Why is defoliation so controversial?

tstick said:

Has anyone ever grown a strain that produces very few fan leaves and almost all buds?

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Boru420 said:

i defoliated the fuck out of my plants, ye ha it dropped the humidity if nothing else.

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LordEnki said:

i am under the impression that once in flower the plant wont grow back anything removed from it.

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getogrow said:

it wont ever grow back anything but it will shoot new growth in veg or flower. Or these guys that believe in this method believe that the plant will focus more on the new growth vs the leaves they take off.

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LordEnki said:

thats exactly what ive read most places. extreme defoliation just before flower and then a month in and the plants "focus" on flower growth and not regrowing lost foliage.

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Hollatchaboy said:

Why not just harvest in stages? Take the tops first, clears the way for lower buds to get more light, wait another week or so, harvest lower buds.

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ÒÒlegilizeitÒÒ said:

I scrog avoid needing this
I defoliate because otherwise the canopy would be way too thick

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PJ Diaz said:

I do a modified scrog, and did a multi-stage harvest last run, which seemed to work well. I do get more than a couple feet of vertical growth above my lowest net

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Hollatchaboy said:

I did a multi stage harvest with a scrog. Prolly much different than your setup and the lower growth ripened up much better but it obviously wasn't as potent.

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PJ Diaz said:

TBH, I felt like the lowers that I harvested a week later were more potent, but the terps were different (less preferable with late harvest).

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Severed Tongue said:

So how come the guys like Jeorge Cervantes, say it's bad and don't do it as its a source of food?

Y'all saying he's wrong???? Lol

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TerrapinBlazin said:

Things got a little heated in another thread when I and another poster put up some pics of our defoliation. He “schwazzed” the plant and I did something much less extreme. This caused one of the main forum admins to come in and speak out against defoliation, with no small amount of derision towards me and the other poster, I might add.

I didn’t think this was controversial. I thought it was settled science that judicious defoliation virtually eliminates larf. Sure I understand urging some caution, and I personally do it incrementally like the guide in the link describes, except this it was a local friend that showed me how to do this.

I’ll admit I was skeptical but he challenged me to try it and I’m always up for a challenge. I got much less larf and now I swear by it. I know that lots of people are bound to fuck up their plants doing this, but I don’t think that means it should be categorically discouraged. There’s no one right way to do things after all.

I like to grow a lot of indica dominant plants with tight nodes. I get fan leaves laying on each other and restricted airflow if I don’t take fan leaves off. This technique is used in commercial agriculture too. I just don’t understand all the hate. I get almost no larf and it’s never even slowed my plants down.

I’d just like to hear some of your thoughts and see if a consensus can be reached. I agree with this article 100% and think it’s great advice. Here’s some pics of my plants in different stages of flowering, all defoliated almost identically to the method described in the article below.

Cannabis Defoliation Tutorial To Increase Yields | Grow Weed Easy

Controversial defoliation can increase your yields dramatically indoors... but removing leaves is for advanced growers only! When done wrong, defoliation can kill your plants!

www.growweedeasy.com

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NanoGadget said:

I almost never do much defoliation, but I think I probably need to modify my methods for this run. Shit got really crowded.View attachment 4814506 Did a light trim at flip and its already a shit show again 2 weeks later..

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bernie344 said:

Yeah....if only leaves were a good smoke it would be so easy.

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NanoGadget said:

I eat em!

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