friend hardcore defoliated couple plants... need some input

Ok so have 12 plants that were hardcore bushy so we decided to do some "trimming". Well i have done a ton of reading on defoliating and its very touchy subject. I began removing what i thought was alittle over the edge of big fan leafs blocking all lower buds from my lollipoped plants... i did fair amount but there was still plenty of green left on branches and the plant. I did strictly what was blocking the inner parts of plant.

Well i turn around and my buddy completely trimmed 2 plants of EVERY fan leaf. Moved the big buds around to get inside and cut fan leafs... there is nothing but sugar leafs on the plant. He swears that online thats how its supposed to do it. Keep in mind this is day 2 of week 4 into flowering an other than lollipoping them after week 1 of flower that was only cutting done on these plants. Yes, you can now see lower buds getting tons of light but i dont see how buds thicken without the frigen leafs. Also, wont plant try to grow new leafs now instead of budding? Im stressing out. Plants look like they are about to be hung to dry. MY PLANTS ARE 6FT. If they die im loosing a lb between the 2.

https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/625261-my-pineapple-express-6k-watt.html

Thats my post of updates to see what thet look like before today. If you guys wanna enlighten me as to if they will recover with loss of yeild or hermi or if this is how your supposed to do it?

Tmr ill post pictures when lights off.

Sounds like the two may result in a loss of yield but hopefully they won't die. I have done selective trimming but I can't comment on extreme defoliation as described because I have never tried. Only thing to do now is let them grow out and see what happens, you will have a good test to prove the extreme defoliators either right or wrong.

Idk how to feel about it cause so many mixed feelings on it... i dont wanna be the tester in this stupid ass debate. I keep my leaves green and trim half dead ones or severe burned ones. Sometimes huge old fan leafs after the 12/12 stretch... i agreed to do decent amount NOT all of them. But yet on many forums people are constantly saying to do this during flowering. Problem is it was NOT ever done during veg so plants were not "used" to the stress as people would say.

I always remove lots of leaves from my plants, i like to keep the thicker growth, any weak thin lower growth i tend to remove
better air flow through the canopy, more colas filling the grow space
i tidy the plants up most of the grow, in the later stages of veg, and through most of the flowering period i will remove leaves
and any other growth that i don't like the look of, although my plants still have leaves left on them, as many fan/ larger healthy leaves as i can keep

i think it is good to experiment and find what suits your own environmental conditions
i have seen folk recently on a few forums picking all the leaves off their plants
and calling it defoliation, this is a pretty new term to me


defoliating ?
i have never tried to pick all the leaves off at once lol, it is not something that makes sense to me to even try
i doubt the plants will suffer too much, the leaves will grow back, personally i would not remove growth unless
it was necessary to open up the canopy , or unless it looked weak
any leaves that can be saved or tucked under i will tuck them under

all of these grows below, the plants had many leaves removed during late veg and
most of the flowering period

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/240168-barneys-sweet-tooth-nft-grow.html

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/458333-mr-nice-angel-heart-v.html

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/438137-jamaican-grape-nft-1800w-3-a.html

peace

This is exactly why I have criticized this shit from the start. It can be useful, but by and large it will ruin a lot of people's crops. I'm not gonna get into another one of these threads, because I always get them locked, but I'm sorry your friend is an idiot, but also glad that this situation is out there so that people can see how harmful information like this can be to have out there. If not done properly, it will crush your yield instead of increase it. I'm sorry you haven't fan leaves as you enter peak flower. That is unfortunate.

Exactly... all the threads i have read from 2007 to now through google lol has all been peoples opinions an no facts just people bull shitting back and forth. I blame him not the people on google saying that it should be done because the buds will use the nutes directly instead of having them stored in leaves just to then be moved to buds. Or another one was the leafs are only useful through veg to grow roots and now roots will transfer food strait to bud.

I do things with this kid so obviously his opinion needs to be addressed just like if i had suggestion he would listen but he wants to do it to the rest of plants if the buds get bigger within the next 5 days compared to other plants which i left plenty of green... im scared buds will get bigger than other plants in next 5 days time cause the light hitting them BUT not lasting second half of flower.

On top of that i had a burning problem which i just hoped to solve about 4 days ago and now with no leaves on it the buds will suffer rather than a leaf taking the hit?

Hopefully all the people who are "pro" defoliating can chime in on some advice of what is to come within next week of time based off experience. Every post online for this topic has 20pages or so. Lets see when its put to the test what happens. Sadly, my 6ft plants which easily i know would yielded me 8oz each are now the test subjects on what happens to plant without fan leafs or "blockers of energy" lol.

That or people say "well you dont remove them all" or "gotta start in veg to train them"... if you look online defoliating is known for removing ALL fan leaves. Just clear that up now since im an experiment. All plants are clones off same plant and grew exactly same. Hydro off same single rez.

If they survive an buds get much bigger than other plants than screw it im for it but i dont see it happening. When i do a video or pics tmr you guys prob shred tear for me.

I am pro pruning, and do some trimming at various points in the plants life. I have not tried commpletely striping a plant, mostly due to the amount of stress I would think it would cause. The way I see this is if these plants are similar in size you've got a half way decent experiment on your hands. You might find that those 2 plants actually ended up weighing more, and we can all be like WTF I can't believe it. Or they night not, another thing to look at is the total quality of the buds over the whole plant. Try to notice if the ones that were defoliated actually had denser nugs at the bottom then the other plants.

