This is a horrible approach to giving advice. Firsthand experience, while better than secondhand experience, does NOT give validity to your argument. Any advice you give should have scientific reasoning, not "this is how I do it and it works". Every single environment and every single strain is different. What works for you may not (and more often than not, WILL NOT) work for everybody. If you actually understood the chemical processes of cannabis you'd know why your response is moronic to anybody with more knowledge on the subject than you. Plucking leaves also has zero effect on branching ability and bushiness. That's not one of the valid reasons for removing leaves.
when someone tells me I am 100% wrong and takes the piss I will write a post like this about 5 years ago I start growing weed, in soil and hydro 4 years ago I started to top and fim my plant doing a side by side test and started to remove the odd fan leave in early veg and got some amazing yeilds now after 20 crops of doing this on over 20 diffent strains I have a very high understanding of how to get any plant to grow the way I want them too but at the end of the day will only help growers that want my help and will take the piss back with comments like your yield will be around one metric ton.....jk....Joe thats 100% false, you do NOT pluck leaves off. if the plant is done with the energy stored in that leaf it will turn yellow and fall off. he call me a jk for no reason
I don't doubt you grow very good weed, with great yields. And if you're plucking leaves to get there, by all means, keep plucking leaves! I would never recommend a grower change something that is already working, unless they want to experiment to potentially (but not always) increase yields. I'm not sure what you mean "he call me a jk". JK (as I understood it in the context) simply meant "just kidding". As in "your yield will be around 1 metric ton... JUST KIDDING!" It was an attempt at humor (whether or not a good one is subjective). Also, in a way, I agree with you. His post was no more constructive than yours was. To suggest something is "100%" false is just asinine. Nothing in this universe of ours is 100%. Example: joe plucks his leaves and gets great results. I also pluck leaves. I pluck diseased leaves, I pluck leaves that are blocking light to important areas of the plant, etc. In a way, he is right, when the plant is finished with a healthy leaf in optimal conditions it will absorb the energy from the leaf and the leaf will yellow and fall on its own. This is a natural process, but often times there are reasons to pluck a leaf prematurely to increase yields.
ok I may have miss read the post, but there loads of diffent ways, mabe these 3 pictures will show you why I keep plucking leaves day 1 veg day 7 plucking some fan feaves day 29 ready for flower needs re poting
it's not about getting more bud sites, it's about growing fat cola tops instead of medium colas and a bunch of popcorn bud
Now we're spilling over into a different topic. Cutting off branches will redirect energy to top colas (it can't send energy to a branch that no longer exists). This results in the yield of your plant being more focused into larger nugs rather than popcorn nugs. (little to no difference in yield). Plucking off fan leaves will not affect bud sites or colas. Bud doesn't grow on fan leaves. Fan leaves just perform photosynthesis until they die. (for the most part)
buds can only grow where there light, so the more top bud sites the bigger the yeild a scrog/sog will give the best yeild because the canopy is full of bud sites and uses all the light. most growers remove all the fan leaves covering the top buds sites to get the best yeild you can grow a single plant under 1 1000w hps (scrog) and get very large yeild and large buds you will get 10 time the yeild of an untrainned plant under the same light trainning a plant well, will increase the yeild, there's no question about that. only how you want to do it just read your grow and you train your plant more less the same as me you prune your plants in veg and your plants look good, why are we even talking about this lol
exactly mate, you have proved my point. if you hadn't taken hard working leaves off your plant would of looked a lot better than that. if you take off half the surface area of the leaves, then it's the equivalent of using half of your lights. if they don't have their big fan leaves then where is the plant going to get its food from? it's the fan leaves that make the food. on small lit grows its even more important
the best bud is bud that is grown under leaves, it's pale sometimes white with very little chlorophyll making such a sweet smoke. grow a few side by side grows cutting hard working fan leaves of one grow and leave it on the other. you will see a huge difference. or you could just look through a basic biology book and see that the fan leaves collect energy from the light and makes food for the plant so it can grow bud. bud doesn't photosynthesis much at all, that's not it's job. it's job is to make seeds. fan leaves also transpire which is a sort of "breathing". cutting off leaves slows photosynthesis, slows transpiration and slows the intake of carbon dioxide
The ideal behind cutting fan leaves off in veg is to shape the plants and slow the growth so you end up with a good bushy plant with loads of top bud sites if you buds sites are not getting direct light, same as the lower part of the canopy, you get airy buds ? well I do The top bud site in direct light gives you the large dank buds ? If the canopy is to thick, you will reduce airflow and increase the chance of mold and getting insects, they live best in shaded thich canopy, and makes it hard for you to spot till its too late. removing some of the fan leaves up till flower will help with light penetration to lower bud sites. keep a good airflow in the canopy so increasing the amout of c02 the plants get if you cure the buds you will get rid the chlorophyll The plant need a lot of fan leaves in flower but also needs to have a good air flow and a level canopy to get the best yeilds
taking leaves does stress the plant but also reveals many spots for tops to grow that otherwise would be shade by the leave and never really grow. the plant wasnt even really noticeable stressed just barely. and the slowed growth was good for my indoor space limits
and exactly joe. defoliation does work if you know how to do it and especially if you combine it with lst
cutting hard working leaves off to allow light to get to smaller, less developed leaves that are further away from the light is idiotic. it cannot help the plant grow faster in the given time. I have done side by side grows to see the difference and it's huge
Your entitled to your option but if you need to grow a low number of plants indoors (I live in the uk, getting court with 30 plants is not good, 10 plant would be ok, light sentence so if I was to grow 4 short bushy plants under 2 600w lights in soil (14ltr buckets) they would class it a small grow so topping fim and TPT (remove a few leaves in veg) setup works well can still pull 6-8 oz's per plant I TPT my plants in veg as its less stress to the plants and better results than fim/topping untrained plants grow and yeild realy well, 9 plants or more under a 600w hps best way if you can have large number of plants (many growers can't)
I was under the impression that taking fan leaves off is another way of training your plants with less stress. As in, it constricts the growth of a branch that's already where I want it to be. For example, I take off only the fan leaves that are attached to branches which I don't want to grow any longer and leave the fan leaves that are directly connected to a good budsite. Do you really need large fan leaves that cannot get any light under the cannopy and just take up nutrients while the nutrients are transported to the top of the plant?
you have the right ideal in flower And also if you remove the fan leaves on the higherside branches/nodes in veg there will be a shorter spacing between the nodes and slows the growth to keep the canopy level let the sides of the canopy grow taller than the middle if your veg room is small and re pot the plants, lst and veg for a week in flower room this will really open the canopy and increase the bud sites/yeild will look at grow later, mates just turned up
Its pretty simple.....if you use the term "it slows growth" you've lost this argument. Defoliation is stupid.
Are you lot worried that defoliation works defoliation means too remove some leaves off the plant some growers take a large amount of fan leave off the plant in flower not sure if this is good or not topping is to remove some leaves and one or more nodes Fim to cut some small leaves off the out side of the node And TFT is to remove top fan leaves on higher side branches to keep the canopy level and helps to bush the plant out the basic facts are, all training will slow the plants growth down and there a few ways that remove fan leaves does that mean there all wrong