Light to leaves--not necessarily to buds???

[alltatup]

I've been watching my current grow and this time I observed how the leaves stretch out on the plants during the first few weeks of flowering: lower on the plants, they stretch out where they are trying to get into the light. Thus, lower on the plant, there are leaves sticking out into spaces where the light falls, while the bud may be in shade.

So it's got me wondering about the whole "fattest buds in the light" debate: Is bud development based on the leaves surrounding that bud reaching the light as opposed to the bud reaching the light?

[GrowMeTrichomes]

Subscribed , curious on other people's thoughts on this one.

[DrPhoton]

I talk about the behavior of photomorphogenesis with cannabis in my article on defoliation. Flowers do not exhibit any real level of photosynthesis or photomorphology. So leaves are infact the only sources of energy. This is why we can use narrow band or band limited wavelengths during flowering, such as high pressure sodium with excellent results, as there is no real effect of photomorphogenesis taking place. It is simply, pure photosynthetic production. There are aspects such as aroma and THC production which can be affected by specific wavelengths of light, however this is not a product of plant morphology to light but simple byproducts of genetic responses to ionizing radiation.

[Redwasp]

Yes alltatup I do uncover bud sites, and when needed I also remove leaves to get better airflow. I usually also remove any of the stems that will end up being popcorn buds. I consider this pruning though because I do not remove any leaves that I dont have to.

I saw the pictures you posted of your defoliation and they look perfect. You did a GREAT job. And I'm no expert but I do not think the argument over defoliating vs not defoliating will ever end. I dont have a side on that argument. I do not know enough to know what works better for others. I only know what I find works for me.

[DrPhoton]

Thats all good alltatup, i wont be changing my name again.

[alltatup]

Redwasp That's what this whole learning process is about for me. I've come to understand defoliation much better than I did before; there are certainly various reasons to defol or not to, dependent on environmental conditions.

[Canuck147]

Leaves are the sugar factories - don't need any $25 words - but I'm with Redwasp. Inside a tent with more than one plant you have to defoliate for air circulation - or - bud rot is inevitable.

[Toker1]

Or PWM

[alltatup]

That's what I also believe for my grow box; it requires some defol.

[Toker1]

So let’s define a few things here first: Fan leaves (the large leaves that stretch out from a stem and have no contact with the flowers) and Sugar leaves (the smaller leaves that touch the flowers and are usually frosted with trics). Both are capable of manufacturing food for the plant, so why are the larger ones needed? My theories are this: in nature the environment fluctuates; drought spells, cloudy days, too much or not enough wind, and nutrient availability will fluctuate with the biological influence in the soil. Nothing in nature is as consistent as the indoor garden is. So fan leaves are also storage cells for when times get hard for the plant. When the plant can not manufacture food on its own. (let’s use the example of a cloudy day) The fan leaves can provide enough stored nutrition to make it through the tough times. In the case of the indoor garden, these fan leaves are only nesessary if the grower messes up somehow. If the grower is able to maintain perfect growing conditions, the stored fan leaf energy is not required and the fan leaves are just blocking out light and wind to the lower portion of the plant in this case (plus those leaves are using up vital nutrients to remain alive). The plant realizes this, therefore puts more energy into developing the tops where the most light and wind hit. In the case of less fan leaves, the other parts of the plant are able to utilize all of the available nutrients contained in the soil.
Removing lower fan leaves exposes light and wind to the lower portions of the plant, and less leaves means more available nutrients (per kappa). The only trade off, is if the environment fluctuates and the plant needs those fan leaves stored energy... yields can suffer. On a flawless grow environment with little to no stress factors, a few fan leaves at the top of the plant and all the sugar leaves through out are able to provide enough energy to produce massive yields.

[alltatup]

Toker1 Excellent explanation!! Nebula also discusses the condition that indoor growers create make some of the leaves superfluous.

[KingKush]

Yea I believe plants make more foliage than they require, to feed the deer and elk. Gotta expect some grazing in nature and a hailstorm too. Perhaps some 60mph winds that rip some leaves off too.

Keeping all the leaves on, the plant seems to shed quite a few as the buds start to develop, like a sort of natural defoliation. I doubt any plant in nature is getting spoon fed nutrients and extra iron to keep things green, unless perfectly positioned over a carcass on a river delta. Underfed or more simple grows tend to see a strong fade with yellowing and senescence throughout bud development. Lots of leaves fall off before the buds are ready.

