Larry Bird Kush (aka Gelato 33) Zamnesia

Week 12, concluding the third week of flowering: Hi(gh) Guys, The third week now also on the counter, seven more weeks to go. Earlier, and probably because all of the defoliation, it was difficult to see the difference on the pictures. Now the plants had some time to recover and continue growing. The differences are easy to see on the pictures, but to make it even better visible, last Friday (11-10) I’d removed the middle two plants and made some pictures. To summarize the differences; Plants recover much faster from any training and show much more abundant growth, best seen by the lower popcorn-buds on the (+Gz)-side. Here the leaves grow much faster, resulting in a much denser canopy. The bud sites are thicker, containing much more white hairs, producing more resin and smelling much stronger than the non-(+Gz)-side. And it also shows on the pictures now! To conclude into this: plants are much better off with the Green Buzz Liquids Growzyme brown algae-extract. What was also interesting this week, a local homegrow website posted an article about defoliating stating the best window to start with it is about 4 weeks into flowering, and should be done in its entirety in one shaving. My method actually is a bit different, the stretching of the branches continues up until the third week of flowering, but can be slowed down earlier by cutting the big fan-leave that goes together with it. This way you can actually focus the plants priority onto growing bud earlier this way, by cutting leaves at the right moment. So the title of the article stated the possibility to harvest 30% more this way, only they told later that this technique doesn’t combine well with other techniques like topping and pinching the lower buds. Again I think I must disagree because every right timed technique can be combined, as long as you apply techniques dosed so that you don’t retard to much or stun the plant altogether. The other benefits from defoliating are improvement of light penetration into the canopy, what also combines well together with the mainline-adapters, because they ensure you can always pick one plant at the time out of tent and work on it. Improving this also sees to it that you can put much more plants inside a small area, and maintaining an even canopy. Also less leave to trap the water vapor, allowing fresh air and Co2 to ventilate through the canopy and thus stimulating the production of trichomes and reducing the chance of mold and rot. I’m happy that I can now sit a little bit more back, not having to work so much on the plants anymore. At the end of week 5 I’m going to start a new minor round up (3x Spliff’s Gold Bar Kush), then again three weeks later I’ll start another major project. This time I’d decided to grow 9x Hempire Seeds - Nicole’s Kush. Both photoperiod strains. So busy-busy! I’m looking forward to see you back and check on the Larry Bird’s progress next week! Grtz, Budcrack ;-)