Prunning during flowering

Im in my 3rd week of flowering, the bottom branches dont get enough light and thus arnt producing much growth or bud development. should i cut them to allow more energy to be diverted to the healthy one or just leave them. will cutting them now cause hormone problems.

it is really up to your best judgement, but I have always been told not to do any pruning once you are flowering. i think at that point yes, you will mess with the hormones too much and although you think you might help divert energy up to the stronger buds, the change in hormones may very well counteract that extra energy. just learn from it and trim more thoroughly next time in the vegetative process, preferably a week or so before you start flowering.

thanks for the input.

CaliKush84 said:

Im in my 3rd week of flowering, the bottom branches dont get enough light and thus arnt producing much growth or bud development. should i cut them to allow more energy to be diverted to the healthy one or just leave them. will cutting them now cause hormone problems.

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It would be a good thing to take some cuttings and make some clones for your next batch.

It's not going to hurt your plants.

Yeah, I see people on both sides of this fence. There's a chunk of us who basically do all our manipulation in veg and when it comes to flower we mostly just stay hands off and let them do their thing. The other chunk will trim fan leaves and branches that are obscuring lower tops where they believe decent buds could grow with better light. Both camps claim to have quite good results, and can list well founded reasons why they are correct. I personally think it's one of those things that has benefits and drawbacks, and they probably come close to canceling each other out (basically sacrificing light absorbing area on one stalk to improve light absorbing area on another).

ya thats seems to be the case, was looking into defoliation, went i lil long on veg and now their really dense with foliage and kinda overwhelmed.

bend the leaves to allow more light to seep in. I constantly bend fan leaves down to allow more light down to the lower areas. But ive done both ways. I use to prune alot and i remember that some of the strains were very fluffy buds. but some were nice and dense. So i would say its strain sensitive. I remember the maui was fluffy but the purp kush loved to be trimmed. and had the biggest buds.