Has it come the time to prune your marijuana plant and you are not sure how to do it? 🙄 Don’t you know if it is the perfect time for pruning cannabis? When is the best time to prune? Don’t worry, no one is born knowing, and luckily this is not difficult to learn and your trusted Growshop will explain it to you.
Pruning of the marijuana is done to gain production, usually many varieties tend to create a large central bud if they are allowed to grow and bloom in their own way. However pruned cannabis can make better use of the distribution of light between all the parts of the plant, producing more buds shaped in secondary branches and even lower and where to buy bud peelers.
At this article we will see when and how marijuana should be pruned to get an extra weight in the harvest, starting by seeing the different forms of pruning and their advantages:
🧐 Types of Cannabis Pruning
- Apical pruning (upper parts of the plant)
- FIM pruning (upper parts of the plant)
- Pruning of lower parts or Lollipop (lower parts of the plant)
- Root pruning (root zone)
It is necessary to distinguish between prunings that are carried out in the upper parts of the plants and the others. Before we start with it, we have to understand the way the cells responsible for plant growth work, the Auxins, which are always located in the upper sprouts, and once we cut these sprouts these cells move to the next higher parts of the plants. This means that when cannabis is pruned we encourage growth in the other higher parts of the plant.
👾 Apical pruning of cannabis, how is it done?
What is apical pruning? It is the most common technique of pruning cannabis, and doing it is very easy, just cut the top bud at the level of the last knot. This way instead of having a single main end we will have 2, if we do 2 apical pruning we will have 4 main ends, and as many times as we want while we are in the growth period, once in flowering is no longer recommended to make any pruning in the upper parts.
When to start pruning cannabis?
If you want to start as soon as possible, wait at least until the plant has formed 4 knots, that is, 4 pairs of normal leaves, not counting the cotyledons. To continue pruning the marijuana it is necessary to wait to the following main branches begin to grow with strength, when you see that these already have other secondary branches. To go deeper into this method of improving production, I recommend you to read this article that specifically talks about the apical pruning of cannabis step by step.
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🎯 FIM pruning in a Cannabis plant
This technique was discovered by chance, F.I.M. is the acronym for “Fuck i missed”, and is what happened to an American grower when he tried to make apical pruning to his marijuana plants. Later he discovered that what seemed to be a mistake had become a great success, since in the bud he had cut began to grow several new branches.
How and when is FIM pruning done?
To do the apical pruning we cut the bud at the height of the last knot, in this case it is necessary to leave between 10% and 20% of the bud. This way the growth is slowed down a bit in that moment, but later the lost time is recovered, since instead of a tip, in that bud will grow 3, 5 or even more shoots.
If we are pruning cannabis to get the maximum weight in harvest, the ideal way is to try FIM pruning at all branches of every cannabis plant, do not be afraid if it is your first time and you are not sure you can get the ideal shoot size to succeed. But, what happens if I do wrong FIM pruning? Well, it depends, if you leave more than 20% of the bud in the cut the most likely is that this same bud continues to grow the same way but with the main leaves cut. If on the other hand you cut more and leave less than 10% you will be doing the typical apical pruning, so don’t be afraid, if you don’t do the FIM correctly nothing bad will happen either.
🔥 Low pruning or Lollipop technique
This method of cannabis pruning has several advantages, on one hand we clean the lower parts of the plant, where the light does not arrive well and surely they are going to produce little or nothing, consuming energy and resources that will take advantage better for buds of the higher parts, where the light arrives well.
In indoor crops we also get more ventilation, because by clearing the low areas the air runs better through those parts, avoiding the dangerous bags of moisture that can end up forming fungi that ruin our harvest.
How do I do Low Pruning?
With help of a cutter or a pair of scissors, cut all the leaves and sprouts where there is no light. We will leave the stems clean from the flowerpot until the height where buds begin to be well formed.
If you grow with the “Screen of green” method you can cut everything that is below the net, if you do “Sea of green” the ideal is that you leave only the main tip of each plant, and if you do not use any optimization technique you can use the depth of focus, where you see that the light does not reach you can prune it. Cutting the leaves of cannabis plants is not ideal in many cases, they are like solar panels that catch the light to transform it into energy, they are also the nutrient reserve and, when the substrate does not have the necessary, plants eat those resources. But in this case cutting leaves and sprouts of cannabis is positive, because if the light does not arrive, they subtract more than they add.
When to cut high leaves of cannabis?
