what are your top tips for ensuring optimal light distribution?

The highest buds do not have the highest chance of pollination! The highest buds get the most growth hormones/auxins, this is why they grow the tallest. By keeping the canopy even with LST, the growth hormones are more evenly distributed throughout the entire plant, that is why you get multiple (main) colas. Selective leaf "tucking" is my preferred method and I would certainly not advocate removing 50% of the leaves right before flowering, this is exactly when the plants energy requirements soar. I would not remove any more than 5-10% maximum, if any. Just remember........ Less leaves = less energy being made = less potential growth. Let Low Stress Training be your friend! Get her growing horizontally out, like in a fan shape, rather than straight upwards. You can keep up with LST until about the second week of flowering. Go easy on the feeding too, she is very (nitrogen) green, which can turn into a problem quite quickly and can also lead to overly leafy buds. Good luck and happy growing!

Try mainlining. Next grow obviously

Yes mate ,LST for sure also leave tucking ,pulling and bending branches to the side (you my brake some branches as you learn i did the same ) to get as much light between branches as possible .do not defoliate too much in autos causes stress .

If you want optional light levels try and keep the entire plant as even as possible and use a SCROG net when flowering. This way all the colas will be about the same height and get the same nutrition from the plant as plants will favour the highest top growth with more growing hormones and nutrients.. Topping and LST are great tools for this. Look up videos on you tube about it to get a bit better understanding of it all. I'm very visual in learning so this helped me out. Good Luck!

Defoliate 50% of your leaves off the plant 7 days before light flip. Remove leaves strategically. If a big fan leaf is laying over top a side branch growth top, take the fan leaf off. You won't hurt the plant. If you don't feel confident in doing that, you can keep the leaves but try and bend and tuck them back out of the way. Contrary to some people's insistence that light matters less than foliage (insane) light matter over anything else in terms of bud site production. If it didn't we wouldn't get whispy bottom buds that don't fill out (rolls eyes) I used to grow 7 foot plants indoors. 7 plants, 7x1000w HPS bulbs hanging between the plants, not above. No reflectors, no hoods. Bare bulb screwed into a mogul that hung from a hook in the ceiling by the wire. We used to pull 2lb per plant. The top colas were fat as a coke can. That was all because of the LIGHT. 7ft includes the 5 gal bucket so maybe 5ft plants in reality? Back in those days defoliation was absolutely taboo! The consensus was that removing the big "solar panel" leaves diminishes their ability to produce. That's bullshit outdated and debunked science. Look at the youtube channel Mr. Grow It. He has buddies that pull over 4lb out of a 5x5 tent. How the fuck people think they doing that?....... Anyways, defoliate 50%, if you want, 7 days before light flip. Believe me, you won't believe how fucking bushy they will get again. Then at day 21 of flower, you do your last selective defoliation and tucking of leaves. From there, watch em blow up with bud! Disclaimer: That advice is for Photo period plants. For Auto's.....i dunno. Auto's are stupid indoors to me so i just don't bother with them.

Hi mate, would start with leaves tucking and selective defoliation. Feel free to check my diaries to see how it worked for me🧑‍🌾 best of luck ✨🍀✨

My top tip: do nothing (apart from continuing the trellising). Branches should fight for the light in vegetative growth. But when you switch to flowering phase, during the stretch, you could do supercropping (or pinching) to even out the canopy.

Hello my friend, it is really easy. You want to bend the branches so that they all reach the same height. When you do this the plant threat all the branches as main colas. The reason for this is that the highest bud got the biggest chance on pollination in nature.