"HOW OFTEN TO REMOVE FAN LEAF'S.."

[William and Sue Ashley]

Wondering?....I just took off 8 large fan leafs from my 4 girls..on Sat....Now there are more fans in the way......I just don't want to stress them to much...They are doing well Pics on Sat....What does everyone think....?..By the way that was 8 on each plant a total of 32 all together......Peace..

[9fingerleafs]

I think of it like this. Every leaf you take is a little sugar factory you are taking from the plant or even the bud right next to the leaf. Fan leaves have a much greater capacity to photo synthesize than calyxes and leaves inside the bud

[Canuck147]

Absolutely right on 9fingers. Without those little sugar factories, the plants will take a much longer time to figure out what happened and then continue on. Autos are so fast growing it's just fun to watch 'em. By the end of next month I'll be looking towards the axe, and the size of the buds.

[William and Sue Ashley]

Wow Thanks Guys...I am so new my first but I have everything to do it right......So I should no longer take any and let grow natural or do some LST????.....

[Green75]

Now ask all those guys that responded if they are defoliators....people that don't do it...Will always tell you no...they have never stripped a plant and seen the marvelous outcome....

You have to decide...are you conservative or do you want to push the limits and get big buds

Cut them off....

[Green75]

I defoliate from the very beginning so my plants are used to it not quite sure how your plants would react to something so drastic this late in the game if you haven't practiced defoliation on them at all.. start small increase every few days till you're happy

[Midnightfarmer]

Thanks Green 75 will do. First grow I chopped all the time great yield but this time I didn't so they are to bushy. Will let you outcome.

[Xconian]

I trimmed all but two of the top fan leaves
Off my plant and she has thrived since then! Crazy crazy developments everyday. I come home from work and she’s twice as tall and bushy then the morning. The calyxes have literally erupted on the bus sites and the stems have doubled in size. She did not shock or stall at all when I did it. I did 3 everyday/every other day. I also topped her. I mean looking back at my pics of her development in literally the last two weeks is like night and day. So idk it worked really really well for me, and I literally read all there is on not
Doing it or doing it, and everyone’s beliefs
And opinions. My opinion is that a tiny plant doesn’t need 30 solar panels to grow, I think it just causes nute burn. I think at a certain point, depending on your end goal, those fan leaves lower down just suck up much needed energy for flowering. Regardless the plants going to store what energy has been collected from the others, so why overwhelm it so young? Of course the timing of cutting is important I think. I had 2 fans begin to lighten up (turning yellow) and I snipped them without hesitation. Nervous? Yes I was . But glad I did it. And the leaves that have grown on my bud sites and stuff are
Plenty enough to give her the extra energy needed now that she’s maturing. Plus the two fans I have are
Super healthy and strong, and not taking away from the rest of the plant.i am doing organic grow, and the only things I have used was epsom salt once (each month if I feel it’s needed) and alpaca grow. Other then that straight water. No bloom spray, miracle grow etc. and the bulb I used in veg was a 65 watt LED green energy bulb. No issues with it at all. Now she’s outside and just thriving. I see the potential In all of it, and the downfalls in all of it. But pruning and topping correctly at the right time seems to have worked superbly for me

[Green75]

As you see fit....I cut leaves every day...strip them clean every week to week and half...

[Green75]

I just chicken boned my four ladies in my tent check them out

[Tika]

Initially in my Grow life I did very moderate defol even tho I LST d my plants from the start. I used the same nutrients up til this Grow for 3 years.
i have found that my lower Nugs-exposed to light and air flow have become increasingly dense.my buds have increased in size and amount and I no longer have larfy little Nugs and the majority of them are tight little sugar bombs. I attributed that do increasing my defol process along with LST.
I have done moderate Schwazzing, the leaves grew back up to a certain point and I still had to daily remove some or seriously bend them to expose the buds.
i will probably never strip them but plan to defol more. will see how my new strains perform.

[Green75]

You have eight upcoming ladies I would think that at least one of them you should strip a few times just so you can see firsthand in your own garden what can happen

[Green75]

And I bet she will be the belle of the ball

[Tika]

I may just do that Greenie

[Weasel]

Defoliation is one of those terms that sometimes gets people all excited and make some choose sides over the issue. In reality I think it's a tool that has its place in certain circumstances.

