Defoliation - When and how?

kingofqueen

kingofqueen

Well-Known Member
It pretty damn simple jeez . Cut all them leaves off lower your yield ,butcher your plant ,who cares . Lower leaves not receiving light should be trimmed ,Sometimes a prune here or there is nessesary for overlapping leaves , and to thin out areas not getting airflow .

But if you are DEPENDING on this technique to make your plants majically pop out monster buds , go ahead be disappointed . Spend some more time learning what actually makes them grow.That and search once and awile .
 
legallyflying

legallyflying

Well-Known Member
^ true that

Bottom line. Do everything for a reason and understand the plants response and you'll be fine. I never trimmed shit outdoors but the sun isn't in my basement
 
Canon

Canon

Well-Known Member
legallyflying said:
^ true that

Bottom line. Do everything for a reason and understand the plants response and you'll be fine. I never trimmed shit outdoors but the sun isn't in my basement
Click to expand...

To me, that is absolutely correct. (cause and effect thru experience)
Outdoor growing is soo much different than within a controlled enviroment where everything is provided & controlled (and hopefully correctly).
 
D

dlively11

Well-Known Member
OP, Remove the fan leaves at around week 2-3. Only remove the larger ones that are clearly going to block a lot of light from your bud sites. After 21 days in bloom the plants really stop any vegatative growth and are into full bloom with no more stretch and the larger fans leaves play a much smaller roll then they did the first 21 days of bloom. I go light on the removal week 2 and heavy week 3. Some of the know it alls around here have ZERO experience in this proven method and are blinded by others and by 40 year old botany books that arent taking into consideration growing under a HID light indoors. You simply cant teach some OLD dogs new tricks, sad but true. Personally I have grows literally thousands of plants in the last couple years in full SOG with and without leaf removal. SOG canopy would be very simlilar to a SCROG canaopy. Have grown indoors under HID for about 6 years now and outdoors much longer so not some newb like some would like to beleive. With 64 plants under each light I can get up to 30 grams per plant dried and cut with leaf removal. Without I am lucky to get 15. Same strain, same room, same nutes same EVERYTHING. Hell I even did half a tray one way and the other half another. Same results with every strain I have grown. Anyone saying that someone is a fool for removing fan leaves under certain circumstances to growers achieving up to 4 lbs per light needs to take a look in the mirror to see who the fool really is. At the very least be open and listen, or better yet try it for yourself. FYI I dont use CO2 either. I have since gone to growing 2 plants per foot which is 32 per light and let them get a little bigger. Less leaf removal required and a lot less plants to have to keep on the trays all the time. My yields are good (35-40 gram per plant average) but a solid decrease in yield 2.5 lbs VS 3.5 to 4. I still HAVE to remove leaves to get these results though. At 16 plants per light I could probably not remove any at all or very little, but my yields would drop even more. 32 a light is very manageable and I can live with the lower yield. If I had one or two trays and needed max output I would still be doinhg 64 per light. FYI I copied my grow style from others in this forum and other forums who had the same extreme results. Getting over 1.5 Gram per watt without CO2 is pretty damn bitchen to me. The old growers like Benny Boy are very happy with getting a max of 2 lbs per light on a good day. Just look at his pic he posted of that super crappy big bud that was 50% air. He knows a lot about certain aspects of growing MJ but seems to have gaping holes as well.


Leaf removal done properly. Strain Fruity Chronic (Chronic white Widow) Every single large fan leaf was removed that wasnt part f the bud by week 3 on these plants. These pics are from an actual grow where I achieved 4 lbs per 4X4 space / 64 plants / 30 gram per plant average. Plus the plants were very easy to trim once dried. These pics were with 3 weeks remaining in bloom on 9 week plant. Buds were rock hard, no mold, no dehumidifer or AC. This first pic the plant was moved/ staged so I could really show its mass without other plants crowding it. The second pic shows part of a row how they were grown.





And another showing the spacing on the plants. These are 6 inch pots.







