Touchet's Perpetual Garden

[Touchet]

An old pic of my current Moms when they were just little pups, also is the mother to the Tangergreen, the new strain.

Here's one for ya, see the male plant in with the two females

well they got together and had a baby

Born from dirt and now bred in hydro only from clone only,

her 2nd week of life,

sex check,

the cubes on the right are the clones,

these six,

strong strong roots

here you can track the two clones that are currently in flowering, in this pic they are on the lower right next to each other,

Here she is after two weeks of veg with roots out the bottom and sides everywhere,

Moms on the left in this pic, daughters are on the right. The screen was used to help train them until the end of the HPS stretch. I use a 150 watt Feliz in the chamber for the first week along side the 150 watt HPS lights to help ease in the transition.

 

[Touchet]

This brings a tear to my eye, it's me holding the very first branch to have flowers on it,

AND TANGERGREEN WAS BORN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[chainseeker]

Great read. Thanks 4 the lessons and keep teaching please.

 

[Touchet]

I have seen a lot of talk lately about which leaves to remove, when to remove them, how to remove them, when NOT to remove them, etc. SO, I decided to do some in front of your eyes work again tonight, and this time the topic is leaves.

Plants use a process called photosynthesis in order to change sunlight into food.
This process takes place mostly in the leaves of a plant. Leaves are large and flattened so that a large area of chlorophyll is exposed to the sunlight.

Leaves are also used in a process called transpiration, which helps draw water and dissolved minerals up the plant's stem from the roots, where these substances have been absorbed from the soil.
During transpiration, water evaporates through tiny holes in the leaves. More water is drawn up through a thin tube extending down the plant's stem.

Knowing these two facts is crucial to us growers. Take a look at one of your plants, see the leaves. Think of these leaves as solar panels on a house. Now take a look at your fan leaves in particular. That's a much larger solar panel huh?! Wouldn't want that to stop working or your computer might go out. But, what if other smaller solar panels, more of them, where being blocked by a larger solar panel (fan leaf), then what? This is how you need to approach your plants.
If you are in vegetative cycle then you should do everything possible to keep fan leaves right where they are, on the plant. However, if your solar system was an "intelligent" solar system and it knew to draw more power from panels getting more sun rather than the ones shaded, it would do so only when needed. The surface area of a large fan leaf is usually equal to the surface area of about three regular sized leaves, depending on strain and growing technique. SO, is it in your best interest to cut them off?
Not really. However if the plant itself should decide to let that leaf slump off then assist it. This is the part you should read twice, "assist it, do NOT FORCE it"

What I mean here is when you see a leaf turning yellow, gently pinch the end of the leaf in your fingertips. With a gentle pulling of ONLY your fingers give it a little tug, DO NOT USE YOUR WRIST! if the leaf does NOT come off with only the slightest pull, it doesn't want to.

Either the plant is trying to heal itself and has decided that leaf is worth keeping or it isn't ready to come off yet. Either way at this point it is NOT your decision. What is your decision is necrotic tissue. Al leaf that has turn a very pale grayish green and all gnarled up into a ball kinda, that needs to go. More than likely it was trapped somehow in its current position and the plant could not expel the leaf from the stem. This happens in nature with something called "wind", it blows and the plant takes advantage of this fact and cuts the supply of "juices" to the leaf so the wind may remove it,natures pruning so to speak.

Now back to those fan leaves real quick. if you had two solar panels. Panel A is 4ft by 4ft, and panel B is 2ft by 2ft. Which one would produce more solar power?? The bigger one, no doubt. But, what if the bigger one was partially shaded and placed at the bottom of a well while the other was at the top of the well?? Hmmmm...

A fan leaf can be forcefully removed, I would ONLY do it one at a time though if I were you. Pulling to many of your large solar panels out of the equation simply is not a great idea if you want your house to be CONSISTENT!!! I say it like that because thats where it will be effected the most. If your light is solar powered and a big cloud covers the sun for the day, your light will dim. When the cloud moves your light will brighten. Now apply it to your plants. Remove a big fan leaf and your plant is going to dim, to bad you cant put ir back now that its off though. Well naturally you cannot. There is one foliar feed that I personally use that will help the plant through this stage but we'll save that for the end of the discussion.

Now let's take a moment of silence, for this small chronic break, and the passing of any leaves before their time.

 

[Touchet]

Now lets look at transpiration for a second.
Transpiration, helps draw water and dissolved minerals up the plant's stem from the roots, which have pulled whats deemed necessary by the plant out of the grow medium.
During transpiration, water evaporates through tiny holes in the leaves. More water is drawn up through a thin tube extending down the plant's stem as the water evaporates from the leaf surface.

Anyone ever siphon anything around here? Remember when gas was really expensive and you stole it from your neighbors tank?? LOL, same thing. The plant is evaporating moisture from the surface of the leaf and is replacing from moisture at the bottom of the plant aka roots.

So, if you were to cut the leaf off and the plant had no where else to send that moisture to evaporate, what happens to it?? It can no longer count on the same flow of nutes from the roots up to the leaves because you changed part of the equation. So it sits, in the roots, or in the medium, doing nothing. If the nutes get "locked" in your roots, well, you all have heard the term "lock up" before right?!

Now before we get into transpiration and gluttation any further lets address something. There is continued debate about whether the flatness of leaves evolved to expose the chloroplasts to more light or to increase the absorption of carbon dioxide. Either way, the adaption was made at the expense of water loss. Jot that down, it'll be important.

