well my plant has been having some problems lately. the fan leaves in the middle are developing yellowish spots which turn into brown and eventually dead sections of the leaf. i dont know what the problem but since it was staying in one general area, i just pruned the leaves off. i dont have a digicam so i cant show you. another thing: when i was pruning the fan leaves i was wondering if once a node has fully developed, are the fan leaves useful since they dont seem to be growing any larger. the reason i am wondering is that the large fan leaves are blocking light from getting to the branches that spawn from the pocket of the node. if i could just clip off the fan leaves (assuming theyre useless) then i could allow the new branches to grow large and get more yield possibility.
Leaves absorb energy from the sun/light, the more leaves the more energy gathered by the plant and used for them buds. At least so I have been told - I am just a noob at this.
Pruning the leaves won't help the root problem. In order to figure out what that is please answer the following: What size pot What strain What type of lights What stage of growth (how old) What type of fertilizer, how much and how often Your question on the pruning issues and the leaves blocking lower nodes really has no right or wrong answer. Some people like to prune the shit out of their plants and they do fine. Others like to just let nature take its course. If you are worried about leaves blocking the lower half of the plant you can LST. Some folks FIM, LST, Top, Tip, Prune etc and others just let her grow. My guess is that both methods will lead to about the same yield at the end but, nobody has completed a successful, side by side comparo yet that I have seen. Definitely prune off leaves that are at the bottom and touching the soil. The diseased leaves will just fall off or you can pinch them off. But, lets figure out why they are yellowing before doing anything else.