What I observed last defoliation: made for a better growers attitude when I can actually SEE more bud sites per eyeful. Happier growers spend more love for their plants. So it benefits my plants because it makes me smile to be able to see at once all those bud sites!

[Redwasp]

KingKush I get that same peaceful happy feeling training my plants. Of course I love the unknown of planting the seeds and am like a kid on Christmas when I plant new strains.

I choose to just prune specific leaves to make sure the plant gets airflow and that all the buds get light. I assume some might call what I do defoliating but I remove alot less than most people who defoliate.

[DrPhoton]

So let’s define a few things here first: Fan leaves (the large leaves that stretch out from a stem and have no contact with the flowers) and Sugar leaves (the smaller leaves that touch the flowers and are usually frosted with trics). Both are capable of manufacturing food for the plant, so why are the larger ones needed? My theories are this: in nature the environment fluctuates; drought spells, cloudy days, too much or not enough wind, and nutrient availability will fluctuate with the biological influence in the soil. Nothing in nature is as consistent as the indoor garden is. So fan leaves are also storage cells for when times get hard for the plant. When the plant can not manufacture food on its own. (let’s use the example of a cloudy day) The fan leaves can provide enough stored nutrition to make it through the tough times. In the case of the indoor garden, these fan leaves are only nesessary if the grower messes up somehow. If the grower is able to maintain perfect growing conditions, the stored fan leaf energy is not required and the fan leaves are just blocking out light and wind to the lower portion of the plant in this case (plus those leaves are using up vital nutrients to remain alive). The plant realizes this, therefore puts more energy into developing the tops where the most light and wind hit. In the case of less fan leaves, the other parts of the plant are able to utilize all of the available nutrients contained in the soil.
Removing lower fan leaves exposes light and wind to the lower portions of the plant, and less leaves means more available nutrients (per kappa). The only trade off, is if the environment fluctuates and the plant needs those fan leaves stored energy... yields can suffer. On a flawless grow environment with little to no stress factors, a few fan leaves at the top of the plant and all the sugar leaves through out are able to provide enough energy to produce massive yields.

I like hearing peoples theories, it allows you to think in ways you may not have before. Leaves in cannabis store very little starch. They produce photosynthates, and imediately shuttle this energy out through the phloem for use by the rest of the plant. Leaves, once matured are sources and stay as sources for the remainder of their life until senescence. Plants only require enough light that satisfies whats called the compensation point. For many plants this is usually around 60-90umols or 5000-7000 lux. This is an insanely low level of light which is always provided under any outdoor environmental condition. Which means they never have to rely on any stored resources for simply staying alive. But many perianual plants such as those with tubers, take advantage of stored resources for occasions such as this to continue growth. Especially during the winters or when major plant injuries occur. Cannabis however does not, cannabis and most other annual plants only store enough energy to contunue their respiration during times when there is no light (night time or dark cycle). They do this so well infact that they actually apply arithmetic calculation to make sure that almost all stored resources, manufactured during the day, is almost completely used before sunrise or the light cycle. Which is why whole plant regeneration is not possible with cannabis.

On another note, many studies on plant defoliation, shows that plants can tolerate up to 20% of loss of leaves. Which is assumed to be a compensation technique in anticipation of natural events where leaves may be lossed. Such as animals, weather, diseases etc.

I completely support the use of defoliation for improving the overall health of the plant, such as disease prevention, humidity, airflow etc.

[Toker1]

So the plant shed it’s lower leaves in an effort to conserve what little resources were left in my mimosa mother plant case then?

[DrPhoton]

Maybe, but its more likely that the lower leaves did not respond to the water stress as quickly as the top leaves and closed their stomata much later. Causing more water to be transpired.

[Toker1]

👍thanks Doc! This makes sense.

[alltatup]

DrPhoton This is about photosynthesis, not photomorphogenesis. Photomorphogenesis has to do with how different light spectrums affect veg phase versus flower phase, but the issue I raise is different:

If photosynthesis can take place in leaves in various places on the plant where light wouldn't reach unless we train the plant, then lower buds will develop better because the leaves exposed to light are feeding them better than leaves in shadow.

So my issue is not about what kind of light we're using, but how we expose leaves to light during indoor flowering.

