My plants are 25 days old today and I am getting them ready for their flowering cycle by doing some defoliation and some low stress training. This plant here is my single bubblegum plant and I just cut off a couple of the large fan leaves that were blocking light to all the lower branches and flowering sites.
It now looks a lot more open and the branches should be able to get a good stretch in and the smaller leaves will be able to soak up some lighting, which should increase growth and nutrients to that area. This past week I think the plants have all doubled in size and I waited until now to trim the bigger leaves off, which I think allowed them to build a nice foundation before flowering starts.
This red poison plant has seen some better days. I snapped one of the branches yesterday while I was trying to remove the super cropper on the lower branch so I could move it to a different plant. Luckily it didn't snap completely in half, so I was able to put a bandaid on it that should heal it up in the next few days and then it will be stronger than it was before, so it is actually not a bad thing that it happened.
If you look closely, you can see the spot where a branch was right below that area that I had to cut because I did the same thing about a week before and that one snapped completely in half. I have learned that mistakes like that happen, but it isn't a huge deal if it happens early enough because the plant can recover and it will divert nutrients to the remaining branches, which will increase bud production to everything else.
This red poison is doing great. I have removed all of the lower set of branches from all of my plants because I never really liked the lower buds anyways, and the branches are always really close to the dirt and get in the way while watering. It also helps to keep good air flow through the plant by removing the lower branches which helps to reduce the chance of mold or places for bugs to hide.
The last of the red poison is going to be my experimental plant. This one is a bit taller than the others, but I won't have to worry about that for much longer because the others are going to be quite taller than this one in a few days.
A couple days ago, I decided I was going to cut the main stem of this one. I am hoping that it will force the plant to create some larger buds on all of the branches because it is essentially done growing upwards through the main stem and all of the nutrients that the plant was going to feed the main stem with will be sent to the remaining branches instead. This should be a good test to see if mainlining autos is worth it or not because none of the other red poisons will be cut like this one.
Overall, I would say that my plants are doing very well and they are ready for going into flower. I am glad that I have been trying to get a lot of the training and stuff done prior to this stage, so that the plants have fully recovered from everything before going into flower. Autos are very sensitive and do not really like being stressed because they don't have as long as photos to recover from everything. So I am glad that I have figured out a way that works a lot better.
My granddaddy purple is doing great. She should be splitting off some new branches and leaves over the next few days. I can't wait to see this one really begin to take off.