First of all you should never cut the healthy leaves of the high parts of the plants, except when these cover excessively the light to other plants. The leaves that are attached to the buds should never be removed, but the large ones in medium height can be cut in the case mentioned above.
🚀 Pruning of Marijuana Roots
The 3 previous pruning techniques are done to gain production at harvest, but root pruning is done more as maintenance. In a normal crop, when the plant grows and the pot becomes small we normally transplant and solve the problem. This cannot always be done with mother plants, especially with “bonsai mothers“, which we try to keep in small pots so that we can have more varieties in less space. In this case what is usually done is a pruning of roots of cannabis plants and being able to use the same pot for a longer time.
How do I prune roots?
First you have to take the plant with its root ball out of the pot. Then, with the help of a cutter, a saw or a knife, we cut a part of the perimeter of the root ball, if it was in a 15 x 15 pot we can remove 3 or 4 centimeters from each side, as you can see in the image below.
Once we have pruned the root ball we add new soil to the pot, put the plant in, and fill the space with more new nutrient-rich substrate. This way the mother plant creates new roots again, gaining health and vigour until it has again space problems, at which point we will prune the roots back again to our cannabis plant.
⭐ Can I prune autoflowering plants?
The answer is yes, how can you do it, but it’s really not very interesting, because the plant loses some time in recovering the growth rate after a pruning, the time that auxins need to relocate in the plant. Autoflowering plants have such a fast growth cycle that rather than taking advantage of pruning to produce more, you can lose production because of lost development time.
If you want to prune automatic plants for height reasons, in this case you can do apical pruning or FIM, to encourage lateral growth compared to vertical.
✨ Pruning in outdoor crops
Indoors pruning makes more sense than outdoors, this is because indoors the light is fixed above, however outdoors the sun moves, and distributes the light much better to every part of the plants. But that does not mean that pruning in outdoor cultivation is not good, as it can also help to increase yields.
The most productive plants outdoors are those that have the shape of bushes, as round as possible, for which many prunings are needed, first the main tip, after a few days the secondary branches should be pruned, then the following ones, and continue so until plants get the pre-flowers, when we stop pruning the upper parts. Then the lower parts can be cleaned and so when the plant focuses on flowering it will be as ready as possible.
Can all types cannabis seeds be pruned?
All varieties can be pruned, but there are some that are more likely than others. Sativas or hybrids with sativa dominance are the best because they tend to branch out more than Indicas. In fact there are cannabis indica that do not really benefit from pruning, they perform better without pruning because they are very columnar and compact, and they concentrate most of the production in the main tip.
– Sea of Green Growing Method (SOG)
– Growing marijuana with the SCROG method
– How to make a marijuana Bonsai
-Cannabis seed
⛳ Tips and tricks for pruning cannabis
It is advisable to use a healing product to treat the newly pruned plants. When we cut the stem of the marijuana we are opening a way of access for fungi and other illnesses, so if we cover it we avoid future problems.
Aerial pruning is always done during the vegetative growth phase, both apical pruning and FIM. This is because marijuana creates new shoots during this cycle, but once the flowering begins it stops forming them to focus on creating flowers.
Pruning cannabis during flowering
If you don’t have more options and you are wondering how to prune in bloom, you have to know that the production is not going to improve anymore, but if it is due to space problems and there is no other option than pruning, you can do it
However low pruning can be done during flowering, the best option is to do it just before changing the cycle, but in this case there is no problem if it is done during the flowering phase.
Can I increase production without pruning?
Sure, there are techniques to contain the size of the plants and at the same time get more parts exposed to light. The best way is the L.S.T., which means “Low stress training”, which is something like shaping the plant to your preference without damaging it. What does this method consist of?
It is about folding the tip and the branches to leave them in horizontal position, tie them to the flowerpot with care, and the shoots of these branches and the tip grow vertically in a homogeneous way, taking better advantage of all the space without having to cut anything.
Another good way is Super Cropping, which means crushing the stem carefully, at a distance between 10 and 20 centimeters from the main tip, and bending the tip to approximately 90 degrees, so that it is perpendicular to the focus.
After a few days, when the secondary branches have grown quite a bit, the operation is repeated with these, in order to try to keep all the main branches horizontal, and more or less at the same height.
Do you know any other way to prune cannabis plants? If so, tell us, and if you think this article is interesting please do us a favor and share it.🤨👉
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Can I FIM and do a little loly popping at the same time or do I need to wait two weeks to try and prune some of the low light leaves after pruning?
Hello Josh,
It is preferable to wait 15 days before the growth stage to start pruning.
Regards.