Yet you consistantly bash and ignore the experienced growers who are growing more bud per square feet then yourself utilizing these methods of leaf removal that defy all botanical facts/science. Its like listening to an old broken record sometimes. You and a few others choose to ignore FACTS. FACT is that removing the right leaves and the right time under certain types of grows will increase yields substantially. You have made it pretty clear you have never even grown a full SOG so clearly you really have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to leaf removal and this style of growing. I do as do others that have chimed in who remove leaves. The ones that do all have one thing in common, we have much higher then average yields. Mother nature didnt intend for us to cram 60 plants in a 16 square foot area. If you choose to grow in SOG, a proven high yielding stlye, you will need to start removing leaves unless you want to harvest mostly leaf. End of story. I have a 4X8 tray right now with 90 plants on it one week into bloom. It would be very obvious to anyone looking at it that you need to remove leaves in the next couple weeks or half the bud sites will bne totally covered by layers of leaves.
I also find your last comment funny to. No doubt there is a bunch of BS marketing out there but a lot of these things works. "Snow Storm Ultra" fo instance works very vey well in increasing trichomes. Its dirt cheap and very concentrated too. As soon as I started running trays with it it was very obvious and the results speak for themself. Of course people like you will just dismiss the proven results and say it wasnt controlled enough for your standards to prove anything. Gravity also works amazingly well at make buds rock hard.
I know I am wasting my breath on some and certain old dogs cant be taught new tricks . I do think however that there are enough people out there not blinded by their own egos/arrogance to see through all the BS.
I do not recommend removing ANY healthy or mostly healthy fan leaves during ANY phase of the plants growth.
Doing so only inhibits the plants growth. This is scientific fact... and NOT just an opinion.
Plants leaves use different types of chlorophyll, the two main types of chlorophyll are simply named A and B. They are used to process photo-active light along with the nutrients and fluid absorbed through the roots to produce cellular growth. No where else on the plant are the different types of chlorophyll required to complete this process present. They can only be found in the leaves.
The chlorophyll inside the stalks and calyxs are merely the cellular building blocks. They can be considered the structural cells. These cells make up the majority of the plants structure but do little (basically nothing) to aid in energy production and cellular growth. These cells are the cells created by the different types of chlorophyll cells in the leaves and the nutrients absorbed through the roots.
The leaves can basically be considered factories for carbohydrate production and warehouses for storage of the carbohydrates for a plant. They process the light and create food for growth. No where else on the plant does this happen other than to a very minor and highly inefficient degree. If you remove the plants ability to carry out this process, in any amount, it will inhibit the plants growth. This can easily be proved by removing ALL of the leaves from the plant. The coinciding result of this is death.
The calyxs and stalks of the plant process photo-active light energy only in a very minor way, to a far less efficient degree. Only the leaves carry out that process in full and with total efficiency. So ensuring that the "buds" get more light does absolutely nothing. That's kind of like saying, if you rip off all the leaves on a Rose bush but leave the flowers on it, the flowers will get bigger because they get more light... It simply doesn't make sense and is technically biologically impossible. Cannabis is merely an annual flower. The calyxs (flowers, buds) require the leaves and roots to create the food for the cellular growth to take place. That is a scientifically proven fact that will never be proven to be incorrect by some little clown shoe simply observing their basement grow and thinking that something might or will work better than what thousands and thousands of years of evolution came up with.
Also, as a plant grows, the leaves and root system grow together in unison, they strive for a 50/50 ratio in mass between the above soil portion of the plant and the below soil portion of the plant. They support each other in a required methodology to continue growing.
If you remove any amount of the leaves the plants growth will slow as it becomes aware that food production has become unbalanced. What happens is simple, it grows more leaves to compensate and catch up to the root system. This reaction however, halts all the other growth as the plant focuses it's energy to create more leaves so it can regain it's ability to sustain itself and resume normal growth. Obviously how severe this process affects the plants overall growth depends solely on how much leaf matter is removed.
Consider other functions of the leaf. Consider the importance of the stoma (pl. stomata) A stomata is a microscopic pore on the surface (epidermis) of land plants. It is surrounded by a pair of specialized epidermal cells called guard cells, which act as a turgor-driven valve that open and close the pores in response to given environmental conditions.
The presence of countless numbers of stomata is critical for plant function.
Typically, the plant epidermis is tightly sealed by wax-coated, interlocking epidermal pavement cells, which protect the plant body from the dry atmosphere and UV-rays.
At the same time plants must be able to breathe, or exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen, for photosynthesis and respiration.
Stomata act as a gateway for efficient gas exchange and water movement from the roots through the vasculature to the atmosphere. Transpiration via stomata supplies water and minerals to the entire plant system. When a plant encounters adverse environmental conditions, such as drought, a plant hormone called abscisic acid triggers stomata to shut tightly in order to prevent plants from dehydration and wilting.
Remove fan leaves and you have cut off the efficient, exchange of gasses, which is vitally important to healthy plant growth and full plant production.
I'm sorry but removing healthy leaves from plants just doesn't seem like a good idea when you look at the science of how a plant functions... Not to mention there is absolutely zero SCIENTIFIC evidence that removing leaves to expose "bud sites" to more light increases their size or weight. All the current scientific information suggests exactly the opposite... all their is on the other side of the argument is personal opinion and personal belief and neither come within light years of being scientifically proven fact, even though some here, like the one I am replying to claim it to be "fact."
When it comes to increasing the number of trichomes and the amount of resin they produce, keep your humidity low in flower and add UV-B lighting rather than waste your money on snake-oils that are mostly water. In nature, where these plants evolved, most strains with the highest number of trichomes per inch or centimeter or whatever unit if measurement you wish to use, and with the most resin per trichome head grow in areas of low humidity and high UV-B lighting. Both conditions are naturally harmful to plants of all types so through thousands and thousands of years of evolution plants developed ways to protect themselves from such conditions and what they do is precisely what we want them to do given our use of them.
Do your best to create conditions, a growing environment, that will make plants grow that way, the way their genetic coding will cause them to grow the very best they possibly can, which is also the way we most want them to grow, and the results will be the very best the plants will ever be capable of achieving.
Use their thousands and thousands of years of evolution and genetic coding to your advantage rather than attempt to fight it, to overcome it, to reverse it and to attempt to force plants to grow in a totally unnatural way that will only assure they will will never be capable of reaching their full potential.
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