accountant
Member
I don't believe training or pruning a plant is "mutilating" the plant. If you train your plants a certain way you probably don't need to defoliate, and tucking away leaves (or even just cutting leaves in half, as Ed Rosenthal suggested) does help but is far too time consuming to do.
Logically to me, it seems the plant gets far more light if there are a lot of smaller leaves rather than having only a handful of top fan leaves take all the light. Surface area, folks...
Neither me nor anybody else here is NOT responsible for what happens to your plants. I can only share what I know or do, and expect others to at least give it a try to see their results. I refrained from posting this in the beginner's forum because I didn't want people seeing the thread and ripping off every fan leaf blindly. I posted it here specifically because I figured people would be willing to do tests on even just 1 of their plants before deciding whether this is right for them or not.
The problem with comments like "it stunts growth" and "the plant needs all the fan leaves for energy" is that these people have likely not tried it and only have opinions on the technique based on how they think a plant works, and not necessarily by somebody who has given much thought to the idea that we're growing indoors (this method is only for indoor plants) and that we can manipulate the plant to suit your needs (maximize bud growth.)
These same people would probably have talked negative about supercropping (is crushing the stem "mutilating" the plant?), lollipopping, etc had these not been standard practices now. Maybe because these things seem unnatural, but it's important to remember that we aren't growing in nature. The plant doesn't have the same needs and concerns indoors.
Logically to me, it seems the plant gets far more light if there are a lot of smaller leaves rather than having only a handful of top fan leaves take all the light. Surface area, folks...
Neither me nor anybody else here is NOT responsible for what happens to your plants. I can only share what I know or do, and expect others to at least give it a try to see their results. I refrained from posting this in the beginner's forum because I didn't want people seeing the thread and ripping off every fan leaf blindly. I posted it here specifically because I figured people would be willing to do tests on even just 1 of their plants before deciding whether this is right for them or not.
The problem with comments like "it stunts growth" and "the plant needs all the fan leaves for energy" is that these people have likely not tried it and only have opinions on the technique based on how they think a plant works, and not necessarily by somebody who has given much thought to the idea that we're growing indoors (this method is only for indoor plants) and that we can manipulate the plant to suit your needs (maximize bud growth.)
These same people would probably have talked negative about supercropping (is crushing the stem "mutilating" the plant?), lollipopping, etc had these not been standard practices now. Maybe because these things seem unnatural, but it's important to remember that we aren't growing in nature. The plant doesn't have the same needs and concerns indoors.