i clipped a good amount of my leaves off

Tahmi.Guhnn

Tahmi.Guhnn

Active Member
Canon said:
Man, you too!
You're absolutely on the right trail IMO.
That's why I'm dead set against only one centered overhead light. I'll take 2 150 watters on the top / sides way before I'll allow one in the center 250 / 400.
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deffinatly a good idea. one light is always a bad idea unless you have like one plant. i think most people forget that the further light travels, wether or not there are shade leaves in the way, the more energy thats lost. and its not gradual its exponential. and just plain physics
 
Tahmi.Guhnn

Tahmi.Guhnn

Active Member
Inverse Square Law, Light

As one of the fields which obey the general inverse square law, the light from a point source can be put in the form
where E is called illuminance and I is called pointance.
The source is described by a general "source strength" S because there are many ways to characterize a light source - by power in watts, power in the visible range, power factored by the eye's sensitivity, etc. For any such description of the source, if you have determined the amount of light per unit area reaching 1 foot, then it will be one fourth as much at 2 feet.
 
TaoWolf

TaoWolf

Active Member
Those big fan leaves also produce auxin for the plant to grow with (even if they are not receiving a high amount of light)...

There's a simple experiment you can do:

Cut the blades off two fan leaves on the opposing sides of an internode. Leave the petioles attached. On one side, apply a small amount of cloning powder/gel to the tip of the petiole where the leaf blades were cut off. Apply nothing to the other petiole on the opposing side.

After a number of days, the plant will form an abscission layer and literally cut off the the untreated petiole yet will leave the petiole that is treated with cloning powder as if there were still leaf blades attached and doing their job.

The reason is that leaf blades produce a small amount of auxin that travels through the petiole and to the plant as a whole - and as long as this is occurring the plant will in turn support the leaf through the vascular tissue. As soon as a leaf is no longer producing auxin, the plant forms an abscission layer through the vascular tissue which cuts off life support for the leaf and literally makes it fall off. It actually has very little to do with photosynthesis and a lot to do with auxin production.

In the example experiment, the cloning powder/gel contains a small amount of auxin which will be absorbed and travel down the petiole as if produced naturally - tricking the plant into thinking the leaves are still worth supporting. This demonstrates that the important thing as far as the plant is concerned (and by extension the grower) is auxin and new plant growth... not necessarily photosynthesis.

The abscission layer is the reason that old, dying leaves will literally come off with a slight brush or pull (the plant has already cut it off from vascular support and they are only hanging on by a thread so to speak).

In a vegetative state, a plant that loses leaves just has to grow new leaves to compensate (which is why you will see new growth in response to removing old leaves). In a flowering state, very little energy is spent growing leaves to replace losses so a massive loss of foliage will literally stunt growth as overall auxin production takes a nosedive and isn't compensated for as readily.

But the moral of the story is that leaves are also important for auxin production and not just straight photosynthesis. Removing too many leaves too fast can stunt growth by lowering available auxin going to the meristems.

But not to take sides in the defoliation debate: topping, supercropping, SCRoG'ing, LST'ing, etc... all also result in a change in either auxin production or allocation and are frequently used to advantage w/ indoor growing... so just trying to throw relevant information in without trying to take any side (I'm personally undecided).
 
littleflavio

littleflavio

Well-Known Member
the way i see it...if its still in veg u can cut moderate leaves. but if its already flowering i wouldnt messed with it since it needs all the energy. but personally i dont do shit on my plants. the birds do that for me, talk about birds this lil mofos just ate most of the leaves on my juvy jilly
 
Farfig Newton

Farfig Newton

Member
I never cut them at random and if I could load the pics up you guys could see thst I didn't full clip off the leaf , just 80% of what ever leaf I did decide to cut
 
footah

footah

Member
He didn't say trim all the leaves
I've seen positive results from trimming some of the larger fan leaves to allow certain stems more light to develop into bigger buds
besides who wants the fluff that will result from leaving them blocked ?
noob sounds like one himself
 
TaoWolf

TaoWolf

Active Member
Nice photography w/ the close-ups...

Agree about the hacked up part, but why do you think overfertilized zem?
 
darkdestruction420

darkdestruction420

Well-Known Member
sike89 said:
true the very basic photosynthesis light = life sure, but did you ever wonder why the bud that has been sitting under all the foliage in the dark is so small compared to the ones in the light? see this is why i said " in moderation" because "sometimes" you need to cut a leaf or two, it does happen. my first outdoor grow we decided to test it like three years ago. we had trimmed an area so that light would get all the way to the bottom of the branch where as we left everything else the way it was, now.. the branch we trimmed a bit actually had a smaller main bud, but the rest of the buds down the branch were bigger then other lower parts of other branches. coincidence? perhaps im no plant expert just a dude who has grown a few plants who likes to try a bit of everything.

im not saying anyone here is wrong, and i do agree that the leaves are VERY important to a nice healthy plant, but i can also see how trimming a little can help the as well.

so do what you feel you need to do to your plant, if it does not work out how you planned, guess what? grow another one and dont do what ever you did to mess it up the first time... its a plant... you can grow another one.:joint:
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thats because hormones are directed to main bud sites.......
 
zem

zem

Well-Known Member
TaoWolf said:
Nice photography w/ the close-ups...

Agree about the hacked up part, but why do you think overfertilized zem?
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the very dark green and the look on the leaves shows overferting. the leaves look like theyr thick and hard not the vibrant green. could be because of hackin em lol
 
Farfig Newton

Farfig Newton

Member
the bubblegum and the blue dream were darker i think when i bought them. im not experienced this is my first grow, so i have a ghetto set up haha.

all i do is have my light on (2 aquarium / plant lights, and i have a sky pretty large sky light above them) and water them every two or three days, when the top in or inch and half of soil is dry. i just use water hose water, i let it sit for a 24hr minimum before watering my plants tho.

right now i think the light cycle is 18/6

the black cord attaches to the other light

image (8).jpg
 
TaoWolf

TaoWolf

Active Member
Farfig Newton said:
hacked up? i only clipped a few leaves , either way i dont know if i will again. on these as well as my next set of plants.
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I don't think you went crazily overboard removing leaves or anything... they just look a little hacked on with scissors here and there. Outside of that, I think they look healthy and pretty good overall which is why I was questioning the over-fertilized comment. Speaking of which, I'm not very good at judging true color in photographs - so I was thinking others might be seeing something I was missing.
 
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