Pruning
Marijuana Horticulture
by Jorge Cervantes
Always use clean instruments when pruning. A straight razor, single edge razor blade, a sharp pair of pruners, or a pair f scissors all work well. Sanitize clippers and blades between between cuts by dipping in rubbing alcohol. Use indoor pruners only in the indoor garden. Pruners used outdoors have everything from spider mites to fungus spores on them. If outdoor clippers must be used, dip in rubbing alcohol to sterilize before making cuts.
After pruning, the open wound invites diseases and pests. Wash your hands and tools before and after pruning. Make cuts at a 45 degree angle to discourage moisture from sitting on wounds.
Avoid pruning up to a month before inducing flowering. Since pruning diffuses floral hormones, flowering is retarded. If heavily pruned shortly before flowering, peak maturation is delayed for a week or longer. It takes a month or longer for hormones to build up to pre-pruning concentrations.
Leave leaves alone! Removal of healthy leaves hacks up a healthy pant. Removing large fan or shade leaves does not make plants more productive even though this practice supplies more light to small leaves and growing tips. Plants need all their eaves to produce the maximum amount of chlorophyll and food. Removing leaves slows chlorophyll production, stresses the plant, and stunts its growth. Stress is a growth inhibitor. Remove only dead leaves that are more than 50 percent damaged.
Remove spindly branches and growth that is not collecting light energy, including dead and dying leaves. Pruning lower branches concentrates auxins in upper branches which forces growth upwards. Cut lower branches off cleanly at the stem s no stub is left t rot and attract pests and diseases. If you must harvest a little smoke prematurely, removing a few lower branches will diminish the harvest the least.
Pruning out spindly branches and growth inside plants pens up the interior and provides more and better circulation. It also allows light to reach deeper inside plants.
Not pruning has several advantages. Floral hormones are allowed to concentrate in tips of branches causing buds t grow stronger and denser. Unpruned plants have less space to bush out laterally and tend to grow more upright. Clones are sent into flowering room after 1-30 days in the vegetative room. All little clones are packed tightly together in three gallon pots. Each one of the plants is taking up the minimum amount of marijuana. Light is much more intense, and the entire plant grows flower tops with few fan leaves.
Most successful growers do not prune at all, especially if growing a short clone crop that is only two to three feet tall. Short clone tops require no pruning to increase light to bottom leaves or to alter their profile. “No pruning” is the easiest and most productive method when growing short crops.
Pinching back or pruning tops (branch tips) causes the two growing shoots just below the cut to grow stronger and bigger. This increases the number of top or main buds. Pruning tops also diffuses floral hormones. These hormones (auxins) prevent the lateral buds from growing very fast. All lower branches develop more rapidly when the terminal bud is removed. The further a branch is from hormones at the plant tip, the less effect the auxins have.
To pinch back a branch tip, simply snip it off below the last set or two of leaves. Pinching off tender growth with your fingers helps seal the wound and is often less damaging to plants than cutting. When the main stem is pinched back, side and lower growth is stimulated. When all the tops are pinched back, lower growth is encouraged. Continually pinching back, as when taking clones from a mother, causes many more little branches t form below the pruned tips. Eventually, the plant is transformed into a hedge-like shape. Most growers do not pinch plants back, because it diminishes the yield of prime, dense tops; but it may not affect the overall weight of dried smoke.
Supercropping is a form of pinching back or pruning branch tips. We are not sure who or when the term r buzzword was coined. We do know that there are several different versions of supercropping “invented” by innovative growers.
Supercropping can also incorporate FIM pruning which is explained below. It can be combined with bending, too. Some people go to the point of mutilating plants by breaking branches a few inches below main buds. Removing healthy leaves so that “budding sites get more light” is also practiced by some supercroppers.
Pruning all the branches or removing more than 20 percent of the foliage in a short time frame stresses plants too much and diminishes harvest. But if taking clones, some growers effectively prune a mother down to stubby branches and let her recuperate for a month or longer.
Pruning to much over time may alter hormonal concentrations, causing spindly growth. This is often the case with mother plants that provide too many clones. The mother must rest and and gain girth, because small, spindly branches root poorly.
Remove all but the four main branches. The meristem (central stem) is removed just above the four lowest (main) branches. Removing the central leader concentrates the floral hormones in the four remaining branches. Fewer branches are stronger and bear a larger quantity of dense, heavy flower tops. Remove the stem above the fur main branches; do not remove leaves on the main branches. Select plants with three sets of branch nodes about six weeks old, and pinch or prune out the last set of nodes so that two sets of branches remain. Move plants into the flowering room when they are about 12 inches tall. Skunk #1 and similarly robust bloomers should be set in the flowering room when about six to eight inches tall.
The FIM Technique was coined by an anonymous High Times reader from South Carolina in the July 2000 issue of the magazine. The technique became legendary, ever since the grower wrote: “this pruning technique could revolutionize indoor gardening.” The South Carolina grower tried to pinch the tip of a plant and said “Fuck, I Missed!” when he did not remove the entire bud and coined the acronym FIM.