The way I practice this method (growing indoors) leaves never get a chance to age. No leaves are allowed more than about two weeks existence. I start at the top in order to remove the shading. Removing lower leaf contributes nothing to the strategy of exposing usually shaded out mid and lower growth to premium light. I still remove older shabby leaves to keep it all tidy.
And this is where defoliation gets controversial. Many growers feel that controlling their plant in any way during the vegetative stage will significantly reduce yields. And I understand how it can seem that way, especially to new growers, before you've gone through the entire life cycle of the marijuana plant a few times.
Experiments show, again and again, that large plants with intensively prepared structure during extended Veg cycle yield far more than untrained, smaller, force-flowered inpiduals.
Nebula Haze from GrowWeedEasy.com: I've also found this to be the case.
Small marijuana plants that are forced to flower when extremely young are
can be fun as an experiment, but produce pitiful yields. Investing more time
in the vegetative stage to gain girth, while controlling the shape and growth
of the plant, has dramatically increased yields for me.
The truth is, that with marijuana, the real 'secret sauce' to getting enormous yields is when you've perfectly prepared your plants for the flowering stage. As any grower knows, once you're deep into flowering, there isn't a whole lot you can do about huge, out-of-control plants except hold on, pray for the best, and do better next time.
I DO NOT lollipop and advice strongly against it. I use defoliation to skillfully and artfully prepare plants during the vegetative stage, so that lollipopping becomes completely unnecessary. I am on a mission to refocus growing technique to never remove ANY productive growth. I believe only leaves should be removed.
Ultimately, the defoliation technique is a huge tool in the grower's toolbox that allows you to dominate the Vegetative stage. Then it can be used in the Flowering stage to maximize yields.
Defoliation is the Big Secret to High-Yield, Compact Marijuana Plants
My style involves
intensive defoliation along with the
twist and train method (a version of supercropping) using a basic net for support.
I only top once, if at all, at the 5th or 6th node(approximately) depending on the height and structure of a given clone. I also deleaf them at this time. The only plants that get more topping than that are because they had clones taken from them. I don't usually keep dedicated mothers, instead, I just clone the clones and cycle everything through.
Here is a close-up of a veg clone getting it's second stripping.
Before
After
To get the best results, you should start defoliation in the vegetative stage. Leaf removal in bud is beneficial after stretch but most important to yields is management and the creation of a more compact plant with more budding sites in a given size.
Stripping and bending takes practice but you must do it to get practice. By starting in veg you risk no bud. Veg plants are replaceable so experiment and be ready to devote a little more time to prepare them.
I'd describe my stripping as "aggressive." Once your plant is trained to deal with defoliation, it's hard to go wrong. Plus, after years of experience, I've become very familiar with how these plants grow and always know what my outcome will be.
But defoliation doesn't end in the vegetative stage. I also continue to pull the fan leaves off of my flowering plants to expose the buds.
As far as when and how often, I don't get too scientific about it.
Usually if things look leafy, meaning that you see more leaf than budsites when viewing the crop, it may be time for another deleafing. It usually takes a week to 10 days for a plant to releaf to the point that there are 2-4 new leaves that have flattened and greened enough to deleaf again.
This repeated releafing process allows that lower growth to benefit from the maturing of the immediate leaf mass.
Leaf removal stimulates lower and mid bud growth by exposing those normally shaded out areas to premium light. Of course those new to the technique should start slow, but if you start too slow you won't remove enough leaf to see the best result.
You basically want to prevent any 'shade' from happening.
Here's an example of how I deleaf a girl who is 2 weeks into 12-12 (flowering)
Before
After
Notice how, you can now see light all the way through the plant. This is a good thing for light, as opposed to seeing nothing but leaves in the before pic.
Wait, did you say you wanted to see what kind of buds I get at the BOTTOM of the plant?
You get extensive bottom growth on defoliated plants
This is on the morning of harvest. While some are obsessed with top growth I like well developed bottoms. Tops are a given. If bottoms are this well developed the tops are certainly getting their share of light. Some guys like tops, some like bottoms. I like my girls to be equally well developed.
Ready to Get Started?
You can start easy and try to save leaves but what happens when you see the results like all the mid growth exploding with the new exposure. It would serve logic that if you remove a little and there is good results than remove more and on and on until you get comfortable with stripping down these girls.
I recommend you start deleafing as soon as your plants start looking 'bushy' at all. Start with removing the fans from all the branches and watch the results. Then remove progressively more. Don't remove any branches or sites if you want to commit to this method.
The idea is shade removal, NOT budsite removal. Allow them to releaf for a week or so and remove again when they look leafy.
This girl is 32"sq. and under 30" tall. She was thoroughly plucked continuously through her 11 week flowering cycle as well as during veg. No shortage of branches or buds, all of them chunky and exposed. I ended up harvesting 12 ounces off her. Marijuana plants do not get like this on their own. Stripping in veg and throughout bud is the only way to get results like this.
