Coming in late, but here's my 2 cents. IF you have plenty of surrounding light, enough to fully penetrate your canopy, defoliation does not seem viable.... as others said before me, LEAVES are what promote photosynthesis Yada Yada, With that being said, if your running Lower overall levels of light (less PAR not necessarily watts) Or your plants are too close together, THINNING the canopy to allow more light penetration, might previse some benefits to you.... but IMHO its a bandage for other inefficiency factors. Cheers
All you have to do is LST one plant to have this question answered for you. Tops/bud sites will not develop significantly if they don't receive direct light. Once you make room for a top to get direct light it takes off. I'm not a big fan of defoliation on the upper 75% of the plant. Bend a branch down horizontal and watch what happens to the lower buds that normally end up a single loose bowl. They reach up and become their own main tops. That development only happens when you expose those bud sites to direct light. Many plants are like this. Most bushes are almost hollow with no green growth hardly in the middle. It's the outside of the plant in direct light that develops the way it should. Lower shaded growth ends up weeks behind and sad by comparison. It's a waste in an annual. I removed an entire paper bag full of tops and leaves from only 2 plants the other day. All the tops that weren't going to get good light and were choking out the rest. The plant got so happy because of it. If bud sites developed without direct light I wouldn't bother thinning my plant out or removing any bottom growth. It's just going to get big anyway even without direct light right? That seems to be what people thought in 2011.. hehe.
I know this thread is old, but I have to comment. Mostly because it pops up on Google as top search results depending on what you search for.... so if may be old for the forum, but people are still seeing it. I need to fully and completely disagree with any type of defoliation, except for certain circumstances as some have previously stated, like growing in sub par lighting conditions and plants that are too close. Buds grow NO BIGGER OR DIFFERENTLY when exposed to more or less light !!!! It is all about the POSITION of the bud in respect to the hight of the plant. The closer the buds are to top of the canopy the bigger they will be. And it appears some where along the line someone attributed this to getting more light. It's not true. The plant is always going to have its main bud, the biggest one. This is why when you top, or bend the main stem, the plant shoots out more buds/branches to take the place of the top. The top buds will put out hormones that keep the lower branches smaller. If something happens to those top buds, the hormones are dispersed to the rest of the plant. Hence topping = bush. Light has no difference on bud size. All of your energy and food is produced in the FAN LEAVES. ALL OF IT. An example. My current grow, a few of my plants are situatated where equal bud sites (same height) around the plant get more or less light. Since the backside of the plant receives the least amount of light, according to your theories the buds on the back side should be smaller. But they are not. INFACT one of them was completely covered with a few fan leaves (from being so close with other plants ) again, you'd expect this to be smallest. BUT IT IS NOT. The amount of light on buds is irrelevant. You want light on fan leaves. Period. Would light on an apple make it grow bigger? What about a strawberry? Grapes? NO. it wouldn't. The Bud is the "fruit" of the plant. The plant produces the bud. The bud does not produce itself.
It's not hormones keeping the lower growth smaller, or the upper growth bigger, but I do agree with your belief in the "bud" and light. I'm responding to hopefully clear a couple of points of confusion you posted up. Don't get the wrong idea, you're on the right track, and I applaud your post of if more scientific approach. I will say that this it one of the top debated topics when it comes to growing cannabis, not so much in the other parts of horticulture. A lot of farmers learn to grow from forums this this, and the lingo used is more of a common tongue; for instance, "defoliation". Technically, defoliation means "remove leaves from", where many here will refer to it as more of a pruning method, including shoots, and stems. I think here its pertinent to bring up technicalities of your statement, and again I understand in the cannabis world, slang is common. "Buds" really means a compact knob-like growth on a plant that develops into a leaf, flower, or shoot. Light wont effect the bud very much at first, but as growth progresses, it may have more effect, depending on what kind of bud it is. I horticulture, cannabis is an "incomplete flower", and "imperfect flower". This means the flower of cannabis does not contain all four organs that a complete flower does (sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils), and may be configured or arranged in a manner that isn't compact as a conventional flower, like a rose. Of course, we smoke the female parts of Cannabaceae Plantae (cannabis) with the most trichomes. Other examples of Cannabaceae are Moraceae, Aphananthe, Gironniera, Lozanella, Humulus, Celtis, Pteroceltis, Chaetachme aristata, and the Trema. This isn't found to be accurate, as many farmers prune their plants in a way where the top growths of each flower are indistinguishable from each other, and the yield from each flower is uniform throughout. The "biggest" growth is directly related to sink strength within the plant as a whole, not necessarily hormones from the upper flowers. While hormones do control aspects of growth, in meristems, "osmosis" and "low pressure" are the chief reasons for the direction of "photosynthate" (plant food). Lack of photosynthate is the reason for the lower branches having less growth. There is "relative osmotic location",as the closer the sink is to the source, the more efficient the growth is, meaning, if the flower is closer to a leaf, the plant food travels to the destination in the flower, and cell division within the flower occurs faster. Hope this clears some things up. Good luck and happy growing