Now onto a second issue:

I've seen on this grow something that didn't happen so much before because I wasn't defoliating the right way: What defoliation allowed in veg and in flower was for more bud sites to shoot up and fill in the canopy. They shot straight up towards the light all over three out of four plants (Afghan Kush has been the lagger all along, and smaller than the other three, though she looks good for her size). It's like they were rushing to fill in the space in the upper canopy before someone else got there first.

So instead of trying to keep all the focus on the main colas, I left all these "survival of the fittest" type smart buds who made it up to the top. They were wonderful to watch in their insistence on gettin up there with the big dogs. Watching them climb and stretch out their smaller leaves is what got me wondering about this topic.

[DrPhoton]

DrPhoton This is about photosynthesis, not photomorphogenesis. Photomorphogenesis has to do with how different light spectrums affect veg phase versus flower phase, but the issue I raise is different:

If photosynthesis can take place in leaves in various places on the plant where light wouldn't reach unless we train the plant, then lower buds will develop better because the leaves exposed to light are feeding them better than leaves in shadow.

So my issue is not about what kind of light we're using, but how we expose leaves to light during indoor flowering.

Now onto a second issue:

I've seen on this grow something that didn't happen so much before because I wasn't defoliating the right way: What defoliation allowed in veg and in flower was for more bud sites to shoot up and fill in the canopy. They shot straight up towards the light all over three out of four plants (Afghan Kush has been the lagger all along, and smaller than the other three, though she looks good for her size). It's like they were rushing to fill in the space in the upper canopy before someone else got there first.

So instead of trying to keep all the focus on the main colas, I left all these "survival of the fittest" type smart buds who made it up to the top. They were wonderful to watch in their insistence on gettin up there with the big dogs. Watching them climb and stretch out their smaller leaves is what got me wondering about this topic.

"So it's got me wondering about the whole "fattest buds in the light" debate: Is bud development based on the leaves surrounding that bud reaching the light as opposed to the bud reaching the light?"

My original reply was in response to your question on leaves vs bud response to light. Which i concluded for you that flowers, do not have any photosynthetic capacity. Not just an abscence of morphogenesis. If i have misunderstood your question here, please let me know.

Exposing different leaves only distributes the light to a different portion of the plant. This does not change the amount of total energy recieved by the plant, but how that energy is distributed. The notion that removing higher leaves because they are blocking light, is somewhat illogical. As the leaf you are intending to remove, is capturing and processing light. Not blocking it. Any additional light that is not utilized by the leaf, is transmitted down, deeper into the canopy.

This does not of course exclude the fact that providing a plant structure where light penetrates deeper is not going to be beneficial. I support the practice of applying training techniques that allow the grower to produce higher quality produce. But not yield. I go over many of the major theories in my article on defoliation relating to this particular aspect on the topic.

[9fingerleafs]

i just wanna say, security has improved tremendously over this past two years on the site, just last year we finally got https, which is important, i use to have to disable security features in order to use the site. i track cookies and block all scrips and connections and i can tell you this site is clean, it uses aweber for the layout and google analytics for indexing, and thats it. ive also checked how the picture scrubbing works and everytime you upload an image all info is cleared, just the name and the picture itself are uploaded, no metadata, no location, nothing, so im pretty comfortable using this site. im sure if someone was after the people growing weed theyll just check amazons "marketing" data for growing equipment. i mean even monitoring seeds sales would be more effective to track down growers.

[Redwasp]

Well I'm sure you can tell from my posts I got over it. Lol Just saying I do understand where they are coming from.

[KingKush]

Ha yea the way all that information comes across can be intimidating and it's easy to think you are getting a lesson. But I personally enjoy the textbook marijuana science lessons that Dano/Dr.Photon has to offer. Nothing but solid, factual evidence. Freely shared, and offered to all with an earnest regard for the truth.

All I'm saying: with THAT knowledge, we want to see THOSE plants Dan!

[Potted]

Well that was a fun little read... thanks all

[Redwasp]

Related to this subject is the fact that some plants grow very few fan leaves compared to most plants and make a whole lot of bud. So I tried one side by side with a different strain and defoliated it to look like the strain that had few fan leaves. Well it didnt work out the same way. It's still made less bud (the defoliated one) and even made less than my grow before. Now these were not clones so it is not scientific in any way. Plus there are lots of variables that could have been different. But I wanted to know. Lol

[Redwasp]

Yes Toker you are absolutely right about that. It was my 3rd or 4th grow on I think both plants. I would have to look it up. I knew the approx possible yields of both as I grew multiples of each on those grows.

