So i was watching/reading some grow journals a few months ago. I wasent brave enough to do it on my last grow but this time im going both feet in. Pruning/Topping cannabis: So i read from someone and watched the photos and the benefits he reaped. Every 2 weeks take the fan leaves off, but not all of them. Just the ones covering bud sites, redirects water/nutrients to the bud sites, we want photosynthesis BUT we want the buds during flowering to do the photosynthesis and concentrate nutrients and water into them. So taking away fan leaves gives more available water for buds to swell, along with telling the plant that solar panel is gone, so it can focus more on the bud. Along with taking the fan leaves, it also creates hormone changes in that branch, whether it be far up the branch or lower it still has this effect. taking the fan leaves also improves air flow through the canopy of your plant/plants. What interested me in this, was watching people grow plants where the plant is about 9" tall, with 8 branches come from this tree, and the buds are the size of my arm wrist to shoulder. This is what im after, i have such limited space im looking to make this stupid huge nugs. Now my other theory as to how people do this, is during the first few weeks of flowering as the buds start to develop you pull the light away and let them stretch, not the branches, you do this after the branch stretch. Thus making the stretching of the bud and elongating it, then you bring the light in a concentrate it to fatten the buds and make them dense. Looking for anyone's input, thanks everyone for reading this.
The fan leaves are the plant's energy source. The bud doesn't have any use for water or nutrients, it needs food, and the fan leaves make the food. They use sunlight to do this. The less leaf surface there is, the less food that can be made and the slower the plant can grow bud. Once the fan leaves are fully grown, they use hardly any food and make a lot. It's these that feed the plant. The leaves also exchange o2 & co2, cut them off and this is ceased. To put it simply, if you cut half your leaves off, it's the equivalent of turning half of your lights off. Any light hitting the ground has been missed by the plant and has been wasted. If I see a bud blocking light from a leaf I try to tuck it down so the light gets to the leaf instead
Stuff like this Majority of those fan leaves were removed. Just the fan leaves that come from the bud sites themselves remain.
Or this one, this was a LST and now he has to Yo-Yo the Buds up cause they are so heavy. By the way long time no see GoldGrower
Can you imagine the amount of bud you would have had if you had let the plant keep it fan leaves? lol.. It's good to see you DarkEetrius, it has been a while mate, how's things with you? Plants always look good when you take the leaves off because you can see the bud, you could be forgiven for thinking a plant looks less impressive when the leaves are hiding it, but it's all there none the less. I did a side by side grow years back, and the plants with most light absorbing, food making, breathing leaves are able to grow the most bud. The only leaves I would consider taking off would be leaves that are below the main canopy and are not receiving any light, but even these ones will be drained of their resources and dropped by the plant if they are not pulling their weight
Yup selective defoliation works well I know this first hand...If you want big buds you need heavy yielding genetics, secondly you need the optimum amount of light and you need your environment dialed in. And when you're trying to achieve buds like the ones you have pictured you don't want to pull the light away ever, you want it as close as possible even after the initial stretch to achieve those dense thick buds, here's one of my buds.
Man so far outta my 2 years now of growing, no matter what i do i cant get my end result of fan leaves to look anything like that. My plant would.........nvm i just put a logical thought together that ive been having PH issues the whole time because i had a garbage PH meter. This grow should be different then all my others. Now with your leaves right there, you are at end stage flush, 2wks im guessing and hydro. Is that how you get the leaves to do that or can i achieve that with soil also?
as long as the plant isn't being supplied with the nutrients to keep producing foliage you will get leaves dying away at the end of the cycle.
Guess it would make sense then that i cant get those results, through doing organic growing i would have extra microbes and what have you in my soil that would prevent that, even if i ran the plant 1-2 weeks over harvest time.
organics can be a lot different in that respect since it's mostly entirely in the soil not what your are supplementing with. That would be the exception when growing, as you don't need to flush proper organics. Every other method of growing tho the leaves will definitely start dying away at the end.
Guess ill link you guys my grow journal so you could give me some advice over there. Never to late to learn anything, and you never know to much to be able to learn something. 400w HPS 3x1.5x5.5 Tent Somango XL SCROG
That was hydro yeah, but I don't really flush as such. I match the reservoir's ppm to what the plants are taking up. After about halfway through flowering this usually gradually goes down to about 200-250ppm by harvest. The red and purple colour is genetic, but all strains should yellow. I think too many people worry about pH. I find as long as I keep it between 5 - 7 it's perfectly fine. My last hydro grow I didn't even check pH all the way through and I had no issues as far as I could tell. I guess if you have really hard tap water it may be an issue.