removing fan leaves

i never remove fan leaves unless there is a problem.

the plant dont grow them 4 fun, they r there 4 a reason.

 

i take them off b4 i dry the plant, and trim off the leaf that sticks out of the buds.

u aint lived till you've partyed with the skunk brothers. when the light s go off........

 

if you have a tight grow space and the light is not getting through to all parts of the plant, selective trimming of fans to allow better light penetration is OK during the flowering stage.

 

personaly i dont see the point of removing a healthy leaf thats doing its job to give light to a leaf thats further away from the lamp. the further the leaf is from the lamp the less efective the light is.

if ur light isnt strong enough to get to the lower leaves then either u shud of brought a bigger light or ur plants to tall. (this is just bad planing being fixed with bad practice)

a fan moving the plants will let light through to the lower leaves for part of the time letting both of the leaves do there job.

in scrogs where the canopy is so dence the lower leaves will never get light there is a good reason to remove them but scrog is a diffrant animal to a normal grow and the same rules dont apply.

removing a fan leaf during flowering is removing stored nutes that the plant will use to finish flowering. if any trimming or removing of fan leaves is to be done it shud be done while the plant is still getting its veg ferts and not when the rich surply of N has been taken away and replaced with bloom ferts rich in P & K.

this is the 1st time iv read somthing posted by BPP that i havent aggred with, i can understand his point of view in so much as it opens up a crowed grow but i do think ther is allways a better way to deal with a problem than to remove the source of all the plants growth.

if i have missunderstood wot BPP has said or ment then sorry, i do think its a bad idea tho...

 

Barney, you haven't pissed me off, but everyone's grow set-up is their own, built around their own specific conditions. For example, if your grow box is 2'x 2' x 6' or for my pommies 60 cm x 60 cm x 180 cm, you know tall and narrow, your plant is going to grow very tall but be compacted inside that box. kind of a super scrog. Bud development is going to be limited to the top near the canopy. I clear leaves to allow more light down so I get buds all over the plant not just at the top.

I said and you may not noticed, during flowering, and I mean mid to late flowering, not during the veg process. By this time, big fans don't contribute much to the overall grow, IMHO. I would rather the smaller secondary leaves that crystalize up receive the energy from the light and develop.

I never said it was the way to go always, but in some situations, removing fans are better than having them there.

 

I have almost the exact setup BPP mentioned.2x4x6 @400hps fim/scrog type setup. I do trim selected fan leaves all thru flowering. Not only for more light coverage of the lower smaller buds but also contributes to lower humidity. I also remove all fan leaves prior to my 3 day flushing. I've tried both , and I have always felt trimming is better for me.

 

yeah in a grow like that then normal rules dont apply.

just a thought but have u considerd putting fluro tubes in the courners of that box? if u got some 5ft 53w tubes and run them off a 40w balast they wud b so cool u cud let the leaves grow into them and the bud at the bottom wud b as fat and dence as that at the top, and prob all the bud wud b bigger from the extra light.

just wot sprung into mind when i seen them stats.

 

never ever remove the fan leaves till they fall off!! this is what feeds your budz, if you cut off them your plant will starve and look like from ethiopia or something. you want BIG BUDZ then leave it alone and let it grow....

 

no offense but,
I think if you have a small confined area you should tie your plants down, put more light in there, or just not grow them so big that the bottom of the plant dies off. Trimming away the trees to see the forest sounds silly to me.

 

more light makes everything alright....

 

lol

 

You my friend need to get a few grows under your belt so you will learn why what you just said is completely wrong.

And I am doing a scrog (I know, its a different situation). I am a week into 12/12 and I have removed about 10 giant fan leaves between my 2 plants and they are thriving No ill effects whatsoever. I am in a 2.8 x 2.8 x 5.3 grow tent, so I am very limited in space, and the huge fan leaves were blocking so much light, so I snipped them off. No negative consequences so far.

 

I've been selecivly chopping fans that are blocking more than 1 or 2 lower bud sites only.

I'm 4 weeks into flowering and was thinking about taking most of them off in a week. But I have been pondering on the exact purpose of this thread. At 5 weeks would I be hurting my plants by chopping the fans? At 5 weeks I have not experienced much yellowing or any dead fans, so I figure there is plenty of nutes available.

Someone correct me if I am wrong please. I use the foxfarm nutes in soil grow and I follow the feeding schedule on there site.

 

double post hehehe

 

At first, I do not cut anything off of my plant, If needed, I fold the big fan leaves down to give light to budsites..

When my plants are in late-flowering around week 6 or so, depending on strain, I will then start gradually trimming fan leaves so that the final 3 weeks or so the budsites all get as much light as possible, because I am a fan of harvesting the entire plant at once, and not staggering.