Other people seem to have different experiences than mine so I'll just say my experience and I fully accept that other people have had different ones- it's not black and white.

My experience is that it works well with heavy Indicas like Kush strains and with sativas it mostly just slows them down.

Most of my pure sativas tend to go through their own natural defoliation process and lose a lot of their leaves during flowering. Some sativa strains end up with almost no fan leaves by harvest time.

Defol also seems to be something that might come in handy when you're growing with LED lights, which generally have poor penetration.

As long as my plant is receiving lots of light I don't see any need to remove leaves. I do believe they are there for a purpose.

I do remove plenty of growth when it's in a shaded spot, or when it is causing major shading itself - too bushy and needs thinning out.

I don't remove fan leaves as a matter of course.
I rarely defol at all anymore other than trimming undergrowth- but I'm growing mainly sativas and they don't seem to like it, IME.

There is a technique of heavy defol which in my experience works best with heavy indicas, and involves removing most fans two or three times during flowering. Timing of the defol seems to be important in this technique- generally a process of constantly removing leaves seems to slow the plant down too much.


I've done side by side grows with this type of major defoliation, vs none,and was happier with the untouched plants. The defol plants yielded slightly more but at harvest time it was a matter of trimming hundreds of tiny buds vs a few dozen big ones.


But- I don't grow the kind of strains that seem to take to it- I haven't done it very much- it's not really my thing. I'm not an expert.
That method of defol can definitely increase yield in some strains- up to 30% it seems.

My best plants yield around one gram per watt. That's a very good yield. I don't feel the need to go to extra work removing leaves even if it did increase yield for me. Besides which I'm almost 100% sure it would reduce my yield, in my situation.

I'd encourage anyone considering defol to have an open mind about it, and constantly experiment to see when it works and when it doesn't

This is a Critical Cheese plant I grew 12/12 from seed as part of a solo cup grow competition. It took 101 days from seed to harvest. I didn't remove a single leaf on it till harvest. Why would I?
I don't believe any defoliation would have done anything but slow it down and give me a smaller plant. I realize the picture proves nothing whatsoever I'm just tossing it in because I feel like it.

This plant yielded just over 42 grams. Something like 42.1 I think. So almost an ounce and a half. That completely kicks ass on my regular plants, yield wise.

[Weed Pharma]

My findings are the same as you outline- ie sativa's don't like it- and trim too often, growth is slowed.

[Weasel]

KingSimon - yes it was grown in coco. I watered it three times a day (had to to keep it from drying out). So I would call that drain-to-waste hydro.

[Weasel]

I wasn't going to be around to water the thing constantly so I made a quick auto-watering system. A garbage can for a reservoir, a little electric pump on a timer, with a garden hose running to a 'manifold', which is basically a splitter turning the garden hose flow into a bunch of 1/4" lines. The res was mixed with nutrients and I set the timer for three waterings a day - one minute is the lowest setting in the timer. Nutes were weak- never got much past 1.1 EC. But yes- it got fed with every watering. This was my first time doing any of this hydro type stuff - I just sort of whipped it together from stuff I had around. It was easy and worked well.

[Weed Pharma]

"HOW OFTEN TO REMOVE FAN LEAF'S.." Every 2 weeks is pretty middle of the road.

It's crazy that a question about removing a few fan leaves becomes a conversation about defoliation!

[Canuck147]

How often? Remove when required.

[Weasel]

Ha ha. Is it? Crazy?
I didn't think it was that far off topic from the original post.
It just seems like half of the threads on this site discuss defoliation, for some reason. Must have mixed this thread up with one of the other ones.

[William and Sue Ashley]

Probably.............LOL.....

[Weasel]

Here- I'll remove the post.
Breathe easier.

EDIT - read a couple comments and decided to just leave it. Maybe it's crazy but too late for me to restore sanity now.

[Green75]

I think cutting one fan Leaf is considered defoliation I think you're right on topic weasel I may not agree with you but you are on topic

[Weasel]

Yeah it's a pretty divisive topic. Reality is - there are different realities -and more than one right way of doing things. People get so worked up 'knowing' that they're right and the other guy is wrong.
As long as we're still having fun discussing and growing our favourite beautiful plant, then it's all good.
Keep on trying new stuff and learning.

