Is trimming fan leaves off buds OK or not?

I have a SOG grow in a 7'x4' flower room with 2-600w cool tubes and good ventilation.

The buds are crowed together with more buds forming below and wanting to come up through. The main colas have these big fan leaves that block light from getting through to these lower buds and the lower part of the man cola.


Is it OK o trim these leaves? There are no trichomes on them.

you can trim a few... I prefer to tuck them... Going crazy pruning can cause stress. But Remember... your leaves are like little solar panels for your plant..

Groweedeasy.com had a pretty good section on defoliation.

onemooretime said:

I have a SOG grow in a 7'x4' flower room with 2-600w cool tubes and good ventilation.

The buds are crowed together with more buds forming below and wanting to come up through. The main colas have these big fan leaves that block light from getting through to these lower buds and the lower part of the man cola.


Is it OK o trim these leaves? There are no trichomes on them.

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This is something that I just don't do ..its very human of you to increase your profit from cannabis, but the plant don't see it that way, to the plant they are sacks of food

Jorge Cervantes PSA: Keep Your Leaves On!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYq7CuVpAeo

IMO- I wouldn't trim them. Your plant needs them.
Your Fan leaves will die, and fall off when the plant doesn't need them any more.
It sounds like you should have done a little more pruning in Veg.

Good Luck on Your Grow.

omt,
This is a topic that's been discussed for almost as long as I can remember. I recall one bit of research related to leaf shading. Turns out that lots of useful light passes through the leaf to the lower parts. So lots of leaves have been sacrificed for no good reason.

One good reason though...and this may apply to your situation. If ventilation is an issue, it may be useful to trim some leaves. Better to lose some foliage then to get mold or fungus...
JD

thanks for replies

Topfuel29- I top at 4-knodes; so how does that sketch pertain to my scenario?

JohnDee said:

omt,
This is a topic that's been discussed for almost as long as I can remember. I recall one bit of research related to leaf shading. Turns out that lots of useful light passes through the leaf to the lower parts. So lots of leaves have been sacrificed for no good reason.

One good reason though...and this may apply to your situation. If ventilation is an issue, it may be useful to trim some leaves. Better to lose some foliage then to get mold or fungus...
JD

Click to expand...

I've read something very similar and have lost the source. It described how the spectrum of light needed for photosynthesis is actually invisible to the human eye. As you said, this light passes through leaves and is still processed by the leaves below. To the human eye it looks like shadows but the plant is still getting what it needs. Does this sound right? Natural light only? Additional comments or links on topic appreciated.

It changed my thoughts on pulling off fan leaves but I have never really verified this info.

I always get popcorn bud on interior low nodes no matter what techniques I use. If there is a way around it, I haven't cracked that nut yet. I pinch off a lot of those nodes now.

onemooretime said:

Is it OK o trim these leaves? There are no trichomes on them.

Click to expand...

This is when I did a sog grow way back. I always pulled off all the lowest branching to cut down on the density of plant matter. Its fine to do this . You want air to move between each of the colas.





Here is my current grow. Could you imagine if I DIDNT pull any leaf off!! I pull handfuls off every 3-4 days easy and even more when vegging it. You would shit at how many clones I just throw away when cleaning out the density. The thing with defoliating is not taking too much at a time and never too much over all. Take a few of the biggest light blockers out but leave the rest... see how it does...go on from there. Air circulation and light penetration are as important as the leaves.

@Bugeye...
Sorry but I don't have any links. My recollection is that it related to visible light spectrum as well as UV. It was basically relating to the actual amount of shadowing. Sure, you can hold your hand under s leaf and see the shadow, but that doesn't mean that the leaf is blocking 100% of light. It's only a partial shadow, a sort-of penumbra...yet still is visible.

As far as popcorn buds and how to eliminate them...or make them bigger. It's easy to mistake the reason why popcorn buds are small. Yes, they are way down near the bottom and don't get as much light...but that doesn't mean that the lack of light is the reason. Not causal. It's my understanding that it's more related to plant hormones. The apical meristem (top growing tip) gets the most bud producing hormones. And the ones on the bottom get the least. So popcorn buds are much more related to plant hormones then to light.

That's why we have main-lining, fimming, LST, lollypopping and all the other myriad training techniques. To spreads out bud production over a bunch of equal height budsites. So if you don't want popcorn buds...trim off all those branches and train plant for multiple top colas. Or that's how I understand it.
JD

Cannabis plantings are competitive growers, imagine a patch of 30 to 50 plants seed from the same mother then imagine that same patch 2000 years later, it would be a forest, then alone comes man 20,000 years later ....lol,
...just saying cannabis don't really need us to grow

Polarizing topic but just think about it. You want to get rid of large fan leaves, that are close to the light, that feed the entire plant. For the sake of the low stuff that by the nature of the plant, will be less frosty and dense.

Take it from the guys that have been growing from 20, 30, 40+ years like Jorge Cervantes, leave that shit alone unless its 50% dead/damaged. hehe.

LST, lollypopping the "sucker branches", etc, that is a slightly different story, in this case your removing/reducing the larf in favor of the top, much better idea, .

I disagree, in my 20+ years working with the cannabis plant I have come to the conclusion that removing large fans is perfectly ok. In fact will benefit the overall quality of your flowers. Think of the trichomes as a sun screen, the more direct light on the buds, the more trichomes the plant will produce to protect the flowers. Remember that the plants only goal in life is to reproduce, or make seeds. Seeds will require more stored up sugars/carbs that are stored in the leaves. If your goal is trichome covered bud, lose the leaf. The best way to learn is to try it yourself, you have nothing to lose.

I grow bud, not leaves.

cheers Itsme.

And just to round things out, there is the middle ground where you just snip the center 3 points off the big fan leaves blocking buds below, leaving a little of that stored fuel for flowering.

I prune the shit out of my plants and trust and believe it lets light in. The more I trim the more growth occurs in other places I thin out the colas to promote more colas and the more light that gets through the taller the neighboring branches catch up to the size of the main colas. I have left plants go and alls I have is a plant full of leaves. The trimmed plants grow buds and the leafy plants grow bigger leaves and have hidden little buds. The best advice is trim one and let one go and you decide.

I went to the room last night and found the RH to be 75%. That made my mind up for me. I went ahead a trimmed. I have 11 plants in her and filled up a 5g pot with what I cut off. It doesn't look so much like SOG anymore but that's OK I need air movement.

you dont ever trim the big fan leaves those are the energy producers for the plant

whatever the truth is both sides will debate so long as no one does a scientific side-by-side comparing competent trimming vs not...
(like something analogous to that Kite guy with his UVB study)

my guess is all things being equal a plant with its foliage removed "Appears" to grow fast because its immediate response is to replace/re-grow its foliage to resume its growth cycle

still OTOH, I'd also bet there is some "crafted" method to strategically remove less efficient foliage, but my guess also is 1/2 of us that do it are just hacks...

DrOctopus said:

I prune the shit out of my plants and trust and believe it lets light in. The more I trim the more growth occurs in other places I thin out the colas to promote more colas and the more light that gets through the taller the neighboring branches catch up to the size of the main colas. I have left plants go and alls I have is a plant full of leaves. The trimmed plants grow buds and the leafy plants grow bigger leaves and have hidden little buds. The best advice is trim one and let one go and you decide.

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lol UV rays go through the leaves just cus you cant see it dosent mean its not happening and you should trim the very bottom i call those leaches because they make useless budd (i still smoke them). but never the big fan leaves its like pulling your teeth out and rubbing your food on your face to gain weight. you can tuck them if it makes you feel better