Lollipopping is a specific way to trim cannabis plants, allowing the plant to focus on the winners and avoid diverting valuable energy to the underperformers. What are the winners and underperformers? Winners get all the best light from indoor lights, while underperformers literally sit underneath these top bud sites and get less light. 

Bud sites toward the top of the plant are the winners, which receive the most direct light. Bud sites that are hidden at the inside and bottom of the plant are underperformers, as they don’t receive direct light. 

Why is it called lollipopping? When growers strip away the leaves and bud sites from the main stem and all the way through the branches, big fat nugs are all that’s left at the very top. This makes for skinny, bare branches with round juicy colas at the top, which resembles a lollipop. 

Lollipopping cannabis plants is more common in indoor grows, because artificial light doesn’t penetrate all the way through the canopy to the lower bud sites as well as the intense light of the sun does. While it’s still a good idea to remove some lower growth from outdoor plants, indoor plants that rely on artificial light require more discerning and aggressive trimming to maximize yields. 

Advantages of Lollipopping

Removing the leaves and bud sites that don’t get much light anyways frees up more plant energy to grow the buds at the canopy level that can truly thrive. These buds at the canopy will produce much more high-quality resin than the lower bud sites ever could. 

This increases overall resin yield per plant, which means more hash and more rosin for solventless production. 

What’s more, lollipopping helps increase airflow through the canopy. Air circulation is very important to overall plant health. Not only do plants grow more vigorously with proper air flow, but there’s less chance of mildew growing on the plants when there’s optimal air circulation all around and through the plants.  

What Equipment Do You Need To Lollipop Cannabis Plants?

Lollipopping cannabis plants doesn’t require any specialized equipment. All you need is a solid, sharp, clean pair of trimmers or scissors. 

That said, you can couple lollipopping with canopy training, stretching a large net across the canopy level of the garden and training the buds to grow through each opening of the net. This trains all the remaining buds to spread out across a level plane, maximizing exposure to the light. All remaining buds become top buds!

Process 

1. When your plants have just begun the flowering phase, double check that they are all healthy and growing vigorously. 

2. Clean your trimmers with ISO alcohol.

3. Starting from the very bottom of the plant, start trimming leaves away from the main branches. Trim the leaves at the very base of the stems - don’t leave any stems protruding from the main branches. 

4. Also remove bud sites that won’t get much light toward the bottom of the plant. 

7. Continue removing the leaves and bud sites beneath the canopy, but don’t remove bud sites that are going to grow directly beneath the main colas. These sites will develop into the lower parts of the main colas. 

8. Removing too much from the area directly below the canopy may reduce overall yield in the end. 

9. Once your plants has about half of the total number of leaves remaining, and all the excess leaves and bud sites are stripped from the lower half of the plant, then lollipopping is complete. 

Things to Avoid

Don’t lollipop an unhealthy plant. Give the plant what it needs to bounce back and resume healthy, vigorous growth before lollipopping, because this aggressive method of trimming stresses the plant. 

Also avoid lollipopping too early or too late in the plant’s growth cycle. The sweet spot is within the first week of flowering. 

Autoflowering plants generally don’t grow tall enough to make lollipopping worth it. Aggressively trimming cannabis plants also causes a temporary pause in growth, which is generally counter productive with autoflowering cultivars. 

Avoid removing too many leaves, as this can actually decrease overall yields. Plants need a few bigger leaves to generate fuel for the large buds to produce lots of resin. It’s better to remove too few leaves at first, then go back and remove more leaves later if you have to. 

Don’t remove any more than half of the total number of leaves. 

Conclusion

Lollipopping cannabis is an effective way to help the plant focus all its energy on the buds that will produce the most resin. This is especially important for making hash and pressing rosin, since the main goal is to collect the trichome heads. We’re not concerned about the volume of plant matter like farmers who are aiming for massive flower yields. 

Lollipopping cannabis plants also helps airflow in the garden, reducing the risks of mold growth and making for a healthier environment for plants to thrive. 

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