Now everyone get ready for Benny Boy to implode .. lol
 
collective gardener

collective gardener

Well-Known Member
I'll thow in my 2 cents at my own perril. If I'm dealing with a multi branch plant, I will remove some of the inner leaves that block light to the mid/lower sections of the branches. If I'm dealing with an un-topped, christmas tree type plant, I won't touch it. My theory is that if I alter the plant (lst, topping, etc...), the plant will be growing in an un natural way and may need some help with light distribution. I believe that mother nature has it all figured out with an un topped plant.

Looking at lively's plants it's hard to argue with results like these. That's some serious growth all the way down the branch. Bravo, man.

https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/407048-20-000-watt-medical-grow.html
 
Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
I don't understand the botanical reasoning for this argument. Everyone says "it works" or "it's bullshit" but no one attempts to explain with biological facts why it would or would not work. I don't buy that the plant uses the fan leaves less in flower, therefore they are removable.

In a SOG I can see where reducing the horizontal profile would help, but still seems to me like removing your foot to run faster...
 
legallyflying

legallyflying

Well-Known Member
Well there are too many things going on leaf wise and if I spent an hour typing them all out, then someone (like UB for instance) would just say nuh uh. Its a plant folks, not a fucking temple, not some hyper delicate crystalline structure. Plant get attacked by shit all the time in nature. Bugs, storms, freezing rain, rodents, birds, you name it. A plant isn't going to go tits up if you remove some leaves. Nor is yield going to go in the crapper. A plant generally has more than enough ATP produced each day to function. I suspect that in the case of growing buds, a shortage of ATP is not the issue, its simply a matter of the time necessary to complete all the necessary conversions. What I mean, its limited by the level of metabolism, not by the level of stored carbohydrates.

yeah, there is some stress involved in taking leaves off. The amount of stress obvious-fucking-lee depends on the amount of foliage you are taking off. Like most things in life, its a continuum, its not a "it works" or "it doesn't"

Its not about "taking your feet off to run faster" Who says I was taking off my feet so that I could run faster? Maybe I was taking off my feet to get a better sun tan? Maybe I was ALREADY running as fast as I could and wanted a little more even tan?
 
Canon

Canon

Well-Known Member
legallyflying said:
Thank god. Is that all it takes?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, No it's not. People perpetuate wive's tales around here like stink on shit.
The idea lives.
I rarely bother arguing things like this anymore on here. Just a waste of energy and really serves no purpose for me and my grow.
The best I hope for is to put the bug in one's ear to try things. How hard is it to verify or negate? One branch? Only one stinking little branch in a grow is all. How difficult is that? And the results don't take mos. either. The effects can be easily seen in a very few days. Even in veg.

IMHO -
Anyone that's actually grown for any time should of tried things like this just to find out for themselves, or they've not really grown (or too lazy to care). :sad:

Unless you like :wall: ,,, why?

UB surprises me to that end,,,, often.

EXTREEM DEFOLIATION;
37l.jpg45h.jpg25d.jpg37f.jpgLBb.jpg

I'll not comment on what I've come to expect as results. You'd never believe me.

Think about it people. Everything you do, has an effect.
If the effect is not what you hoped. It's not failure, it's simply wrong tool for the job. Remember the results whatever it is,,, and make it work for you when you need it at another time. Don't just file it away saying it didn't work. You'll never get anywhere like that.
Cause and effect, learned from experience is what makes a real grower. - Someday I hope to be one.


I know,,,, let the flaming begin. :roll: :sad:
 
legallyflying

legallyflying

Well-Known Member
Very good point cannon. I should add as well that you don't need to be weighing dry leaf matter and root densities to know if something has affected a plant positively or negatively, you can typically tell. I should add for those that don't use feminized seeds, unwanted male plants provide an excellent way to experiment without risk of losing a crop. obviously you won't know how things will affect yield but you can make correlations. My last seed popping resulted in 6 males out of 8 seeds. My subsequent anger was vented by putting 5 of these males through what can only be determined as plant hell.

