defoliation when in flower

SPLFreak808

Well-Known Member
After you top a plant the same thing can happen, it depends on the environment, soil, light and the skill of the grower
defoliated is for advanced growers
Yeah no, i have NEVER seen a topped plant miss a beat. Why? Because we do it in veg not flower! Nice try though about thd advanced grower bullshit lol i top every plant.
 

jacksthc

Well-Known Member
I topped these plants and removed a few fan leaves every few days in early veg
The results in less than 4 weeks, very healthy, short bushy plants, level canopy with at least 4 main shoots under 40w of light.
I do most my training in veg, sometimes i will do a little defoliation in early flower to reduce the plants stretch in flower



veg.jpg

on this plant I did a lot of defoliation in veg and she loved it, don't she look happy ?
I could have taken over 60 cutting off a 18" x 18" plant ( not a bad ideal as a mother plant)
4.JPG

that's try this on a large plant and harvest it 8 weeks later, let all the buds grow vertical into each other, the results where amazing

buds.JPG

and another plant

plant.jpg

fellow I know defoliation works

but you can keep thinking what you like
 

RM3

Well-Known Member
Those of you that defoil should go right ahead and do so, but I post in these threads so that new growers trying to learn will get the science/botany side of the argument.

let me share a few pics from my first book :)

this is one plant, that was 3 feet tall under a 400 watt light
.S_SAM_0746.JPG
 

RM3

Well-Known Member
It is from a chapter in the book that teaches how to grow for yield, I even said before it started, gonna show ya how to get a lb off 2 plants.

To prove that is one plant here is another pic
.
S_SAM_0745.JPG
 

Uncle Ben

Well-Known Member
Plants are meant to grow outside and as the sun goes over the Christmas shape plant, most leaves only receive about 5 hours of direct light as the other side starts to get shaded
That is not true especially under windy conditions. All parts of the plant receive full or dappled light throughout the day. Got any pix of your outdoor grown plants?

receiving 12 hours of direct light causes the long node spacing between the nodes ( last thing i want)
Wrong. The forum paradigm is long days decreases internode spacing. I have grown exclusively under HPS and not had long internodes, see my avatar.

Long internodes are driven by genetics and high P foods.
 

Sativied

Well-Known Member
@Uncle Ben check this out for a laugh:

http://www.amazon.com/Aptus-Plant-Tech-Fasilitor-500-ml/dp/B0094WHERC

$450 for 1L. It's called Regulator in NL, where it's roughly $280 per liter.

I've been discussing this popular hyped product with some botanically-challenged money-growers in a Dutch forum. Secret recipe, no good laws on mandatory ingredient labeling, but enough hints in the description to figure out it's obviously Potassium Silicate.

Ingredients (from several sources including guaranteed analysis from Cali and Washington):
0.6 Potash
0.1 Boron
0.001-0001 Molybdenum
1.4 Si

According to one of those sources (state of Washington) it's 2x as concentrated in K as Dyna-gro Pro-Tekt also based on potassium silicate. Basically, it's 7-8x more expensive than protekt.

And that is just one of the many bottles, the most expensive, but the rest is stupid priced too. Like a K boost, a P boost, or CaMg boost... The amount of money some clowns here spend on plant "food" is stupid on a whole new level. Plenty actually see improvements but subscribe that to 'aptus regulator' and not its actual contents so they praise it and the herd follows. That dutch site dyna-groW I mentioned once is gone by the way, seems there is currently no Dyna-gro in NL available.

If I was looking for yet another job I'd import a sea container of Agsil 16H...
 

jacksthc

Well-Known Member
Those of you that defoil should go right ahead and do so, but I post in these threads so that new growers trying to learn will get the science/botany side of the argument.

let me share a few pics from my first book :)

this is one plant, that was 3 feet tall under a 400 watt light
.View attachment 3596365
you have a large plant with a low amount of fan leaves (great example lol ).
All this proves is you can pull a large yield from a plant with a low amount of fan leaves, thanks as this really helps me put my point across

A large 3ft plant under a 400w hps with large buds 3ft down in the canopy, looks like most growers got it wrong, why lolpop, scrog or even do a sog as it would be a waste of your time as you can grow buds 2-3ft long under a 400w hps

you must be growing 5ft long cola's under a 1000w hps on a 6ft plant and pulling 2.5lbs per light

don't think many growers are going to full for this mate, 1 lb of high quality bud from a 3ft x3ft plant under a 400w hps, the canopy is not even level lmao

now that get back to the real world fellow

400w hps can give you lots of 10" long cola's on a 3ft (w) x 2ft (H) plant if the canopy is level, that's why growers do sog and scrog to pull the best yield

topping and lst works well to give you a level even canopy
 

jacksthc

Well-Known Member
That is not true especially under windy conditions. All parts of the plant receive full or dappled light throughout the day. Got any pix of your outdoor grown plants?



