defoliation attempt

dimebag87

dimebag87

Well-Known Member
Hey ppl. Hopefully we can get a little debate going. Im mad. Its my first grow and I'm attempting advanced techniques. I have 4 plants that are starting to get a lot of branching that wasn't receiving quality light. It was killing me to see all these potential tops going to waste.


So I took off the first two sets of fan leaves and began to bend the shoots out and away from the plant so they revive more light. The one on the left has about six or seven potential tops! o I hope it works.

I decided to try it on two first
 

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dimebag87

dimebag87

Well-Known Member
yeh man its the basic idea. only I took the fans off to expose the shoots properly to the light. Really hope it recovers properly lol
 
B

bigsteve

Well-Known Member
I've been down this road before. I trimmed most of the fans off of 4 Armageddon clones I was flowering.
Shortly afterwards I noticed small leaves turning albino white. Then half the "greenery" was in fact white.
I harvested as usual to find the white reefer was worthless. Here's why....

On the underside of fan leaves are organelles (little organs) whose job it is to take light from your bulb and
convert it to a form of energy the plant uses to grow. When I trimmed my fans I also cut away the plants'
ability to grow properly. Fans are necessary for photosynthesis.

You can trim a few and be OK. But don't trim until you see white greenery.

Good luck, BigSteve.
 
Krondizzel

Krondizzel

New Member
I noticed if I take them too early or too many at one time it really makes the girls mad. I quit messing with "advanced techniques" and have seen a big improvement on growth. I stopped taking them off until they are withering and dead. Its pretty obvious to me now which ones to take. None of them, unless your root mass can't support the foliage. I had to remove foliage on one specifically because I saw no growth in about 2 weeks. I took its 2 big leaves off (thats all it had, plus some tinyof ones) and it started making new stuff immediately. It kind of takes some experimenting too :)
 
dimebag87

dimebag87

Well-Known Member
Thanks for the input guys. Well if I screw them up at least it wont kill em outright. They will still give me something. I didn't remove all the fans as you can see. Just enough to gain some light exposure to the lower branching. You can see the potential when there is loads of tiny bud sites sitting there begging for some light. I will post a pic in a few days if anyone is interested to see how they are dealing with it.
 
Grown n Oregon

Grown n Oregon

Active Member
instead of cutting the leaves...just wait till ur branch is long enough to bend it past them. this is just an opinion, but a plant that small prob needs all the leaves it can get to grow bigger.
 
Krondizzel

Krondizzel

New Member
You know, I actually just looked at the picture really carefully and in fact, that is exactly what I would recommend NOT doing. My ONLY reasoning, I'll keep it simple... I did that to mine when they were roughly that size and it made them pretty mad for a day or two. Once I quit plucking leaves off, they went back to doing their thing. Yes it is hard sometimes keeping myself from pulling leaves off when I have the urge to do so, but I have noticed quite an increase in growth. I'm sure you can get away with 1 or 2 here and there, but... take it easy on the lil buggers, yes they grow back, but now they have to repair what damage that may have occurred during defoliation. Time better spent creating new foliage in my opinion.

Just remember, its just my opinion, I'm pretty new to this too but I figured I'd share what experience I have on it. Hope it helps!
 
dimebag87

dimebag87

Well-Known Member
Krondizzel said:
You know, I actually just looked at the picture really carefully and in fact, that is exactly what I would recommend NOT doing. My ONLY reasoning, I'll keep it simple... I did that to mine when they were roughly that size and it made them pretty mad for a day or two. Once I quit plucking leaves off, they went back to doing their thing. Yes it is hard sometimes keeping myself from pulling leaves off when I have the urge to do so, but I have noticed quite an increase in growth. I'm sure you can get away with 1 or 2 here and there, but... take it easy on the lil buggers, yes they grow back, but now they have to repair what damage that may have occurred during defoliation. Time better spent creating new foliage in my opinion.

Just remember, its just my opinion, I'm pretty new to this too but I figured I'd share what experience I have on it. Hope it helps!
Click to expand...
thanks man :)
 
Grown n Oregon

Grown n Oregon

Active Member
look at it like an apple tree...do u have to cut and remove leaves from it for it to produce buds in the middle of the tree? simple answer...no, no ya dont. they will search for light all on thier very own, its almost like nature planed it that way..
 
dimebag87

dimebag87

Well-Known Member
Grown n Oregon said:
look at it like an apple tree...do u have to cut and remove leaves from it for it to produce buds in the middle of the tree? simple answer...no, no ya dont. they will search for light all on thier very own, its almost like nature planed it that way..
Click to expand...
Its a fair point dude and of course bud's would grow if you left the foliage alone. It would also be fair to say that lower branching bud that is shaded and lower down the plant all ways produces the thinner fluffier buds. Even with an apple tree, fruit production seems to occur towards the end of branch's nearer to the sun rather than inwards near the shadier bark. I'm no expert though. This is just stuff I have read.
 
dimebag87

dimebag87

Well-Known Member
well its five days later. only do this if your plants like to grow an inch a day. ive probably just lost an oz in yield. lesson learnt lol
 
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