I started "playing" with them shortly after I could sex them which was about 8 nodes. I wanted to investigate transplant shock, defoliation, "extreme" LST, and also become more adept at spotting over fertilization early. This is basically what I found:

1. I ripped one plant out of its pot and left it lay out for a whole day, roots and all. I repotted him and watered with superthrive. Net result...he got wilted as fuck for the first half a day or so but was quickly back to normal. The overall net change compared to the untreated plant was essentially nill.
2. The extreme trim plant got all the lower stems and leaves removed. I would say about 90%. The only thing left were the two top nodes. He did not like this at all. The plant basically went into a sort of hybernation mode and nothing happened for about a week. After that week though he started growing very rapidly. he never did catch up obviously as the untreated plant was hauling ass but he didn't shrivel up and die. My take was, not a good thing but it wasn't going to be the end of the world if you needed to do something drastic.
3. The extreme LST dude didn't really impart any new information to me.I basically tied and super cropped every single new shoot as soon as I could. I didn't want an apical stem to form basically. I wanted to see if I could force the plant to maintain many large stems instead of always focusing on that primary stem. I'm in a SCROG so this would be awesome. Basically the plant became this trainwreck looking thing. Shoots, shoots and more shoots, It didn't have much vertical growth, well some, but ultimately the plant got so damn dense that I thought it would be a nightmare if it every went to flower. It seemed that instead of maintaining several large stems it just kept making more. I dunno.
4. The "death by salt" plant probably had the worst time and I swear if you turned the fans off and listened really closely you could hear him scream. I watered at the usual times but he got to drink 3000 ppm of grow nutes. It actually took longer than I thought for him to really cry foul. It was about a week of this feeding before he got major tip burn and the leaves started both rolling and folding. The thing that was interesting is that he went from looking ok (well, he was WAY to dark green) to a burnt nightmare in a single day. Other than the dark green color, I couldn't really decipher any tell tale signs of over fert :( I gave him a straight tap water feeding and the next time fed him 3000+ of bloom nutes. Crazy high phos and no nitrogen. A day or two later he mega bleached out turning yellow (the whole leaf, no interveinal green) and at that point I got tired of him and he went in the compost bin.

I guess my point is, if you ahve some males or extra clones, go ahead and beat the hell out of them. Its kind of fun to have a "I don't give a fuck what happens attitude" :)
 
D

dlively11

Well-Known Member
There is a time and place for the removal of leaves. Outdoors where the light source moves obviously no need. If your plants are spaced out well not needed so much maybe a little. Hanging HIDs into your canopy wont need it at all either. Light movers can help as well. The problem we all have growing indoors is most of us have a stationary light unlike a plants natural enviroment. Sticking 2-4 plants per SW foot is also very unatural and is seriously pushing the grow. Dont need every gram dont bother. Leaf removal for me depends entirely on how many plants are in my canopy. Try growing 4 plants a SQ foot with no leaf removal and await your huge yield of leaf and tiny buds. Been there done that. If the large fan leaves are creating so much energy how is it possible to get such huge colas with them removed? Funny thing is I did the same strain outoors in a 65 gal pot and the colas where half the size of my indoor buds on 20 inch tall plants :-o

I would like to add there is another middle ground you can try yourself and I use now with great success. I heard about this technique being used in Holland and did it on my last two tables. Instead of removing the entire fan leaf remove all the blades but the large center blade or the center blade and a couple small outer blades. Lets a good 50-75% more light in and increase air flow greatly for a crowded grow if you are pushing for max yield. I still pick off really low leaves just like Scroggers do and lollippers.

Personally I am a firm believer in trying things for yourself. Use good judgment and your results will be good.
 
downtimej

downtimej

Active Member
You should try and lollipop your plants at the end of your first wk in bud. Try and leave 4-6 tops per plant depending on the strain, this way you concentrate all your energy to a few big colas instead of a bunch of popcorn. Remember, youll get the same yield per crop regardless of wether you have 4 plants under a light or 40. All depends on what you like.
 
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