Defoliation for yeild?

Try waiting till after the initial stretch happens right after you change your lights to 12/12 to remove lower branches and deep inner growth. This will give you a good idea what will and won't amount to anything. I take off the bottom third of the plant worth of growth after the first 12 days of budding and clean up the small growth with no bud formation near the middle. I've more than doubled my yield and cut my trim time in half using this method. It also allows good ventilation in between plants with all the in needed foliage in the way.

 

Un needed foliage out of the way-*********

 

[quote name='"striker1"']I am going to remove the bottom 30%, I guess I will do it slowly, Just lower leaves or branches also?TIA[/quote]

I would remove the little scraggly branches at the bottom.

 

Defoliation is a MUST! I see so many setups where there could be so much more weight with just a little time.

There is no magic ratio per se. First, keep this in mind: even when you get the nicest, densest finished bud its still at least half leaf honestly. They are so crusty in the middle they are just part of the bud. So even when it looks bare in comparison, once there are colas there is still a huge ratio of leafs to calyx'. This is where a huge misconception changes. Once there are established colas the sun leaves actually rob energy from them. You want full light on colas, and every part of them. Colas have plenty of leaf area to convert light, and now sun leaves are these big energy suckers with a ton of weight hanging very far away from the main stem, this makes the leaf weigh exponentially more, basic math and leverage, and more energy wasted on thick stems to support the leaves. The more buds and the bgger they are, the more leaf area, the less need for 'sun suckers' as I call them.

I do a canopy or scrog method, but with sativas. Same principle apply for me though. First is: undegrowth. I have had canopies that were more spaced out where I left the undergrowth and got huge solid buds even under the main canopy. I did this by defoling the main canopy with the intention of.getting light down to the lower stuff. I usually trim away the lower stuff though and do a more intensive and selective defole on the canopy. Let's say at two weeks I will take a good bit off, so that I can see light on the trays pretty good. Over a couple weeks it will darken back up, and I go through and carefully remove again to get some light through. Air movement is often talked about too, I call this the light movement. It's more about WHICH leaves are removed as opposed to how many. Any leaf blocking a nug is a detriment on your crop.

As my crop finishes, the buds have more and more leaf area as the grow bigger since they are always gonna be a lot of leaf. I slowly take away more and more of the big sun leaves until at the end I basically have a canopy of solid nugs. I typically get very little trim per pound since so many of those heavy leaves have been removed while growing, even some crusty ones. But the extra hash not worth the lost bud.

 

once fans get over 3-4 inches its time for them to go!!!!

 

LOL. more of the blind leading the blind.

PW

 

[quote name='"pointswest"']

LOL. more of the blind leading the blind.

PW[/quote]

Nearly personal opinion. As is the choice to grow in dirt, soiless or hydro! All personal choices my good man! As an indoor grower light to the buds is a big deal. As where outside defoliation isn't a necessity. Yet gain, my personal opinion. You guys will find there are a million ways to grow with another thousand variations on said grow style. So to come on here and call it the blind leading the blind sounds kinda asinine! The end'

 

I don't have any reputation to prove myself around here or anything but I've always personally been a full believer in not removing ANYTHING green from my plant. If it's green then the leaves still have unused energy that you are wasting by removing them. Now what I do with my plants is I will maneuver the leaves around to give the lower colas more light while still keeping my leaves on the plant. Just because some of the leaves aren't getting full sun or light all the time doesn't mean they're wasting energy. It's not like the plant has a set "limited" amount of energy that it can use because the limit is the size of the plant itself which includes the amount of leaves and foilage, am I right? This is just my opinion from the information I've gathered and every body i fully entitled to their own opinion.

I do know for sure though that I have seen worried people posting pictures of their poor plants that had several fan leaves removed thus resulting in miniature pathetic buds. Be careful with this...

 

I hate to burst your bubble, but defoliation for hi yield is an advanced technique that has been used quietly for a long time indoors. When you say:" It's not like the plant has a set "limited" amount of energy that it can use because the limit is the size of the plant itself which includes the amount of leaves and foilage, am I right? " you are in fact wrong. Whats wrong is indoors we have a limited amount of "energy" to FEED the plant with. Meaning LIGHT. Feel free to grow all the leaves you wish. But for those wanting to grow buds, many of us strip the hell out of the fan leaves during our grow.