My take on it is even if the leaves aren't getting light they are storing food for the plant. Lower stems however I do usually remove, I run a single cola SOG and typically lollipop my plants up about 40%. I only remove the branches for the most part though, and I spread it out over a week or so. I'll leave the leaves for the plant to use, and to soak up any spare light that does make it through the canopy. Other then that I only typically take leaves off if they are completely in the way(because my tray is to full) or if they are damaged or dead. Just my 2 cents but thats where I'm at for now.

Yea, they all same size. 6 are all tall and spaced out and other 6 on opposite side of room are more bushy and shorter. Weird for being same strain but i divided them up. All pots are same, all nutes are from same rez, growing medium is all same, sealed room with monitored co2 at 1450ppm, same distance from light, humidity is at 42% to 35%, temps pretty steady from 82-86* max.

So yea i guess pictures are in order for tmr and then we see how it goes every 3 days ill put new pics. I WILL NOT be removjng more if they do come back lol. I would rather have meds than be able to do an experiment that people will hate on if results vary from their likings anyways.

It's a good thing that cannabis is such a resilient plant because our community of stoner growers sure tries hard to fuck everything up. Hope your grow survives this, but it sure shows the sad state of our community. Think of this same post over at the hydro tomato community....

In other news, maybe your friend could give us some input on his favorite kool-aide to use for flavored weeeed.

Lol......cannabis plants ARE a lot like humans......if you give me a good haircut,im a happy mofo!.....give me a bad hair cut,take too much off,IM PISSED!!......sorry to hear about your bad haircut

B166ER420 said:

Lol......cannabis plants ARE a lot like humans......if you give me a good haircut,im a happy mofo!.....give me a bad hair cut,take too much off,IM PISSED!!......sorry to hear about your bad haircut

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the only difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is 2 weeks, Let's hope for this kid's sake it's true for plants too.

Ok first 3 pics are what he did to the 2 plants... 4th picture is the set of 6 i did. As you can see i left alot of green BUT i was still uncomftable with what i did. The videos are way better to look at. They are uploading now.

Ok now for some speculation since we did the "trimming" when lights just turned on, they sat in light all day yesterday and had almost a full night since i snapped pic/videos... the lower buds have DEFINITELY gotten noticeable difference in both sets of plants. But that is what i figured would happen at first and then think they will not progress like the ones with leaves will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtNJ48Rqzg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Above is showing the obvious 2 plants he cut up... some of the 6 in that video he began to do when i said something so they are not as bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTjOL_1kVBY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Above is vid 2. These are the 6 i did.

Oh yes, forgot to say THIS IS A LEGAL MEDICAL ROOM. Videos make me nervous. People like to report shit that doesnt need reporting.

http://youtu.be/fMtNJ48Rqzg

http://youtu.be/nTjOL_1kVBY

Man,all you can do now is leave well enough alone....at least you'll be able to see a side by side comparison...imo it will be ok,maybe a little loss on the defoliated ones
LOL...like i said they're like humans,those yellowing leaves are like scabs....they'll come off when they're ready..don't be picking at'em!...lol.peace

chuck estevez said:

the only difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is 2 weeks, Let's hope for this kid's sake it's true for plants too.

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I haven't seen too many KID'S with a growroom that clean....lol.....but we know what your saying.peace

For starts, beautiful room!

Contrary to popular thought, buds don't need light, fan leaves do....... or ANY leaf that has a decent amount of surface area for conducting photosynthesis. This is just common sense.

Your friend needs to get his head out of cannabis forums and into a good book on botany.

Good luck,
UB

Thanks... yeah its hydro so no real need to be inside room much. Poly everything. Setup the enviroment control and feed schedual and let the plants do the rest. My rez and control bucket are outside room to keep in cold temps and darkness. I have it sealed with co2 burner so they dont even need me talking to them lol!

As for the plants that were cut up, im just nervous if the leafs get nute burn then what? Buds get any food locked out to them? Its not like there is a bunch on there.

akula said:

It's a good thing that cannabis is such a resilient plant because our community of stoner growers sure tries hard to fuck everything up. Hope your grow survives this, but it sure shows the sad state of our community.

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You can bet that if a grower finally realizes the hard way that some kewl technique is actually bullshit.....they'll be off and running trying desperately to find some "new" way to fuck it all up again. It's mind boggling.

I guess apples just create themselves. Silly why commercial apple growers don't understand what pot growers have known for years - that you'll get more and better quality apples if you just remove 1/2 of the foliage.

UB

ricky6991 said:

As for the plants that were cut up, im just nervous if the leafs get nute burn then what?

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Ricky, can we talk some common sense here, cause and effect? You feed plants based on their NEEDS, not some forum paradigm, chart, or schedule. Plants are dynamic living things. Now, since you butchered your faves it stands to REASON that they will require less elements, nutes, to sustain them as opposed to when they are bulking up such as late adulthood or during the stretch. It's a balancing act. You've got the growing drills/hardware together, now just use some common botanical sense.

Just in case you're not getting it yet, back off the nutes. They don't require much nutrition now cause there is not much photosynthesis going on. Again, you guys focus on buds when you should be focusing on the root system and foliage, retaining as much as possible until harvest. Don't you think that not only your flower production has been compromised, but the very foundation of your plant, it's roots, has too? It's already been said....finish them up and let them be.

Buds get any food locked out to them? Its not like there is a bunch on there.

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The ONLY food buds get is the simple and complex carbos the leaves make via photosynthesis and deliver to them via the phloem. Where are you getting this stuff that buds need plant food, nutritional salts? Your actions and those of your friends obviously aren't driven by what makes a plant tick. Get Mel Frank's book and learn some botany.

UB