How much to trim?

maybe, if things are overlapping and causing standing water to condensate on the leaves... good airflow helps avoid microbial growth too. better to leave what you can... have a reason to remove anything... adjust over time based on results light doesn't need to hit 'buds'... it needs to hit the leaves on nodes near those buds. if the leaves don't exist, extra light on a bud doesn't help as much as most think. yes, technically even a green stem or green parts of bud material photosynthesize, but it is not as productive as light hitting the tops of leaves. significant attenuation occurs elsewhere. it is definitely not apples to apples relative to your setup and genetics growing, you'll find a certain depth is worthwhile to keep... and anythign below that... trying to improve it probably sacrifices more elsewhere in plant with less gained down below trying to get light down there... (inverse square law plays a big role in this educated guesstimate too). better to prune off the guaranteed larf, imho.. or if you cook/make concentrates it's great material for that, and maybe worthwhile to leave some proportion of it. so, i'd gain some familiarity before any major pruning.... prune a bit less.. see how that goes first.. then try a bit more... if you aren't growing the same exact clones, you will still likely see wildly variable results... it will be near impossible to determine what you are doing is 'better' or 'worse' in such a context as a small home garden. so, try to form a good baseline without using the technique, first... and testing on clones is better option too. a lot of techniques are just oversophisticated OCD-caused behaviours of hobbyists that liek to smell their own farts. there is something we ALL do that is absolutely retarded and unfounded because of all the nonsense that currently permeates this hobby. took me a year to realize flushing was retarded... LOL. There is, by volume, more bad information than good information out there on growing marijuana.... form a good baseline of basic behaviours... so you can think for yourself and judge what is useless and what is not.