Beautiful! I find that there is a max yield for a setup, and less plants yield same overall as more plants... with a helluva lot less work and damage risk. Mainline plumbing makes alot easier keeping tops even. And, allows for much bigger plants, with only week or two extra veg. I like the pure mainline look, but lots of strains aren't suited for pure mainline at max yield. And, my main constraint is height. So those girls swirl and do a screenless scrog.
White Widows: Starting week 7, repositioned tops, buds sugaring up and starting to fatten. Gonna have to find the microscope soon.
C99s: Starting week 4, did major defol, complete repositioning of mains, laterals, and tops, ready for buddage. Before defol/repositioning: After:
Big difference there. I'm sure you know that some say once flowering has started you should not do any defoliation, even to clear shading & give the buds better light. I believe their theory is that the plant cannot help but put some of its energy into rebuilding & replacing the leaves that were removed, and that takes away from energy that could be put into building buds. Has your experience been that that is incorrect, and that the additional light & space you create for the buds by pruning makes up for any potential energy loss?
Flowering is all about light. You don’t get light to the pistils, the buds don’t grow. Of course it is a trade-off removing leaves. But these wannabe mothers, with so much light and other things in balance, are growing gangbusters and would produce more leaves (and less bud yield) without the defol. If the defol slows down leafage, i see that as being a benefit. I consider flowering to have 3 major stages: budsite devel, bud devel, bud ripening. Sometime between full-blown budsite devel (pistil ball formation) and full-blown bud devel (“hairs” reddening, calyx swell) the plant hormone balance shifts so far into reproduction from veg that few if any fan leaves will initiate. So you need to be sensitive to this and leave some fan leaves to maintain reproductive growth. So again, if you have a healthy plant and matching grow environment, and plenty of light, defoliating each main/lateral to 2-3 fan leaves at tips is fine between 12:12 and week 4. After that, selective defol coupled with bud positioning are all you can and will want to do. [Believe me, each time i do a major defol, i’m scared as hell that i overdid it. But the plants just keep on building buddage.] Just look at my widows: i did major strippage 3-4 times between 12:12 and week 4: Here’s what resulted as of beginning of week 7: You are looking down on the bud tops, notice the diameter of the individual buds, The whole plant is covered in dense 1-2” diam buds of varying length. This would not be the case if i hadn't done all the defol i did. In fact, if i hadn’t done what i did, this grow would be an out of control, pm infected, larfy mess. People who don’t defol (indoor grows) either don’t have enuff light, or don’t know shit about the value of defoliation. They should read this: growweedeasy .com/defoliation. Btw, defoliation also has a major positive impact on airflow, and thus temp and rh, at a time when airflow is most critical.
Great explanation, that is why I asked you. I have never defoliated once flowering began on my outdoor grows, I have just been too afraid of messing things up. But indoors is different because of the focused light, and that is why I wondered if the gains in light penetration would outstrip the loss of leaves that might turn some of the plants energy towards replacement. You experience seems to prove that it does, and frankly I am glad to hear that. Like you I do more defoliation than most, and if I can continue to do it the first 4 weeks or so of flowering without losing any bud growth then that is huge.
Indoors, during 12:12 to ~wk 4, you’re so much better off doing defol than not. Do a side-by-side. Take off the amount you’re comfortable with, with the goal of opening up light/air holes to buds below tops.
Another point that you brought up, re: leaf replacement: New leaves don’t grow as replacements, they grow from tips of mains/lateral when the plant is in veg phase and there is sufficient carbo production (photosynthesis). Removing a leaf reduces carbo production, so lessens potential new leaf production. Once a pistil forms, where a lateral grew from a node, the associated fan leaf becomes mostly a storage site with diminishing photosynthetic capacity. By the time you remove these fan leaves (indoor, during flowering), the leaf’s primary carbo producing/growth-aiding days are already over. Future growth comes from the still growing leaves/calyxes at the nodes above/out. So, removing the older fan leaves does not represent a major neg impact on growth, and keeping them does not represent a major pos impact on growth. I have found that, in my setup, leaving 2-3 fan leaves plus all sugar leaves on each growing tip is sufficient to power bud development and ripening, while allowing deeper/broader light/air penetration to budsites/tips that would otherwise have less - in effect, producing more and bigger nugs than otherwise.
So based on that do you think I would be able to do some defoliation during the first 4 weeks of flowering on an outdoor grow? Obviously the light situation is very different between indoors & outdoors, but if removing the fan leaves does not negatively impact growth very much and can clear the canopy to get better light to the buds, could it still be favorable outdoors?
Outside is totally different, i’d focus on spreading canopy, not pulling leaves. Of course, you can always do your own experiments.
Nice looking FULL rooms you have there. I just harvested my White Shark on Wednesday. The White Widow influence is heavy. On the topic of defoliation, again we have very similar tactics @Or_Gro. I grow more SOG style with smaller plants in my 4x4 but defoliate heavily Here is a pic May 30th before defoliation May 31st after defoliation of all fan leaves except the top two nodes. Here they are June 10th filling right in And this was June 18th, full of buds
Beautiful s2c! Look at that frosting, man!!! These plants respond well when you cut them down to wood. Great job!
You have seen my pics so you know that is what I have been doing so far, with some defoliation where the leaves are blocking light. Much like indoors just spreading the canopy is often not enough to remove the shading, and so some leaf removal is necessary. Once flowering starts I usually stop everything, but I may pick one plant this year and experiment a bit.