Trimming Pot Plants
Trimming your pot plants can mean manicuring the buds or it can mean actually maintaining the plants while they are still growing. Manicuring or trimming buds is one of those things that separates amateurs from pros.
Trimming your bud does a whole lot more for the quality of your weed than just the visual bag appeal. A properly trimmed bud will have smoother smoke and be less harsh. The more leaf you leave on a bud the harsher it will be.
Some growers choose to trim vegging plants to remove lower branches that do not get much light anyways. Why spend plant resources on lower shaded branches. Or they may trim some of the large sucker leaves off. Other growers would see this as an atrocity and believe that you should not trim a growing plant at all, leave it all natural.
Manicuring Your Pot Plants
Trimming marijuana is done by hand with very sharp shears. Some larger growers use trimming machines that remove the extra leaf very quickly. The effectiveness and the efficiency of these machines is highly debated and many growers argue that they only work when the buds are fresh and wet.
For most growers trimming is done by hand with sharp shears. This process can turn into a very monotonous activity but it is a necessity to harvesting marijuana. The best method is to place the shears against the bud and cut all the leaves without cutting off any of the bud itself. You will get the hang of it. Put your extra leaf in bag for making cana butter or hash later.
You will notice pretty fast that your fingers get gummed up from the resin. You may choose to wear latex gloves to keep your hands cleaner but gloves will have to be changed often since they will get gummed up as well. Once you have your buds trimmed and manicured perfectly they will then be dried or cured.
Conclusion
Trimming pot plants in the manicuring sense of the term, is an important step that can be the difference between so-so bud or high quality medical marijuana. Take your time, you have put in a lot of effort so far so be patient to finish the process.