Now, lets look at a leaf for what it is,

 

[Touchet]

see the epidermis? This is what we're gonna focus on.

The epidermis is the outer layer of cells covering the leaf. It forms the boundary separating the plant's inner cells from the external world. with out getting to technical,The epidermis is usually transparent (epidermal cells lack chloroplasts) and coated on the outer side with a waxy cuticle that prevents water loss. The cuticle is in some cases thinner on the lower epidermis than on the upper epidermis, and is thicker on leaves from dry climates as compared with those from wet climates.

So jot that down, thicker on leaves from dry climates as compared with those from wet climates. More humidity equals thinner leaf, less humidity equals thicker leaf.

The epidermis tissue includes several differentiated cell types: epidermal cells, guard cells, subsidiary cells, and epidermal hairs ( trichomes ). The epidermis is covered with pores called stomata, part of a stoma complex consisting of a pore surrounded on each side by chloroplast-containing guard cells, and two to four subsidiary cells that lack chloroplasts. The stoma complex regulates the exchange of gases and water vapor between the outside air and the interior of the leaf. Typically, the stomata are more numerous over the abaxial (lower) epidermis than the adaxial (upper) epidermis.

Jot that down also, more numerous over the lower than the upper. And they control the exchange of gases and water vapor. Aka foliar feeding and o2 / co2 exchange. These are key!

The middle of the leaf or the Mesophyll is where about 80% of the photosynthesis process takes place. Divide that section into two layers An upper palisade layer of tightly packed, vertically elongated cells, one to two cells thick, directly beneath the adaxial epidermis. Its cells contain many more chloroplasts than the spongy layer. These long cylindrical cells are regularly arranged in one to five rows. Cylindrical cells, with the chloroplasts close to the walls of the cell, can take optimal advantage of light. The slight separation of the cells provides maximum absorption of carbon dioxide.
This separation must be minimal to afford capillary action for water distribution. In order to adapt to their different environment (such as sun or shade), plants have to adapt this structure to obtain optimal result. Sun leaves have a multi-layered palisade layer, while shade leaves or older leaves closer to the soil, are single-layered.

 

[Touchet]

Now let's make this more interesting and using what we just learned, we are going to watch some vid



This is my purps plant, about 20 days ago I cut all the fan leaves off. On purpose. It was to answer this same question in another forum, will the plant be ok?? I have let her rebound with out foliar feeding program applied to the other plants around it on the tray. You can compare her color to the other plants, she is light green.

at about 15 seconds on the vid you can see me pulling on the leaves like I said in my first post about this topic. one falls off when I blow on it at about 20 seconds into the vid.
at about 50 seconds you see when a leaf comes off from gently pulling on it, the plant itself never moves so it was ready to come off.

You can see me pul the gray necrotic tissued leaves at 1:30 and again at 2:05 in the vid

 

[Touchet]

You can see me pull old dead fan leaves off some of the other plants as I work through my 1250 ppm tray

I start by tearing into the kush plant, notice the plant doesn't shake if the leaf comes off,

At about 5:00 I dig into the train wreck and start pulling out old FAN LEAVES

 

[Touchet]

In this pic you see a lower branch where a clone was taken. This helps confirm what I say about telling people to use the lower branches because they are the strongest for clones. To the right of the blue paper clip is new growth, the plant is try to replace the branch because I did NOT cut it properly when taking the clone. In order to do this it is sucking all the nutes out of the surrounding leaves and forcing a new growth on the side as well which I am touching in this pic.

 

[Touchet]

It will continue to try and fix these branches unless I cut them properly, if I don't this will continue to happen.

The plant forms only enough new leaves on the interior to support the needed photosynthesis until the branch can reach the edge/top of the canopy with its own set of fan leaves to soak in the rays. Once it reaches it, the plant kills the inner smaller leaves and refocuses on growth.

 

[Touchet]

Now seeing this and knowing what I told you above about the leaf layers, I have + rep for the first person to tell me what could have solved this problem.

How could the plant have had enough power to keep all those little leaves and repair that branch??

Remember it has no fan leaves

 

[chainseeker]

Liquid Light?

 

[Touchet]

Liquid Light?

nope, it would have helped a lot though

try again

 

[chainseeker]

I'm thinking along the line of u doing something different. Like leaving a leaf or 2 so the branch would have water and nutes drawn thru it. IDK ur making my head spin. I am diggin the lessons though this is the only thread I want to read several times.

 

[chainseeker]

PS this is my 1st grow so bare with me. I hooked!

 

[jebus2029]

Did you remove the larger fan leaves above so the small leaves received more light?

 

[gumball]

Could it have helped to cut the clones the right way?

 

[Touchet]

Did you remove the larger fan leaves above so the small leaves received more light?

yes sir,the question on the other forum was, "would it survive?" well it has survived, not to well but she's still with us.

Chainseeker, your right, something is different in the veg table as opposed to the flowering chamber. The flowering chamber has something that the veg trays dont. And it would have helped drastically. I reduced the surface area of the plants leaf mass, thus reducing its photosynthesis power. So in order to keep all those little leaves the plant would have had to increased something, what?

 

[Touchet]

Could it have helped to cut the clones the right way?

Nope, did the same thing to another plant and took clones as well, same time to strip as much foliage as possible. Same effect, smaller leaves went necrotic within a week. I'll give you a hint, "its touching you right now"

 

[gumball]

Air, you let air get into the stems, causing that??? That or light, they are the only things touching me, aside from fabric clothes, and we haven't covered their significance to growing yet!