new grower... flowering tips?

Hey I'm new to growing and these are my 2 plants from feminized blue dream seeds. They have been growing from seed for 42 days. I'm curious as to when I should begin flowering and any info and tips for the flowering process. I plan to prune tonight also.

Oh and they have been topped. (Which I guess is obvious)

DO NOT REMOVE FAN LEAVES!

I'm new to this so how come? I've read that removing lower growth is healthy and promotes growth where it matters.

THCBrain said:

DO NOT REMOVE FAN LEAVES!

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It's ok to take some leaves off but not fan leaves the plant will produce new fan leaves by itself if and when it needs to so if you have a fan leaf with a deficiency and it dies back the plant will produce another one or something like that I found by me removing fan leaves did nothing much for the plant it took ages to do anything now with two weeks left it's kicking out tons of new 3 bladed fan leaves all over the bottom of the plant that's not what I need I need buds to be swelling ready for chop

lanethcopeland said:

I'm new to this so how come? I've read that removing lower growth is healthy and promotes growth where it matters.

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Fan leaves are the primary energy collectors for the plant. They are effectively solar panels. Removing them reduces the amount of energy the plant can produce, resulting in slower growth. My rule of thumb is never remove a leaf by itself unless it is dead or almost dead. Try to cut undesirable lower branches that would produce poor quality popcorn bud when they are as young as possible, and cut the entire branch off from where it joins the trunk or larger branch. Don't trim anything off after you go to flower (except in mold/rot cases.)

Those plants look like they should be larger at that age.

They got stunted for a minute but I fixed the problem and they erupted after any tips tho on when to flower and the process of flowering?

lanethcopeland said:

They got stunted for a minute but I fixed the problem and they erupted after any tips tho on when to flower and the process of flowering?

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I flip to flower after the plants have filled out horizontally. If much direct light is still reaching the floor, I usually say in veg. Once the plants are large enough to fully utilize the light it's time for flower. Going to flower sooner will result in less bud, later and you will need to trim to avoid overcrowding.

Keep it simple. Don't try running a bunch of additives. If you want to experiment, and you should, keep 1 plant on just the base nutes (or your previous best nute mix), and use the second to test 1 or at most 2 changes at a time.

Make sure you have enough light, 5000-7500 lumens per square foot. Make sure you have a PPM meter and PH meter and use them... Make sure your light puts out a lot of red spectrum, but doesn't totally neglect blue and UV end spectrum.

Don't let yourself over water, wait until top is pretty dry then water well.

I have 6 2700k CFLs for it. Should I leave one of the 5700k in to give it some blue light?

lanethcopeland said:

I have 6 2700k CFLs for it. Should I leave one of the 5700k in to give it some blue light?

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Sure, or if you want to do one better, just use a single UVB 10.0 reptile bulb. It will provide some blues, but more importantly UVA and UVB to stimulate resin/tric production.

to make you feel a bit better about trimming the fan leaves...
I was trimming all my lower growth as I mainlined my very first grow with 4 clones...
it was hard to tell if I was doing it correctly as there isn't many hands on guides to mainlining clones...
long story short, every week I was removing the lower growths because I thought I was encouraging growth to my budsites.
after wandering why my plants took so fucking long to start growing I realised I was removing all my solar panel!
which resulted in a 7 week veg even from a rooted clone...
trim fan leaves nearest the bottom later on in the flower stage, not ALL the fan leaves but most of the growth WELL BELOW THE CANOPY.
I know it looks a touch ugly when your stems fill up with budsites and fan leaves especially with a clone anyway but just let them grow, the plant will love you for it and can be removed for cloning closer to the harvest date.

lanethcopeland said:

View attachment 3536938 View attachment 3536939 Hey I'm new to growing and these are my 2 plants from feminized blue dream seeds. They have been growing from seed for 42 days. I'm curious as to when I should begin flowering and any info and tips for the flowering process. I plan to prune tonight also.

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I thought true blue dream was clone only