There is more involved than just saying remove the leaves. But basically that's what those of us that use this method are doing. My last indoor grow I had 1 plant yield 7.5oz dry using this technique and it was only 34" tall. I hope to surpass that this grow. I have seen growers report getting 10+ oz regularly and up to 19oz using this technique, indoors, in hydro, off of single plants with height restrictions (they weren't 6' tall plants).

I have totally stripped in veg almost every single fan leaf (usually two times before flower), and in flower, after stretch is over strip any fan leaf that has a 1" or longer stem, and all that the corresponding bud site is well developed and growing on it's own. Doing this adds LOADS more light to the bud sites TOP TO BOTTOM and popcorn is no longer a question. That popcorn becomes bud. Maybe only the size of a quarter down low, but it's solid hard nug. All because it got light.

I highly suggest you google: Defoliation Hi-Yield technique and spend a week or two reading.

 

Leaves not getting any significant amount of light, often like those at the very bottom, can be done away with. When a leaf blocks a major budsite, it can be removed because the green parts of the bud can process food and because the light will increase the growth of bud at that site. Pretty much all other leaves benefit bud growth and should be kept. If keeping these leaves requires more resources than are produced by them, the best course of action would be to either increase light levels or decrease the size of the grow area. The effort used to heal cuts should also be considered when deciding if removal will be beneficial or not.

Only cut a little at a time, allowing time to heal between prunings.

Less photosynthesis, as well as fewer growing shoots, means less food will be used and removing a significant amount of foliage will impact nutritional needs.

 

So jelly, you're saying that all those folks running 1-6 plant grows in tents and what not that strip all the fan leaves off at varying times in a grow and yield 7-19 oz per plant with plants under 40" tall are wrong?

This 34" tall plant that gave me 7.5 oz dry, was defoliated twice in veg, then at 21 days of flower and continual removal of any fan leaf with a stem during the rest of flower, was wrong? You don't see diddly for fans on that plant just moments before harvest.

Defoliation for yield is an advanced technique that some folks have done (indoors) for many years. It's often spoken little because there are so many that are hell bent in their belief that this is bad and that leaves mean everything to the flower.

As always, try to keep an open mind, research, and research a lot, then research a little more, then decide for yourself if it's worth a try.

 

Bah was trying to get the pic just b4 harvest loaded, I'll give it another try:

Not my best pics of the plant, but there are more of it in my albums or whatever.

 

Many thanks to you for providing me with this information. I had the wrong impression of this technique, I can just never get myself to rip any precious leaves off of my plant...lol. I completely get your point too about being indoor and having limited light, I've only had experience outdoor and I guess I'm used to not having to deal much with the angles of light because the sun moves all around for you...heh.

Again thanks man, I use these forums for the knowledge shared among all of us. You can never learn too much information.

 

Nice to hear striker. I really wouldnt worry about pulling any fan leaves that have a stem and are not directly attached to a developed bud site.

The only time I don't pluck a fan leaf in flower (after the strip at 21 days I mean), is if it's attached to a newly developing tiny budsite that has no real leaves yet. But once it gets leaves, that corresponding fan leaf is gone.

**I should note too however, that I do often leave the outer most fans in the grow that will never shade anything except when it's on a really skinny branch and the weight of those fans hinder the branch from reaching straight up for the light.

Below are 10 pics. First two are newly planted seedlings. They were fim'd 2 days ago. I'll remove nearly all the fan leaves in about 3 more days or when I know the topping has developed. Then within 7-10 days they will be fully re leafed and branching out nice and wide. I'll strip them probably two more times before going into flower and shoot for 17" tall at most before going into 12/12.

The other 8 are my current grow, 36 days into flower on a 10 week strain (kosher kush). They were defoliated in fl0wer near end of stretch and now constantly have fan leaves removed once they have a stem. As you can see, almost every branch is bent at least three times to keep the canopy as even as possible and spread out wide. There's only 4 plants in that 5'x5' tent, and it's a good 12" deep of nothing but bud. Only half way through now, so I expect they will end up being pretty nice solid good size buds.

** dont know whats going on but I can't get pics to upload. keeps failing. Will try in next post***