Fan Leafs. Blockers of Light Or Energy Producers???

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elkukupanda

Active Member
After the lights turned on, I checked the plant to see how she reacted to loosing that leaf... There was some remarkable growth to the side of the plant... Now today is their 8 day flowering so it might be that as well... Anyways, I'm interested more about the outcome on removing those pale/ beginning of yellow leafs at the bottom than the yield ... so just as a continuation I decided to cut off one of the two remaining leafs that look like this, what you think ?
this one is a little bit more in roughy shape.. And they are located under the first node at the bottom..

veins are looking good.. i think it went completely pale green first... then began yellowing from outside in from the front of the leaf.. after a few cm starts at the back of it... and its like is closing up towards the middle of the leaf..
 

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elkukupanda

Active Member
So I don't know... I gave her an extra dose of nutes two days ago but... I didn't check the bottom prior to that.... Now here is a pic of the plant... All the other leaves are in perfect condition.... And the plant is looking happy... This is why Im asking... Maybe since no light is getting down there the plant was discarding the three bottom fan leaves?
 

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Slab

Well-Known Member
So I don't know... I gave her an extra dose of nutes two days ago but... I didn't check the bottom prior to that.... Now here is a pic of the plant... All the other leaves are in perfect condition.... And the plant is looking happy... This is why Im asking... Maybe since no light is getting down there the plant was discarding the three bottom fan leaves?
transmittance, the process of light passing through the leaf to the next one, and the next and so on.
yo will want to increase Nitrogen to keep them green.

your plants looks great, they are like ; " do you even lift ,Bro?"

haha.

Did you cut clones> and what strain is that?
 

infdjedi

Well-Known Member
After the lights turned on, I checked the plant to see how she reacted to loosing that leaf... There was some remarkable growth to the side of the plant... Now today is their 8 day flowering so it might be that as well... Anyways, I'm interested more about the outcome on removing those pale/ beginning of yellow leafs at the bottom than the yield ... so just as a continuation I decided to cut off one of the two remaining leafs that look like this, what you think ?
this one is a little bit more in roughy shape.. And they are located under the first node at the bottom..

veins are looking good.. i think it went completely pale green first... then began yellowing from outside in from the front of the leaf.. after a few cm starts at the back of it... and its like is closing up towards the middle of the leaf..

Feed more N. If you are getting yellowing only on 8 days of 12/12.. they are N deprived at the least. I only start to get yellowing on week 6 or 7.
 

akula

Active Member
I have a botany degree and worked in botanical fields for several years now. I know how plants grow, and more importantly, I know how to manipulate plants for our own selfish human needs which more often than not, are different than a plants own needs. In regards to defoliation as a means to increase bud production, folks need to throw a lot about botany and plant growth characteristics out of the water. The reason being, think about what the entire point of a plants life is: to reproduce. That is, in the case of a female cannabis plant, to become pollinated and produce LOTS and LOTS of SEEDS. That's right, seeds. When a plant becomes pollinated it is safe to assume most of it's energy is diverted to grow and mature the seed. As cannabis growers, we are in fact training the plant to do something it does not want to do, grow massive, unpollinated buds.

I am stumped at how you are here claiming to have a botany degree and then in the next sentence dive into a idea that we are "manipulating" the plant and throwing plants growth characteristics out into the water. I dont know if you wrote it badly or just sort of jumbled in your ideas here. For one growing sensimilla, though it is manipulating the environment, it has nothing to do with manipulating the growth characteristics of the cannabis plant. It is perfectly within its natural order to put all its effort into attracting pollen before its death and that effort is to grow large sticky swollen calyxes to achieve that. So we are not exactly training it, just taking advantage of its natural survival process in a controlled environment. Then you go into your case for defoliation with no natural backing that we have with why we grow cannabis sensimilla and how we take advantage of this natural process for our benefit.

This is actually a very common logical fallacy, but I dont think you actually are aware that you did. I would like for you to expand on your defoliation argument and how it relates to a natural process or tendency of the cannabis plant like your base argument of growing sensimilla. There is nothing outside of the norm when a female cannabis plant fails to attract pollen and swells in a desperate attempt to attract pollen. This is actually very normal. However what process do we have to add credence to defoliation that helps us? Something that backs your argument here is what I am looking for because relating an unnatural process to a perfectly natural process is really not a good argument. For example, if cannabis evolved to grow around grazing animal herds, and it used the animals grazing on its leaves for triggering its reproduction operations, then defoliation could absolutely be equated to your example of sensimilla. Can you expand on anything like this?

**edit: I just re-read this and dont want to come off as calling you a lair or anything. I am just thinking you wrote this without really applying your botany knowledge.
 

infdjedi

Well-Known Member
I am stumped at how you are here claiming to have a botany degree and then in the next sentence dive into a idea that we are "manipulating" the plant and throwing plants growth characteristics out into the water. I dont know if you wrote it badly or just sort of jumbled in your ideas here. For one growing sensimilla, though it is manipulating the environment, it has nothing to do with manipulating the growth characteristics of the cannabis plant. It is perfectly within its natural order to put all its effort into attracting pollen before its death and that effort is to grow large sticky swollen calyxes to achieve that. So we are not exactly training it, just taking advantage of its natural survival process in a controlled environment. Then you go into your case for defoliation with no natural backing that we have with why we grow cannabis sensimilla and how we take advantage of this natural process for our benefit.

