shocking a plant by trimming...

Will trimming water leaves shock a plant into hermaphrodism, or is it only when you do something more serious, such as repotting or messing with the light schedule?

thanks in advance for all replies..

I currently started a micro grow and the pattern that I'm seeing is that the original leaves on the main stem seem to break off as the branch progresses, so i wait till the branch is around an inch long and i wack the leaves hoping the light will conentrate growth. So far the plant hasn't slowed down at all, in fact it seemed to like it!

Ya know, anything out of the norm could stress a plant and cause side effects. I am not against a little trimming here and there, but for the most part I just let them go. When I do trim, I dont tell anyone on here because most ppl freak out and talk negative.
If you are trimming just to be trimming then dont do it.

i tend to not trim unless something is dry, brittle, and practically dead

I trimmed the hell outta my plants few weeks back. They seem to be allright. I'm going to repot them and they are 4 weeks into flowering. Let's hope they don't feel like turning hermie. They're feminized so idk if they turn hermie, i'm going to have to kill myself literally... lol o/j

dont trim any big leaves unless they are dead. They make food for the buds.
Messing with the light schedule or light leaks is the #1 cause of hermies of all time indoors

Bear*rack Olama said:

dont trim any big leaves unless they are dead. They make food for the buds.
Messing with the light schedule or light leaks is the #1 cause of hermies of all time indoors

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What number would you give repotting while flowering. I've heard of people's plants turning hermie coz they transplanted during flowering.

kash959 said:

What number would you give repotting while flowering. I've heard of people's plants turning hermie coz they transplanted during flowering.

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I often transplant my plants in flowering...Never has cause a hermie by that alone so far. Always has something to do with genes or light leaks in all of my encounters....
Be careful and dont tear up the root ball. If its too hard to keep from ripping soak the soil and then slide the plant out into a bucket of water and move up and down repeatedly till the soil removes from the roots and you can then repot it easily.

Bear*rack Olama said:

I often transplant my plants in flowering...Never has cause a hermie by that alone so far. Always has something to do with genes or light leaks in all of my encounters....
Be careful and dont tear up the root ball. If its too hard to keep from ripping soak the soil and then slide the plant out into a bucket of water and move up and down repeatedly till the soil removes from the roots and you can then repot it easily.

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What's the furthest into flowering you've repotted them? Mine are in week 4 but the soil arrives sometimes during week 5 or maybe later ...
I had an incident with one of my young plants that half of the rootball broke apart and majorly stressed the plant so this time i'll probably do it like upside down if you get what i mean. I can get the rootbal out of the pot, but i don't wana take any risks of it breaking... coz after what happened to my other plant, it looked realy stressed and unhappy.

is repotting always wrong casue of tearing roots? I have 3 girls in rockwool that are too big for their pots. I need to repot. This wont mess up their roots really, i will just add a biger pots with more tockwool, no damgae to roots at all.


Will ths hermie the plant. I think it needs more rockwool as its leaves are drooping ans it ned more time in flood to get heavy.

if youre worried about ripping roots....

just cut the bottom of the existing pot off...place the entire smaller bottomless pot into the larger one with new dirt...your roots will continue to grow downward into the new soil and you dont have to worry about stressing your gal

good post funkdoc, never heard of that trick and never would have thought of that either

a little bit of pruning is fine. just do it in moderation maybe once every couple weeks. often it will help airflow and temperatures if you are growing in a confined space and have a full canopy