I didnt read all the comments but it seems like nobody on here been growing plants for a long enouf time to experiment it them selves. People on here just seem to like writing stuff. The plant wants to grow how it grows naturally. You can help it by picking just the leaves off that turn yellow befor its too visable cause the plant is just putting in allot of energy keeping it alive. Take your biggest leaves off during bloom so light can reach further in, you have buds down there that receive energy to grow from the leaves near it, on the same branch. What good is nutrents if you dont got light for energy? Dont take more than 15% of your leaves off doin this though, just make it look like light is flowing through it a little better. Hopefully you got a breeze to keep the plants moving around so its not hitting the same little spot in there. Happy growing guys.
not surprised there are 40 different answers on here. The battle lines are clearly drawn between the "lollipoppers" and the "old schoolers". I fall kind of in between on this. I generally do not trimp anything off during flower. I just feed her and let her do her thing. I just recently started some minor lollipopping, where I just cut off the lower bud growth, far under the canopy. All the shit that I don't want to trim. However, I always leave the fan leaves on. Even the bud sights I cut off, I still have fan leaves there. I always just go with the thought process that if the plant didn't need it, it probably wouldn't have grown it. Why do you think for leaves pop up when you trim the others? Because the plant needs its solar panels. The leaves are the engine that drives the bud growth, so I generally don't mess with them at all.
I lolipoped a female it makes bigger bud growth Sent from my SM-J320R4 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
May I just make one adjustment to the theory you presented. More UV-B light increases resin production. Aside from being sunscreen, increased resin production is a proven fact. That's why people run 10ks the last two weeks. So that means there in a relation to buds getting light and producing more resin. So why wouldn't it grow bigger buds? And what about imbonioe nutrients?
This is very on point. Maybe also add that adequate light getting to buds can stimulate resin head production. That's why growers use 10ks the last two weeks. And that's why I prefer greenhouses as the sunlight has the best light available to us farmers.
I almost don't want to pass on this link the info is so good. It's called the Cannabis Cultivation and Science podcast. Listen to episode 43 with PhD Dr. Allison Justice of Outco and SC Labs. Another scientist and her have done extensive scientific testing on lollipopping and defoliation of cannabis. Scientific papers to come. Their finding are any leaf or plant structure on an indoor plant getting under 200umols of light is a drain on plant resources as a whole because of inefficient photosynthesis. The growth groups attached to it get inferior development and become a sink on resources to the plant. You can almost go around with a light meter and if that group of leaves is getting under 200 umols it is a net deficit to the plant as a whole and needs to come off. They are scientifically proving what experienced growers have known for a while. The bottom of the plant in an indoor garden if it's choked for light is useless and will limit the production of the top buds that are actually in light that produces.
She said the defoliating techniques with cannabis were similar to what peach growers do. I guess they also heavily defoliate and actually knock half of their peaches off so the ones that are left are larger and more healthy. They saw no reduction in final yield defoliating up to week 4 as long as it was done selectively.
Thing that bothers me is that I dont jnow what ti defoliate while are they in veg mide,And If I do that in flower i just stress them too much??
It takes some practice but you want to thin the plant out if it's too bushy. Instead of removing much material at all from the upper strong branches remove the reachy tops that start at the bottom with thin branches and reach up to the top clogging up the light penetration. Limit top canopy thickness to 12-18" and thin it out for air circulation and proper penetration. Everything below that 12-18" area remove completely to bare branches.
5days into flower mate, I never bother with a big defoliation during veg mode just little bits off the bottom as I like to try focus on getting the canopy as even as possible. Will only be doing the second stage of schwazzing when the stretch is over around week2/3 of flower, I typically get 0.85 grams per watt using this technique Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum