In this Alchimia video tutorial we show you how to perform lollipop pruning on the lower parts of your home-grown cannabis plants.
By using this simple technique before switching our plants to flowering, we facilitate light penetration, avoid possible pests and infections and increase productivity… by pruning lower branches we can create the ideal environment for maximum performance.
Alchimia Growing Happiness
Today we’re going to see what lollipop pruning is for and how it’s done…
We’re in our grow tent, we have this density of plants, we are finishing off the vegetative stage, and before switching the min to flowering we’re going to prune the lower parts. Dani, what is the point of pruning the lower branches?
Dani- Well, several things, and although they are simple, what they are going to do is make our work much easier. The penetration of light to the lower branches decreases considerably with respect to the upper part of the plants, which means less productivity, so we remove them. And in addition, the lower leaves will divert energy from the upper floral tips, so we’ll eliminate them which means we can irrigate more easily and we will also avoid possible pests and infections.
Auxins are hormones that are responsible for directing growth.
They can be manipulated via pruning.
The natural growth tendency of auxins is vertically...
Always from bottom towards the top to then be distributed to the rest of side branches.
With lollipop pruning we concentrate most of them at the top of the plant.
We’re going to take a couple of plants and see how this lollipop pruning is done… we’re going to work with a couple of plants from Philosopher Seeds. What are they?
Dani- The one on the left is "Purple Punch x DoSiDos" and the one on the right is an "Early Gorilla".
Well then, simply clean the pruning shears with isopropyl alcohol, we’ll also wash our hands with sanitising gel to avoid diseases, and get to work…
Dani- Get to it!
What we’re going to do is very simple, it’s just to cut these branches down here and leave everything from this node upwards, okay? So we get the scissors right into this node and we remove all this, cleaning this area.
The branches that bother us when watering or that can lead to pests and diseases, right?
Dani- The plant will be much cleaner, and evidently the energy will be directed to the upper part, which is what interests us.
All this is very simple work but it’s going to leave everything super-clean afterwards.
Dani- Sometimes you only do it once during flowering, other times you'll do it twice. Depending on how big the plant is, sometimes you have to do this twice.
There, you can see, it’s all clean…
Dani- Let me see? That’s it, very good. Let's go for the other… it's the same. And then we're going to do it with the whole tent.
Exactly. We’re going to cut and leave it clean from here upwards. I’ll cut this low branch…
Dani- Perfect.
...and this one, that maybe we can make use of?
Dani- Of course, to take clones, right?
Yes, because it looks great. I don’t know if you can see properly…
Lollipop pruning, a very simple technique but a very effective one. As you can see I’m going to water and we can switch the plants to flowering.
Dani- Great, well until next time.
Bye!
Dani- That’s a bit easier now, eh?
Easier now! You can see, I get everywhere, I see everything... Great!