[growgreenjr]

Defoliation is one of those terms that sometimes gets people all excited and make some choose sides over the issue. In reality I think it's a tool that has its place in certain circumstances.

Other people seem to have different experiences than mine so I'll just say my experience and I fully accept that other people have had different ones- it's not black and white.

My experience is that it works well with heavy Indicas like Kush strains and with sativas it mostly just slows them down.

Most of my pure sativas tend to go through their own natural defoliation process and lose a lot of their leaves during flowering. Some sativa strains end up with almost no fan leaves by harvest time.

Defol also seems to be something that might come in handy when you're growing with LED lights, which generally have poor penetration.

As long as my plant is receiving lots of light I don't see any need to remove leaves. I do believe they are there for a purpose.

I do remove plenty of growth when it's in a shaded spot, or when it is causing major shading itself - too bushy and needs thinning out.

I don't remove fan leaves as a matter of course.
I rarely defol at all anymore other than trimming undergrowth- but I'm growing mainly sativas and they don't seem to like it, IME.

There is a technique of heavy defol which in my experience works best with heavy indicas, and involves removing most fans two or three times during flowering. Timing of the defol seems to be important in this technique- generally a process of constantly removing leaves seems to slow the plant down too much.


I've done side by side grows with this type of major defoliation, vs none,and was happier with the untouched plants. The defol plants yielded slightly more but at harvest time it was a matter of trimming hundreds of tiny buds vs a few dozen big ones.


But- I don't grow the kind of strains that seem to take to it- I haven't done it very much- it's not really my thing. I'm not an expert.
That method of defol can definitely increase yield in some strains- up to 30% it seems.

My best plants yield around one gram per watt. That's a very good yield. I don't feel the need to go to extra work removing leaves even if it did increase yield for me. Besides which I'm almost 100% sure it would reduce my yield, in my situation.

I'd encourage anyone considering defol to have an open mind about it, and constantly experiment to see when it works and when it doesn't

This is a Critical Cheese plant I grew 12/12 from seed as part of a solo cup grow competition. It took 101 days from seed to harvest. I didn't remove a single leaf on it till harvest. Why would I?
I don't believe any defoliation would have done anything but slow it down and give me a smaller plant. I realize the picture proves nothing whatsoever I'm just tossing it in because I feel like it.

This plant yielded just over 42 grams. Something like 42.1 I think. So almost an ounce and a half. That completely kicks ass on my regular plants, yield wise.

Just wondering; is that an 'auto' or a 'photoperiod' plant? Thanks in advance!

[Weasel]

Well Nartak that plant is a photo- in case you missed it. I don't grow autos myself.
But in terms of straight up production yield as well as fun- the 12/12 solo cup grow was great.
It's fun growing new strains from seed and the old veg, clone, label, flower, repeat- routine can feel like work sometimes.
So that would definitely be one attraction to autos.
I grow small one-off strains like that solo cup thing for fun and strain exploration. If they're good enough they become one of the cloned bread and butter strains or personal smoke strains.

[Nartak]

I know she is a photo,was thinking an auto would be the same in terms of yield and an overall less work for me...I have yet to reach the point where im "researching strains" In time... thanks for the tips man!

[Weasel]

There are many very experienced growers who say that autos are a waste of time and energy indoors - because they use more energy overall, aren't faster in the end, and produce lower grade herb. It's not an argument I'd ever get into and I've got no interest in them to begin with- but probably worth looking into. Depends on your priorities. Yet another touchy subject no doubt.

[Nartak]

I will be honest,i only looked through the thread to see if Green has been on here...And he has so there's pretty much nothing i can say..I can post pictures that would hurt peoples eyes....

[DingusKhan]

Wow, that's hard core. I'm looking forward to seeing her in a few days. I've not been doing that much, but I have been following the cutters. Mostly because it feels like something that I can "do", you know, gardening and shit, because this is all so new to me. But my plants are doing well, and it's a real rush seeing them go from hairless pups to thick bushes again.