SOIL Organic Growers - Do you defoliate?

[AGH]

Hello all!

I grow in an organic soil and always have and love it for the ease (no chemistry set necessary!) and the quality (not to toot my own horn, but the dispensary flower doesn't come close to mine).

Normally I do some decently aggressive defoliation at the flip to 12/12 and again a couple/few weeks later.

This time, I'm doing minimal defoliation. My thought is that since organic gardening doesn't force-feed nutrients, doing a lighter defoliation (only removing leaves that keep blocking bud sites, fans that are completely in the shade, and eventually bud sites/branches that have no chance of reaching the top of the canopy) will allow the plant to keep nutrient stores for the later part of flowering that are easier to access than the good good that's in the soil.

I know that with synthetic grows, aggressive defoliation can be very helpful. I also know that Nebula did some great side-by-side experiments showing the benefits of defoliation, but she left the question of how it would/wouldn't benefit an organic grow unanswered and hopefully the topic of another experiment.

Any organic growers or anyone else have any experience with defoliating versus not defoliating an organic grow?

Photos attached just for reference.

At Day 11 of flower, strain is Alaska Thunderfuck, Roots Organic Soil top dressed with Earth Dust.

Thanks!

[SoOrbudgal]

I don't defoliate my outdoor plants until they are getting within 3wks of harvest. But i do defoliate my indoor with my own soil mix i make an reuse it a couple times. Again i do it within 3wks of harvest and i will remove like you those blocking the bud sites and small irregular branches will come off early in the grow. Tents help keep the light reflective but nothing like the sun outdoors. I don't like leaf touching or overlapping tents much. I like to see space inbetween branches, airflow helps so much with strong branching.

[Orggrwr]

I agree with SoOrbudgal . Have done my own side by side experiments with defoliation and in my experience it drastically improves the bud quality. I sometimes get carried away and worry that I've taken too much but they always bounce back and produce great weed ( almost always anyway).

[Bootsy]

I also agree keeping some spacing and no leaves touching definitely increases quality. my last 3 grows I have been doing side by side grows of soil and coco, and for my soil doing a major defoliation slows them down, but gives great dope. just taking what needs to be removed on a regular basis seems to work best for me on the soil plants. With coco and nutrients i can do major defoliation and they recover instantly due to the speedier growth. The soil plants get checked and pruned every couple days, sometimes only a few leaves. nea to see the difference. Find what works for ya, your reasoning is reasonable and you are fine tuning - very cool!

[Smallgrow]

I’m in Black Swallow KIS mix living soil now and some other brands before , I’ve always defoliated more or less like Nebula suggests. After my last grow seemed to come up a bit short on nutrition at the end I’m thinking to take it a bit lighter on the trimming this time.
I’ll still get rid of most of the lower branches and make sure I have airflow , but I’ve seen many good growers suggest with organic one should leave the leaves as they provide easily accessible nutrients the plant can draw on.

[Gavin]

I often remove the streched shoots in late veg/first 2 weeks in flower(12/12).

also lollipop the plants in early flower.
often I will remove some leaves in veg and flower.

[AGH]

Thanks all for the thoughts!

From everything here, it sounds like I'm on the right track and in good company!

I'm going to continue according to plan, removing leaves that are touching each other or blocking bud sites as well as branches that won't reach the top of the canopy. If anything noteworthy happens, I'll keep everyone posted!

Happy growing!