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.
