so i'm far from an advanced grower but i'm hoping to find some help here on my first run to make it as much a success as possible! i vegged 5 plants for 4 weeks from seed then swapped to 12/12. working with limited space and 400w of CFLs so i decided to flower them in 1 gal pots with coir. each plant grown to 1.5-2 ft in height so far the buds are very frosty but very small. the plants are lanky looking even though they were grown in an enclosed space and not very tall... When I started growing I read not to do defoliation because the fan leaves are plant's "solar panels" and all this. Decided fuck it after seeing so many expert growers using defoliation and the obvious fact that even tied down the big leaves most of my colas were empty or wispy hairs receiving little or no light. I cut about a gallon bag worth of leaves off my 5 plants and they look a lot more normal for this stage. I'm hoping the plants can easily recover and hopefully this will solve my problem with small buds? Perhaps I can get good sized buds by simply letting chopping down the top colas as they finish and letting the bottom nugs get some extra days of light at the end? before and after. as you can see the top nugs are forming nicely but everything else is quite sparse. please let me know if you think there's still time to salvage a decent yield a lot more budding sites are visible to the lights now
Well that makes one of us. I don't know any expert growers who cut off the fan leaf. All the experts I know, do in fact know to leave them on. Your plants will still grow, and god willing, you will still have a fine harvest. We get better as we learn from our mistakes. http://youtu.be/xYq7CuVpAeo
thanks a lot for this response. i also have seen this video and others which is why i kept the leaves on as long as i did. however i saw many other people saying to defoliate especially saying to defoliate during flowering. i've seen a couple places saying to defoliate at day 21 and 45 of flowering as well as defoliating during veg to increase growth rates.. i even saw some guys saying they defoliate any fan leaf with a stem as soon as they seen it appear (leaving only the leaves attached to buds) anyone else seen this kind of info floating around ? some of these guys are supposedly pulling great yields by the way
probably true. i have learned a lot since putting the beans in the ground. i have read about growing for years but barely retained any of that info until i had my own stuff in the ground. a couple months ago LST sounded too complicated for me and i was too impatient during veg to top them but you can bet the next round they will be better
plants are looking happy and healthy 24 hours after defoliation. the smell is noticably stronger now too with the fans blowing on buds instead of fan leaves. i may have made a mistake by cutting so many leaves but i think it will be okay. i think it's good that i cut all the leaves at once because the plants will likely switch into defense mode temporarily and reduce resin production. getting this over with one and done seems better than continually defoliating healthy leaves. i would guess the buds have about 5 more weeks until maturity so there will be plenty of time to bounce back if any damage did occur. first grow i'm just hoping for a zip or two of small but potent nuggets. the entire duration of this grow i've only smoked mids so my first taste of homegrown will be especially sweet
I just used defoliation on my plants, I think the sativas tending to grow tall colas are helped a lot, light gets to the bottoms of the colas better. Haven't seen any stress from it. Only way to tell for sure is same strain side-by-side.
Patience is the key to this hobby. Most bud development occurs during the last 2-3 weeks of flowering. Next grow top and LST and you will see a big difference. Also you are running 400 actual watts with you cfls? . Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Thanks for the suggestion. For my next grow i'm getting serious. This was bag seeds... the plants are high THC but the genetics are unstable... pulled one herm in week 2 of flowering and another one of the girls in the pic is popping nanners in week 5 not sure if i will pull it too or just keep an eye out for balls. Anyway next grow I'm doing it right - high quality genetics and I'm gonna do a SOG style grow with a mum and clones. I do have 400 true watts of CFL. You can't see all the lights in the pic because some of them hang over the plants and I had to take them down to get a good pic. running 6 x 63 watt 2700k 1 60 watt 6500k 1 40 watt 2700k can't wait to see how these last couple weeks turn out. Buds are noticeably bigger since the pics above
Be careful not to do it too much and don't do it to an extreme. You may inspire the plant to try and propagate the species (ie mutate hermie) due to it realizing that it's own personal grow season is coming to an end. It's amazing how much you learn just in one grow. Imagine what you will know after you have 5 or 10 for that matter. You will get better and better each time. Having the right gear will really let you focus on just being a good grower.
Cutting off leaves is fine in a very controlled manner. Now if you think it makes for more bud it dont, It just saves trimming. Iv been taking some leaves of mine but not that you can tell. LOL View attachment 1630899
ouch.... the occational fan leaf here and there is fine when defoliating. I have grown some monsters where the center of the plant was nearly dark so its beneficial to pluck a few to thin the mass. Dont take leaves that are getting direct light. The people who told you the leaves are like solar panels are kinda right....leaves are the food factories. your buds wont get much bigger then that after taking nearly all the fans off. next time just take a few and see what that does.
i'm not sure it makes as big a difference as everyone says here... maybe i did slow down growth a little bit by doing this but many leaves have grown back and the ones i left on grew a lot bigger... also it sounds like you guys might not have been growing with CFLs... before defoliation only the top buds were developing now i have well developed buds all throughout the plants there's some shots of the buds now i would say they've almost doubled in size in the past couple weeks and still growing strong... starting to really reek for a couple CFL bulbs in a 2 x 6 x 6 ft closet i'm pretty happy with them
Be VERY careful they don't hermie on you! Keep an eye out for pods and nanners. Cutting plant during flower = stress. Stress during flower = hermie. It's that simple.
The room about 18 x 30 but all the plants are sitting in a 4 x 6 space . I dont close things in. I dont ever use tents just light curtains. air can flow all around. I have room for 5 grow rooms but just have this and a closet LED grow going.
I used to wonder why some of my cab grown weed was piss-weak. Defoliation is part of poor plant management. I've been there, I'm afraid. You'll still get a harvest out of your plants, but you've really lost the potential you had. Yield and potency will both by substantially decreased because you've massively decreased the ability of the plant to capture the light. The plant has wasted its resources replacing missing leaves, instead of growing buds. Buds don't capture light very well, leaves do. Buds grow in the shade of leaves just fine - like other plant fruits. eg http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23433030 and specifically