Question about trimming fan leaves during flowering

[effektz]

Hey city, I'm on my first medical grow and things are going swimmingly. I have 6 plants going under a 1000 watt bulb. Im growing 6 different strains and one exploded and is a lot taller and busher than all the others.

I'm 2 weeks into flowering, and I'm wondering if it will do more harm than good to trim the new, giant fan leaves at the top of the plants to let light into the bottom.

Is the trade-off worth it? Having light hit the inner plant, in exchange for cutting the top fan leaves. Any and all suggestions and advice is welcome, thanks!

[britishcolumbia]

trim all the red stemmed fan leafs. leave the ones close to the nodes. This will help in controlling humidity

[effektz]

are you talking about the giant fan leaves that stick way out or the smaller fan leaves forming in the buds?

And if other people would please weight in that'd be great

[bouldernugs]

DON'T TRIM FAN LEAVES! They're the main solar panels for the plants.. they have the most surface area and produce the most sugars to be carried to other developing parts of the plants.

[vLaDii]

bump, sounds helpful

[LBH]

Originally Posted by bouldernugs

DON'T TRIM FAN LEAVES! They're the main solar panels for the plants.. they have the most surface area and produce the most sugars to be carried to other developing parts of the plants.

Along with other vitamins and nutrients.

I trim as few fan leaves from the very lower canopy as possible but not till at least 4 weeks into flower. Even then, it has to be yellowing drained of nutrient already. If you have to pull leaves, do it in incriments, keeping stress as low as possible, don''t pull them all in one sitting.

[HERB INSURGENT]

Originally Posted by bouldernugs

DON'T TRIM FAN LEAVES! They're the main solar panels for the plants.. they have the most surface area and produce the most sugars to be carried to other developing parts of the plants.

i dont trim any fan leaves unless their yellowing or damaged , tuck em or tie em back but i wouldnt trim a healthy leaf

[LBH]

Originally Posted by HERB INSURGENT

tuck em or tie em back

I knew I left something out,lol. THIS ^^ is your solution.

[HerbGuy]

Excuse me! Bump lol. What about cutting them in half? More harm than good?

[bouldernugs]

cutting leaves in half is done to reduce transpiration after taking a clone. since the clone obviously has no root structure for the first few days of its life, you want to cut large leaves in half so that they don't make an embolism in the plant by transpiring too much and sucking up air through the xylem. that's also why you keep clones in a humidity dome.. you want to keep the air surrounding them very humid so that is slows transpiration. In a healthy plant, only cut those fan leaves when they look spent. the large fan leaves usually yellow first because the plant is actually taking nutrients stored in the cells of the leaves and using them in other parts of the plant that need those nutrients for flowering. i would only cut leaves in half when cloning.

if you're looking to clean up your understory a little bit and clean up the canopy to let light in, the best way to do it is to LST to expose as many budsites as possible or use a scrog. You'll bite yourself in the ass if you cut off too many fan leaves as your plants will not be happy with you. if you do the scrog, you do have a little more leeway when it comes to cutting fan leaves because you're supposed to 'lollipop' or trim the understory that doesn't get exposed to light. i would still do it slowly, though, if you absolutely have to do it, just to stress the plant as little as possible.

[LBH]

Originally Posted by bouldernugs

cutting leaves in half is done to reduce transpiration after taking a clone. since the clone obviously has no root structure for the first few days of its life, you want to cut large leaves in half so that they don't make an embolism in the plant by transpiring too much and sucking up air through the xylem. that's also why you keep clones in a humidity dome.. you want to keep the air surrounding them very humid so that is slows transpiration. In a healthy plant, only cut those fan leaves when they look spent. the large fan leaves usually yellow first because the plant is actually taking nutrients stored in the cells of the leaves and using them in other parts of the plant that need those nutrients for flowering. i would only cut leaves in half when cloning.

if you're looking to clean up your understory a little bit and clean up the canopy to let light in, the best way to do it is to LST to expose as many budsites as possible or use a scrog. You'll bite yourself in the ass if you cut off too many fan leaves as your plants will not be happy with you. if you do the scrog, you do have a little more leeway when it comes to cutting fan leaves because you're supposed to 'lollipop' or trim the understory that doesn't get exposed to light. i would still do it slowly, though, if you absolutely have to do it, just to stress the plant as little as possible.

I've been following a few very specific scrogs as I learn and I notice they don't pull the lower stuff. The nice thing about the screen is that it gives you all kinds of tucking options for those big leaves. You can pop the bud site up above the screen and tuck the fans below.

[belialtheunholy]

I guess we'll all have to see what this produces. Because I've been trimming all the fan leaves off of my plants, and all in one sitting.

You definitely increase airflow, and your humidity drops quite a bit. The leaves tend to grow back in a week, so even if you think you made a mistake doing it once, you'll be okay next week.

I've been told that trimming the fan leaves allows the plant to put energy into bud production rather than leaf. Same thing with the trichomes. When it's their time to come, they develop on the buds rather than the fan leaves. That sucks if you're trying to make hash, but if you want some dense, sugary nugs, I was told to trim the fan leaves.

Either way I'm not upset. We'll see how things turn out.

[toastybiz]

I also am in the camp of not trimming healthy growth, especially big fans during flowering. Tuck or tie to allow better light penetration.

[ironlung253]

Originally Posted by belialtheunholy

I guess we'll all have to see what this produces. Because I've been trimming all the fan leaves off of my plants, and all in one sitting.

You definitely increase airflow, and your humidity drops quite a bit. The leaves tend to grow back in a week, so even if you think you made a mistake doing it once, you'll be okay next week.

I've been told that trimming the fan leaves allows the plant to put energy into bud production rather than leaf. Same thing with the trichomes. When it's their time to come, they develop on the buds rather than the fan leaves. That sucks if you're trying to make hash, but if you want some dense, sugary nugs, I was told to trim the fan leaves.

Either way I'm not upset. We'll see how things turn out.

You can trim up to 50% of your plants leaves and probably not experience any problems. That's fine to do during veg, but after flowering starts you do not want to be trimming and removing unless a bud site is totally covered and you can't tuck or move the leaf out of the way.

I think a better idea is to just remove some of the lower branching altogether. This is especially true the lower the wattage you have to work with. You don't have to worry about exposing these sites, that are just sucking energy from tops where it is better utilized anyways.

[hipster]

Originally Posted by belialtheunholy

That sucks if you're trying to make hash, but if you want some dense, sugary nugs, I was told to trim the fan leaves.

You were told? That's not a very good reason to me. My first two grows I plucked all of them off and I will never do that again. That was before I found Grass City. That plant grew those fan leaves for a reason. I'm strictly a "bender" now and I don't pluck any of them, ever.