs are what gives you plants power to grow .

It's about the right leaves . Don't go to crazy it really is also depends on the plant itself to begin with too.

Hope that helps

 

[vyserage]

Kingjoe83 is 100% right about the middle being open, i did this with all 6 of my plants and light shines through like a boss. I heavily defoliate twice in veg as well as occasional clip leafs blocking light in the middle of plant. For example ill cut off most of the fan leaf's hanging in middle of plant so that light has NO PROBLEM shining to all lower nodes and the little nodes will shift inwards sometimes too since a lot of light penetrates down middle. Dont clip off the very top fan leafs of your cola's, tuck them instead or tuck & tie with string to force it to stay somewhere. You want your top canopy to grow strong and it needs its fan leafs. you can see perfect example on pic #2 from the top of my pics. The rest of my plants are so bushy right now but over a week ago they werent this bushy! Thats ok tho, the extra leaf's from time to time in veg im sure help power it through growing faster.

EDIT: Here is a perfect guide, i followed much of this with a single plant on my first grow (the heavy defoliation) and thats how i got my increase of 20grams (3/4 plants 50-55g, with the 4th one being my experimental that got 74g)
Nebula's Flowering Defoliation Tutorial (Secret to Bigger Yields) | Grow Weed Easy

 

[Old Salt]

After some pruning...

Day 105 of Grow / Day 22 of Flowering

Day 105 of Grow / Day 22 of Flowering (Top View)​

These are taken under the grow light. Usually I take picture under a T5, a few minutes before it comes on. I cleared it out under the screen, and removed about 10% of the fan leaves above it. I'll take some more in a day or two.

The difference between the left and right sides is due to testing out different feed schedules. I went to 1/2l at 25% strength twice a day for all plants ten days ago. Prior to that I was alternating feed at 50% strength and water.

I'm making mistakes by the numbers, but it's all good. No one, and no attempt is useless. You can use them as bad examples.

 

[vyserage]

From here on all you have to do is bend all the tall ones down towards the lowest ones (this can be done all at once or a few a day for less stress on plant, i prefer to just do it all at once because the longer you wait, the harder it is to do). Plus remove light blocking fan leaf's daily or every other day and you're set from here! What you're aiming for is as close to perfect a canopy you can get so u can lower your lights down closer and get that light nice and even across all of them.

Also dont be afraid to bend as much as you need! I've seen some people bending so many times on each cola to force it down to an even canopy.

I have yet to use the scrog method (the netting you have down below) but i can easily see how it would help (its basically just like bending for an even canopy except you're just pushing nodes/cola's further out underneath the net to use up all the space u can while guaranteeing a perfect canopy AND no stress to plant, win win)