Longer Flower Period with Defoliation?

[Guest]

Will defoliation during flowering increase the time it takes for the buds to be ready to harvest?

Soil grow, organic nutes, 1 CBD Medihaze plant, 150 watt HPS, grow tent,

[GDTRFB95]

It shouldnt, but if the result is tighter denser bigger buds that take less time to trim after harvest Id take the risk of an extra week or 2 anyday

[oldjarhead100]

Its better to harvest 2 weeks late than 1 week early buds really bulk up last week

[Guest]

Thank you for your input.

I agree with both of you and my challenge is that I have to be out of town and won't be able to tend to my plant. I'm not sure I want to risk harvesting too early if I've prolonged the flowering time by defoliation. I've grown CBD Medihaze a number of times and have it dialed in. The timing of when to harvest to when I have to be traveling is right on schedule. I'd like to do some defoliation during flower but not if it's going to delay my harvest.

From past experience if I harvest too early the cannabis can give me a headache.

Any additional thoughts would be welcome.

Best to you all.

[PaganRich]

The short answer is not necessarily....it all comes down to how much you defoliate. Light defoliation to expose some bud sites could bring things along at a normal pace but in my experience, if you defoliate regularly and fairly robustly you can easily add another week or two to the time required prior harvest. I add a month sometimes getting the veg stage the way I want it but I am brutal with trimming though....worth it though...

[Guest]

Hey PaganRich I like your Avatar and screen name.

Sounds like I should be very selective on which fan leaves I remove and that they should only be the ones casting a shadow on buds. I think I'll give it a try.

I'll report in on the effect, if any, on the harvest timing.

Thanks.

[PaganRich]

Low....if defoliating is your thing then you really should check out Green 75`s grows....very educational my friend....roll on to a bumper harvest

[PaganRich]

Fyi this is a Super Iced Grapefruit I`m currently growing.......she`s about 2 months old here and still hadn`t been flipped at this point....she has been heavily defoliated throughout that time and is so use to it that an hour later you wouldn`t even know, leaves up and happy. Finally, if you look at the stems you will see that I`ve gone for sturdiness in growth which will hopefully be reflected in longer, larger cola`s.

Nice job on the LST. I'd like to try that sometime when I have a longer schedule. My LST isn't that extensive and I flipped it at 4 weeks but because she was really growing quickly.

[Insight]

PaganRich ...Hi...Can you explain the purpose of those black clips near the center of the plant. I notice you use them on your grows and would like to understand what they do...Thanks.

[PaganRich]

Well....when I started I met a guy ( Gods this sounds so dodgy) who knew a guy who got 6-8 oz per plant regular with no defoliating or anything really fancy by using hydro and a clothes peg as a LST device to promote bud/ root growth. However, I tried safety pins to `hold` stems and didn`t get any real benefit and tried washing pegs and still didn`t. Now this guy said you were meant to scrape the green off the surface and let the plant grow round the peg..I haven`t been able to reproduce...so...I`m trying orchid clips on main stems...not just `the` main stem...as a kind of experiment to see if restriction works....to be honest my thoughts are this: if it works well restricted, what would happen if I removed them halfway through flowering and there was a surge of nutes, etc...that`s it, work in progress...hope this makes sense, just had a bottle of French red and it may not...but be mellow

[Insight]

Thank you for the explanation...almost seems like a "mechanical" super cropping method.
I always enjoy reading your posts. It's obvious you are really into growing and seem to experiment with different methods of feeding and growing that are slightly "outside the box".
Keep it up,.... I keep learning.

[PaganRich]

Thank you but I`ve only been growing 18 odd months I think so it`s all new and experimental for me. I actually don`t like gardening and have a guy come in once a month to do my titchy garden I hate it so much....but these plants.....they just are something else.....just really really love growing them for the personal joy, pleasure and of course, the consumption

[Guest]

Light defoliation appears to have increased the grow time a bit but increased bud size for the same stage as without defoliation. I have taken one fan leaf off of each node but have left the highest two leaves at the bottom of each bud. It's about three weeks to harvest. I'm on a tight schedule so I'm going to try and encourage the buds to mature more by reducing from 12/12 to 11/13 for a week and see what happens. I may reduce the lighting by one hour a week until harvest Floor is open to comment.