UpstateRecGrower
Well-Known Member
Such a touchy topic around these parts.. I always love the justification of the non believers, "if they didn't need all those fan leaves they wouldn't grow them", "those are the plants solar panels", "they'll take 2 weeks longer to finish because they have to regrow leaves", "that's not how they grow in nature". OK, well here's the thing.. the primary goal in nature and growing naturally in the wild is reproduction, not dense bud's with bag appeal. We're also growing indoors with plants being in close proximity to each other. Leaves do give the plant energy but they also use energy, that's why heavily shaded leaves toward the bottom eventually yellow off and die (the plant defoliates itself). You can have too many leaves or not enough, when you defoliate (at the right time) you need to take off a a good amount because the leaves will fill in again, so you want to take off more than you would think is ideal so that when they grow back (and they do that quicker than you'd think) you have a desirable bud to fan leaf ratio. Plants that have not be defoliated grown in close proximity to each other will also have under developed buds below the top colas, fluffy/larfy, white hairs, looks like they need a couple more weeks. What I do is right before day 1 I lollipop leaving only about 3 nodes on each branch, everything has already been topped in the veg cycle at some point. After about 3 weeks everything has stretched for the most part and filled in, now it's time to goto town.. The bottoms will need to be cleaned up again, remove anything underneath that looks really small, every large fan leaf on the bottom gets removed, they're using more energy than they can make. Any fan leaf shading a bud site or touching another leaf gets removed, the larger top fan's get removed, removing them is going to allow more light into your canopy. Remember you want to remove a little more than you would think because it will fill in again, and there's also maintenance you should do weekly after this if you have the time, look for large fans shading lower bud sites or covering other fan leafs, ect.. I know a lot of growers are against defoliation, I think some of those guys probably aren't growing as dense of a canopy as they could be. I consistently get over 3 ounces per sq/ft, my highest ever was 3.88 ounces per sq/ft and that was with my old citizen cobs that I've since retired for veg lights. I have a couple different grows but the one pictured is about 40 watts per sq/ft with about 70 samsung lm561c PCB's and the total canopy area is about 8x12, 48 plants, 7" pots with a coco/rockwool mix DTW.
Before defoliation day 19
After (same day/day 19)
Before defoliation day 19
After (same day/day 19)