The plant that had low leaf to bud ratio always out yielded the other plant. I tried to make all variables the same but honestly that's impossible. For example the mh/hps bulbs would have had to been brand new on all grows to even start to think it was equal. Even if you did that the umols of all bulbs even from the same company will not be exactly the same. So again not equal. I also do not know how you could actually make any comparison unless you grew lots and lots of plants both ways at the same time, place, location, condition's, from clones and not seed.

But I can tell you for sure that the low leaf to bud plant did as expected right in the middle of the range of those who came before. The other plant was about an ounce or so lower than the lowest yielding plant before. Was it the defoliation? Me screwing up somewhere? The seeds? A older bulb or newer bulb? Did the one have more air blowing on it. Well you get my point. All I can say that at least in that one grow I "think" it was me removing to many leaves. Way more than I ever had before.

Sorry for the long winded post. The jest of this is that I grow awesome plants now the way I do it. So maybe I should stick with what I know.

[Toker1]

And again this is just me guessing...but I don’t think defoiling actually produces larger quantities on its own. I think there is a lot of misconceptions about that. Given the right structure, environment, and growing conditions, I think the benefits come when cramming as many thick branches together with out sacrificing the lower buds to shadows and stagnant air. If you have unlimited space, you can give each branch it’s own little spot in the wind and light where it is the most happy. I don’t think a defoiled plant would be a better producer in these conditions given proper space to exist. Most indoor growers can not afford that luxury. So in an effort to bring branches closer together, defoiling can be utilized to improve environmental conditions that cramming branches together comes with. IMO.

[Redwasp]

Yes I agree on space. That's why I have unused setups. In case one or more get bigger than expected. Like I was saying I just wanted to try it. Lol

[Chefbjy]

Hey alltatup all this science gab can get confusing. But when you expose lower growth to light it encourages them to join the top. I don't think taking off leaves is necessary to make this happen. You can get the same results with tucking, tieing, and supercropping imho. This is why they say to stop defoliating after 3 weeks of flower as you can lose to many at the end.

This is where I feel structuring is more important then leaf removal. Though I agree that pruning to keep proper airflow,pest management, and humidity is necessary indoors. But just imagine you open up those sites with supercropping or tieing the dominating colas down rather then taking off leaves. So now by the time stretch and leaf production cease you have all these energy capturing resources still. Then you can take off whatever you see not getting light instead of trying to expose those growth tips but still have a lush plant that captures light efficiently and not prone to deficiencies. Risking chance of losing those resources in an unknown event,mishap,or health problems. Moving the leaves out of the way or taking them off later in flowering only to control humidity and such. After a certain time in a leafs life it becomes less efficient and removing it won't leave you wondering if you've taken too much off. But the upper leaves usually made during the stretch are the ones that are going to be more efficient at photosynthesis. Thus leaving you with a less efficient plant when they are removed. DrPhoton is a man of science not show and tell. These are factual references and proven science. It's fine to be a grower and not a shower it's not like he's making any claim or reference to any of his personal experience or grows.

Though the debate of defoliating still continues throughout the growing community. I tend to agree with solid proven results. And I have no reason to believe that defoliating increases yield or bud size for that matter. I've seen monster colas in both aspects of this practice and yields aren't very reliable when referring to either. Just my thought and I won't debate defoliating yes or no. I say do what works for you and live in the now and enjoy the experiences growing these magnificent plants and enjoy the fruits of your labor. If you're growing cup winners I'm sure a few leaves won't effect the quality of your smoke. ✌ 💘 😊. Growers love.

[Redwasp]

I Do not know anything. I just wait for the plants to tell me what they want. If I try to think myself it just doesnt work. Lol Like my plants in the pagan thread they are currently in a state of confusion so I'm letting them get their heads straight and talk to me.

[LurkingInTheGrass]

They seem to 'hear' my plans and thoughts. Then they gather themselves to work exactly opposite of my plans 😁

Like Red, I'm trying to pay more attention to what they want/will allow

[alltatup]

I won't do anything to my plants without sitting down first and discussing it with them.