First Grow Week 7 from Seed.. time for defoliation?

These are my plants I popped the seeds around the second week of November. They are in soil which is a blend of organic super soil I made myself, fox farms ocean forest and coco coir. Under two SF2000 200w led lights. Room temps are around 75, humidity around 40 percent, watering them with reverse osmosis water with a tablespoon or so of organic cal mag per gallon. I added a layer of cedar mulch the other day to try and slow down the evaporation from the soil. I topped the plants and tried lsting but I think I didn’t do enough. They have a lottttt of leaves and they’re super bushy. Wondering about when I should start taking the lower leaves and branches off, I plan to flower them when they’re another 6 inches tall or so. (1-2 weeks?) let me know what you think about them

Overall for your first grow the plants look extremely healthy and happy. Since they are demonstrating a lot more indica qualities, being short and bushy the defoliation doesn't have to take place. I would wait for them to get a bit taller. Are you planning on topping them at all? I would say to wait until you're ready to flower. So let's say you let them veg for another three or four weeks. I would plan to defoliate the bottom portions of the plants a week out from flower. Once they reach the height you want, remove some of the lower branches and leaves then give them a week or so to veg and recover then flip them to flower.

They're looking great, fair play to you! If you're going to defoliate them then do an initial trim, give it a few days to recover and then do a bit more and carry on like that.

Try and only take stuff off that'll be blocking bud sites, any leaves that can be tucked under another should be instead of cut.

You're basically cutting the solar panels/power generators off your plants so do it in stages to let the newer growth catch up a bit before you take anything else off. Make sure you've got it to pretty much the desired shape etc before flipping to flower because you don't want to fuck about with them too much at that late stage.

You could also drill a few holes in the top of your pots (or something similar using pegs) and LST the outer branches.That'll open up the middle of each plant and cause less stress than trimming. Happy growing!

SomethingToDo said:

Overall for your first grow the plants look extremely healthy and happy. Since they are demonstrating a lot more indica qualities, being short and bushy the defoliation doesn't have to take place. I would wait for them to get a bit taller. Are you planning on topping them at all? I would say to wait until you're ready to flower. So let's say you let them veg for another three or four weeks. I would plan to defoliate the bottom portions of the plants a week out from flower. Once they reach the height you want, remove some of the lower branches and leaves then give them a week or so to veg and recover then flip them to flower.

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I topped them once, wasn’t sure if I should again. I think I might go with tying the higher tops down just to spread things out. Thanks for the feedback!