Wrong. The forum paradigm is long days decreases internode spacing. I have grown exclusively under HPS and not had long internodes, see my avatar.

Long internodes are driven by genetics and high P foods.
ok i don't grow weed out doors but have grow loads of different plants outside in my back garden
loads of things affect the amount of light the plants get, clouds often cause plants to receive less direct light, building trees and many other things causes shade on the plants as the end of the summer draws in, the days get shorter maybe the daylight gets down to 9-10 before you harvest the plants

while genetics and high P foods may cause Long internodes, low light will cause nodes to stretch, any grower can see this on the lower part of the plant


here the first pic i found in google pics

Topped-Marijuana-Plants.jpg

very well grown plants but look a very stretched shoot at the bottom of the plant
 

Uncle Ben

Well-Known Member
@Uncle Ben check this out for a laugh:

http://www.amazon.com/Aptus-Plant-Tech-Fasilitor-500-ml/dp/B0094WHERC

$450 for 1L. It's called Regulator in NL, where it's roughly $280 per liter.

I've been discussing this popular hyped product with some botanically-challenged money-growers in a Dutch forum. Secret recipe, no good laws on mandatory ingredient labeling, but enough hints in the description to figure out it's obviously Potassium Silicate.

Ingredients (from several sources including guaranteed analysis from Cali and Washington):
0.6 Potash
0.1 Boron
0.001-0001 Molybdenum
1.4 Si

According to one of those sources (state of Washington) it's 2x as concentrated in K as Dyna-gro Pro-Tekt also based on potassium silicate. Basically, it's 7-8x more expensive than protekt.

And that is just one of the many bottles, the most expensive, but the rest is stupid priced too. Like a K boost, a P boost, or CaMg boost... The amount of money some clowns here spend on plant "food" is stupid on a whole new level. Plenty actually see improvements but subscribe that to 'aptus regulator' and not its actual contents so they praise it and the herd follows. That dutch site dyna-groW I mentioned once is gone by the way, seems there is currently no Dyna-gro in NL available.

If I was looking for yet another job I'd import a sea container of Agsil 16H...
These shysters have no shame. That is hilarious!
 

RM3

Well-Known Member
you have a large plant with a low amount of fan leaves (great example lol ).
All this proves is you can pull a large yield from a plant with a low amount of fan leaves, thanks as this really helps me put my point across

A large 3ft plant under a 400w hps with large buds 3ft down in the canopy, looks like most growers got it wrong, why lolpop, scrog or even do a sog as it would be a waste of your time as you can grow buds 2-3ft long under a 400w hps

you must be growing 5ft long cola's under a 1000w hps on a 6ft plant and pulling 2.5lbs per light

don't think many growers are going to full for this mate, 1 lb of high quality bud from a 3ft x3ft plant under a 400w hps, the canopy is not even level lmao

now that get back to the real world fellow

400w hps can give you lots of 10" long cola's on a 3ft (w) x 2ft (H) plant if the canopy is level, that's why growers do sog and scrog to pull the best yield

topping and lst works well to give you a level even canopy
Nice how you make assumptions LOL

each plant had a 400 watter over it, so 2, 400 watters and they were CMH bulbs, I have never owned an HPS

These days, I flower under T5's

as far as folks fallin for it, there were witnesses to the harvest as I said it's pulled from my 1st book and for what its worth I missed it by 7 grams :)
 

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
I find that some leaf trimming is necessary at about 6 weeks flowering. I remove most of the upper leaf that has no trichs on it. There's more than enough leaf on the bottom parts to intercept all light. Those leaves were getting starved before and the lower buds were fixin to become fluff buds. A week after the trimming those bottom buds had darkened and started triching up. Worthless bottom bud had been turned into pretty much top bud. It's not a matter of randomly plucking leaves, it's surgical pruning to make best use of available light.