Actually, scratched what i said earlier. I was thinking about how i trimmed a lot on every plant that i had coz the bottom area wasn't really getting much light, and now that i think back, i think that migh explain why it took atleast 2 weeks to show any pistils when i began flowering. Usually, i see pistils within the second week but after 2 to 2.5 weeks it began so def some slowing down. But the plants are doing fine now... It didn't turn em hermie or anythin which is a good sign. hope that helps

trimming, like "many" things, could cause stress. accidently bumping into a plant could cause some stress. plants in the outdoors encounter stress probably every day. it's not something you really need to worry about that much if you have good gens. femmed beans will have a tendency to herm easier than a stable non-femmed bean. i always do a lot of trimming. as long as you don't do too much at the same time, it's fine. i'll trim a good 6-8 leaves/small branches a day over about a 3 day period. if they need it again in a week or too i'll do the same thing. you don't need to worry much about roots breaking off when transplanting either. i transplant, and break off big chunks of roots and the plants do just fine. the worst that usually happens is they droop a little while. they usually recover the same day. think about keeping a mother plant. those need re-potting on occasion. there's a whole shit load of roots getting whacked, and the mothers do fine.

Ok, great replies to everyone.. Thank you so much, YOu have all given me some things to think about. For all the people repotting, what I do is start with the clones in rockwool, or vermiculite, or whatever, and tehn, when they take root, either in the tray, or in 1 quart containers (the little ones), I transfer to 5 gallon bags ONCE. Thats it. They are fine from veg, all the way till the end of flower, no more shock or stress. Also, I trim water leaves from the bottom up. Usually when they get big with the purple stripe, I whack em off, so the ones above do the work. I know they make food for the plant, and they also draw water up from the roots, so I figure if I whack off the bottom ones and leave the top ones, more water will go to the top of the plant. I could be wrong, but the last ones seemed to do well...

hangshai said:

Ok, great replies to everyone.. Thank you so much, YOu have all given me some things to think about. For all the people repotting, what I do is start with the clones in rockwool, or vermiculite, or whatever, and tehn, when they take root, either in the tray, or in 1 quart containers (the little ones), I transfer to 5 gallon bags ONCE. Thats it. They are fine from veg, all the way till the end of flower, no more shock or stress. Also, I trim water leaves from the bottom up. Usually when they get big with the purple stripe, I whack em off, so the ones above do the work. I know they make food for the plant, and they also draw water up from the roots, so I figure if I whack off the bottom ones and leave the top ones, more water will go to the top of the plant. I could be wrong, but the last ones seemed to do well...

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plants being root bound is a myth. You should never HAVE to transplant a plant if you feed it right.
The purple stripe you just described in your fan leaves (i believed you called them water leaves?) is a Phosphorous deficiency. They arent getting the nutes that they need to preform to their maximum potential.

Bear*rack Olama said:

plants being root bound is a myth. You should never HAVE to transplant a plant if you feed it right.
The purple stripe you just described in your fan leaves (i believed you called them water leaves?) is a Phosphorous deficiency. They arent getting the nutes that they need to preform to their maximum potential.

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i agree. as long as all nutritional needs are met, the plant will do fine. limiting root growth just restricts the plants growth, it doesn't harm it. if it did, i guess there wouldn't be such a thing as sog.

Silky Shagsalot said:

i agree. as long as all nutritional needs are met, the plant will do fine. limiting root growth just restricts the plants growth, it doesn't harm it. if it did, i guess there wouldn't be such a thing as sog.

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Pot size, root size or anything else does not limit the plants growth.
Roots are their effects on plants is simple to understand...
Roots are grown by the plant to find nutrients. They will keep reaching out even if they find those nutrients, no matter what. If you have a smaller pot it restricts the roots from reaching out, How would that prevent them from uptaking the amounts of nutrients that they normally could?
A) It doesnt. The roots still do their job even though there is less of them there.

This picture(not mine used to explain) is a sog grow, But youll notice how much taller the plants are where most sog grows are done from the time that the plants root.
Plant size has Nothing to do with root size, but rather root efficiency.
If you feed plants right, and your roots are efficent as they should be. Yields will NEVER be hurt.

I don't understand Obama and the others. I understand the concept of there being enough roots to absorb the nutrients if there is enough nutrients... I've always read how rootbound plants go sickly and stuff. Can you explain some techniques that are used to keep the plants happy in small containers e.g the ones in the pic. Sounds like i can save a lot of soil money and the labour. Also, have you yourself grown in small containers with success?