If you leave your marijuana plants untrimmed, most of them grow into a Christmas tree shape.
If you’re growing marijuana outdoors, this isn’t a terrible problem, because side branches radiate in an equal symmetry from the main stalk, and they all get a decent amount of light…at least on the top side of each branch as far in as the sun can penetrate.
When you’re growing cannabis indoors, you have height restrictions.
You might have an 8-10 foot ceiling. Using HID (which is still the only hydroponics lighting firepower that can give you massive harvests of full-size plants), you have to keep your plants at least 12 if not 24 inches away from your light reflectors.
So you really don’t have much more than about six feet of vertical space. That’s just one reason it’s good to trim marijuana plants so they develop into bushier, denser plants.
Trimming give you more branching, a rounder canopy, and the potential for turning side branches into a cluster of main branches.
In general, as long as your cannabis plants have ample root space, ideal grow room conditions, and the right hydroponics nutrients, when you do a trim you create heavier yields.
Trimming is also used to remove extraneous sucker branches and stalks that are buried in the canopy and would never get enough light to yield good buds.
Extraneous branches suck down nutrients, block air flow, and decrease light penetration.
You can read more about trimming cannabis plants in this other good article, but the main things to remember are you don’t want to trim or prune more than a week into bloom phase, you want to use clean, sharp pruning/trimming tools, and you want to pre-visualize the results so you make the right cuts in the right places.
The easiest way to trim is to do it when your clones or seedlings are about four weeks into grow phase and then you take the topmost leafset and cut off just below it.
If your plant has one main stem that is growing way above side branches, cut it off so it’s equal in height to the side branches, just below a leafset node.
More experienced cannabis growers might do more than one trim.
For example, they might to an initial topping at 3 weeks, wait to see how the cannabis plants form out, and then do more topping just before the plants are flipped to 12-12 lighting.
When you trim, you want to feed your crops B-52 stress-relieving vitamins, and a potent rich base nutrients formula such as Sensi Grow pH Perfect so your plants get the nutrition they need to handle being trimmed and to create two branching leafsets at the point where you cut one leafset off.
Always remember that what you’re doing when you top is to create a doubling effect.
So be careful how many sites yu top because if you top too much on a cannabis plant, you’ll create a gangly mess of branches that you’re going to have to support with netting or stakes.
Trimming and pruning are sweet techniques for increasing your marijuana yields, and as you become a more experienced marijuana grower, you’ll see how trimmed plants give you more weight than untrimmed plants.