Besides, you can take off a good third of a plant's leaves and all that happens is that the remaining ones become more efficient. They expect to get partially eaten by animals and insects so they put out extra leaf. As long as you don't see a lot of light penetrating to the soil level it's all being used. The bottom leaves just green back up instead of getting lighter and dropping off. There's no net loss, or very little. They just lose some from the top instead of the bottom. The amount of leaf actually gets pretty ridiculous by week 6. Growing leaf is a waste of space.
 

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
What I did with my latest batch was to cut off pretty much all leaf from the top colas at the end of week 8. You could call it live manicuring practically. That's exactly what it was like, all leaf poking out from the cola had to go. I did that because I could see that those leaves, even the small ones, were shading calyxes right below them. I left bottom leaves on but it was pretty thorough deleafing on the upper parts.

So what happened was that those colas got very fat and heavy, actually the heaviest I ever got. I also reduced the hours of light to 8 for the final week. It ripened them up by the end of week 10, when with 12/12 they always still had lots of white pistils and were foxtailing. I don't know if it was the photoperiod, the deleafing or both combined that did it, but it was a bumper crop and solid buds all the way to the bottom. So I'll be using the same routine every time now. I also put reptile UV CFLs in for the final week. I also gave them 36 hours of continuous light right at the end. Could say I gave em the works.

BTW, I do recommend 10 weeks. Big difference in yield between 9 and 10 weeks, like night and day. At 9 they're usable, but at 10 they're monsters. After getting all the way to week 9 might as well go one more and get the full potential in yield. I harvested at 8 weeks a couple crops ago, due to necessity, and they were quite inadequate. No comparison between 8 and 10 weeks. 9 is an absolute minimum for usable bud density imo and 10 is optimal.

Also here's a tip on how to go 10 weeks using a 3 week harvest system (3 flowering chambers 3 weeks apart). Every third harvest you let the whole system go an extra week. Then you get a full 10 weeks with 3 week harvest frequency. So it's like 3,3,4. It's mostly 3 weeks between harvests. Just it's 4 weeks now and then.
 
Last edited:

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
Forgot to mention that this was also the first batch where I had pruned the roots when I transplanted the clones. That may also have been a factor in the monster yield. The next batch also looks a lot more vigorous than before I started the root pruning. It just consisted of pulling the roots down so they were straight and cutting them off just below the main root ball.

Also I said I gave my last batch 36 hours continuous light at the end but come to think of it the total was 42 hours. I would recommend 48 but 42 happened to be at the most convenient time to start chopping.
 

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
After processing that, I think they could have been denser. Next time I won't defol so drastically and I won't use 8 hour days for the last week. Probably use 10 hours for the 3-4 days before the 48 hours continuous at the very end. Days never get lower than about 10 hours in Afghanistan anyway, the absolute lowest is just under 10, so I doubt there's any strain that would benefit from less. Still got a pretty good batch though even with only 8 hours.
 

Trippyness

Well-Known Member
I have run defoliation side by side twice.
Once under Hydro HPS and once under COCO LED.
I have found that defoliation helps get more light to lower growth and I have had an increased yield.
First test was
32 plants SOG deoliated and second side was 32 SOG non.
Defoliated won by quite abit.
Coco version the defoliated side had much larger nugs down lower.
I always defoliate now.
Very helpful for me.
I would say do your own test on what strains you have, but for me it works.
I pulled a monster 6OZ plant in Coco defoliated 30 day Veg.
Amazing nugs.
Ill find the pic if I can :)
I defoliate in veg and flower about every 2 weeks except for stretch. I wait until stretch is done then I defoliate.
 

Trippyness

Well-Known Member
Lazy growers leave all the leaves


Kush Is My Cologne
I have done side by sides both in hydro and in Coco, defoliation is very helpful.
It takes quite a bit of time, but well worth it.
I really cant stand when people argue the point " its not natural"... we are growing indoors mates. We are trying to get the best yield and best plants possible. We are not looking for the most earth friendly natural way.
As for defoliation, I recommend you give it a test. Youll be surprised with the results like I was.
 
Top