Theres nothing wrong with lightly defoliating, or just tucking leaves under a scrog. It seems to me that this is a plant by plant issue. I have a Strawberry Banana plant now that is kinda thin. It doesnt need too much defoliation meanwhile the other plants are going crazy. Sativas sometimes dont need a shave. Just dont shwazz it.I feel you... outdoors vs indoors and dwc vs soil is incredibly different and offers a steep learning curve I wasn't entirely prepared for... many things I didn't pay attention to outside are my top priorities inside. The speed at which everything happens in the dwc world is insane!
Mimicking mama nature isn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be
But I'm learning and I'm in the flush right now so I'm hopeful I can pull a gram per watt but if not I'll be happy with some quality stuff over quantity.
Even a half gram per watt for my first ever dwc/indoor grow will make me happy!
A couple weeks into flower, I remove the majority of the big fans. But, only if there's something below. When you remove those huge fans, and let all that lower growth get some light, she'll explode! All those bud sites get blocked by the huge fans. I tried not trimming, a couple grows ago, and it was a disaster! Only the very top buds we're good, but everything below was all larfy. Leave the smaller leaves that are attached to the bud sites. Those are the ones that matter.Hiya
Wouldnt normally threadjack but this is exactly what i need to know at the moment, a rookie looking for advice!
This is a DP Euforia auto at day 60. She was topped, and pretty much all side brancing was removed. This gave me 6 shoots with a lot of growth near the top, just where i want it, near the lights. Its almost as if it was a scrog which is pretty much what i wanted.
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View from below you can see the canopy...
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The thing is it is getting VERY leafy up the top, true its not blocking the light cos there is nothing growing below but still im wondering if i should defoliate at bit...
SORRY for barging in on your thread OP but it seemed like the right place to ask...
Ta very much
Well putI'll just add my own little opinion on the matter, and say that with plants grown normally outside as nature intended, it doesn't make sense to defoliate. The power of the sun reaches all the leaves (it has traveled 93 million miles, so a few extra feet is nothing). When grown inside, this isn't the case at all. Many, many things are done to the plants to try and make up for the shortcomings of indoor lights, compared to the sun. Another example of this is how outside plants can handle much higher temps than indoor. The reason is because of the massive amount circulation outside compared to trying to match it with fans.
When you think about all of the things we do to indoor plants, like topping, supercropping, manifolding, scrogging, etc...,why is it so much of a stretch to say that it may be beneficial to remove leaves from under the canopy, where our whimpy lights can't reach, or thinning out the middle, so our whimpy fans can circulate the air throughout the whole plant(s).
I have seen the benefits of trimming, and I think it may be needed more with hydro, especially dwc. With dwc, my plants grow too many leaves during veg, because of how agressive they grow. I'm growing the same plants I just grew with dwc, but in soil this time. I noticed a pretty significant difference in how they veg. Even though they didn't veg the same as with dwc, I still thought they needed to be trimmed.