Amazing setup you got going on, I'm planning a scrog setup again for my cookies kush. Do you get more yield lollipoping them? I did it once but I didn't get good results but I had a bunch of other issues so I don't really know how it affects the yield. Seeing your pineapple chunk and the time she is in I must say I burnt my buds a little :/
@Lou_Grows, I'm far from an expert but here's the way I approach it. Indeed, when you flip them, get rid of anything you think doesn't look good at the bottom 1/3rd of the plant. I'm not so good at predicting which branches will grow to what extent, so I err on the side of safety. Then the plant can stretch for a while and start to produce the flowers. Secondly, there is a stage when your main tops are getting a reasonable amout of pistil hairs, let's say around the start of week 3 of flower, just before the budset really begins. At this point I'll take out anything that looks like shit compared to the main tops. You've seen it, weak branches with about 40% the number of hairs of the main tops. intuitively you know they will produce almost nothing.
I also continually take off the tiny buds that keeps growing at the bottom, to keep them at bay. I don't defoliate much and bud stems will always try to from at the internode So it's really just a continuous process with 2 slightly more aggressive prunings, 1 at the start of flower and another before the real budding begins. the rest is just taking stuff away that just won't become nice in the end. 😊
Some people say it's best to do pruning in one event because it would stress the plant. I think this is wise advice if you are removing significant portions of the plant. I don't notice any negative effects from my minor pruning
@chronicthehemphog, Good question! I think you will get a different answer from everyone... I personally found a lot of drawbacks - you can't move plants or lift pots. I could not reach the ones in the back properly. it seems harder to provide everything with fresh moving air. To name a few.
If a scrog can do it, you can do it with LST (yeah, with a lot more work). I'd rather tie a rope around the pots and LST to that, or put some bamboo sticks in the medium to LST branches to.
For me being able to lift pots and move plants is just essential. I don't always water in my tent. when I'm flushing with lots of water I like to be able to take them out. And that's the time when they're most entangled in the scrog. I also want to 360 a plant and do any necessary trimming. If spider mites happened in the back of my tent I probably would not have found out until it was too late. Collecting the runoff water is such a pain in the ass if your plants are on the ground which my tent height forces me to...
So I did not like it but there are those who swear by it. 😊
I might do a scrog again if I had access from all sides & could put the pot on a table for easier watering. I'd do a single plant in a big container instead of multiple plants.
@chronicthehemphog, No that is not necessary 😊 I do/did it for 2 reasons, 1 is I don't care much about the small buds that form there and prefer the energy in the tops, 2 is for better air movement & less leaf mass for pests etc. E.g. overlapping leaves which are not moving tend to get mildew for me. This scrog was more like a half a scrog and half a support net because I started using it quite late.
@Skunkman, Thanks, it's been great! It was barely scrogged and pretty much all the branching and canopy was from topping at the 5th node. The leaves are so huge and from the beginning of flower it was clear that this was going to be a yielder. These nugs are just so fat, round and dense. I wish I had a clone alive of this plant, although I have not smoked it yet.
If there is a next time I would defoliate it loads when going to flower in a room like mine. Its many big overlapping leaves are an invitation for mildew and stuff. The pineapple plant can make very very long stems for its leaves, so they are always sticking out everywhere. It can easily steal light from other plants.
@Welovephattrees420uk, Cheers, should have gotten some better pictures haha! This was a really great result despite the mildew. My favorite grow so far