This is actually a very common logical fallacy, but I dont think you actually are aware that you did. I would like for you to expand on your defoliation argument and how it relates to a natural process or tendency of the cannabis plant like your base argument of growing sensimilla. There is nothing outside of the norm when a female cannabis plant fails to attract pollen and swells in a desperate attempt to attract pollen. This is actually very normal. However what process do we have to add credence to defoliation that helps us? Something that backs your argument here is what I am looking for because relating an unnatural process to a perfectly natural process is really not a good argument. For example, if cannabis evolved to grow around grazing animal herds, and it used the animals grazing on its leaves for triggering its reproduction operations, then defoliation could absolutely be equated to your example of sensimilla. Can you expand on anything like this?

**edit: I just re-read this and dont want to come off as calling you a lair or anything. I am just thinking you wrote this without really applying your botany knowledge.

How often are plants not pollinated in their natural environments? Since the entire source of existence is reproduction.. I disagree that unpollinated females are abundant in natural environments. Sure, the wild bee dieoff has caused this problem but it is rare in nature. Sure, endangered species which do not have many males around certainly have more unfertilized females. What we do as cannabis growers is prevent female plants from completing their life cycle. This changes a lot of things w/ in the plant that happen naturally.

Let me ask you this. If an pollinated cannabis plant is putting all of it's energy into flower + resin production, how on earth do you think it will have the energy left to create healthy seeds if it is eventually pollinated? The plant obviously stores energy in reserve in case it does get pollinated. This reserve energy must be generated somewhere, which exact place is up for debate as it requires extensive scientific study. One thing people have agreed upon, is fan leaves are a place for energy storage as well as photosynthetic production. One generally accepted principle is all living things try to evolve as efficiently as possible. Therefore, it is reasoable to assume plants try and reduce the distance energy (food,water,minerals) travels. Based upon this idea, I feel that defoliation (I am not talking total defoliation) is beneficial because the leaves closest to the bud will get more light and more of that energy will be put into the bud.

I guess my basis for the argument is the cannabis plant does not care how many unpollinated flowers it has, only the number of pollinated flowers. I believe that the leaves closest to the buds produce most of the energy that goes into the buds themselves, whereas larger fan and shade leaves put most of their energy into reserves for seed production. I realize I have no peer reviewed literature or a scientific study to prove this to you.. all I have is my experience which you can take it or leave it.

I have found that when a number of fan + shade leaves are removed, more light hits the bud sites which grow much larger than they would w/o fan leaves being removed. The negative of removing fan leaves is outweighed by the fact that the bud sites are larger (which is our goal, as humans).
 

elkukupanda

Active Member
thanks for the replies.. i will keep an eye on the leafs... maybe the plant is just discarding the very bottom leaves since they get almost no light and is very bushy... The reason why i think this is... 3 days ago i upped the nutrient dose to 1 1/2 str8 and i use a 20-20-20 fert... so i have my doubts about been a deficiency... u see why i don't want to even feed more? I'm leaning more towards UB thought of excess of salts at the end.... Today she will get just water... So if its n def I will know for sure
 

elkukupanda

Active Member
transmittance, the process of light passing through the leaf to the next one, and the next and so on.
yo will want to increase Nitrogen to keep them green.

your plants looks great, they are like ; " do you even lift ,Bro?"

haha.

Did you cut clones> and what strain is that?
Hahaha, yes bro, what's the range of transmittance of 600w hps? 4 feet? Cuz the lights are about 4 and a couple inches... I'm just super curious about this
 

elkukupanda

Active Member
How often are plants not pollinated in their natural environments? Since the entire source of existence is reproduction.. I disagree that unpollinated females are abundant in natural environments. Sure, the wild bee dieoff has caused this problem but it is rare in nature. Sure, endangered species which do not have many males around certainly have more unfertilized females. What we do as cannabis growers is prevent female plants from completing their life cycle. This changes a lot of things w/ in the plant that happen naturally.

Let me ask you this. If an pollinated cannabis plant is putting all of it's energy into flower + resin production, how on earth do you think it will have the energy left to create healthy seeds if it is eventually pollinated? The plant obviously stores energy in reserve in case it does get pollinated. This reserve energy must be generated somewhere, which exact place is up for debate as it requires extensive scientific study. One thing people have agreed upon, is fan leaves are a place for energy storage as well as photosynthetic production. One generally accepted principle is all living things try to evolve as efficiently as possible. Therefore, it is reasoable to assume plants try and reduce the distance energy (food,water,minerals) travels. Based upon this idea, I feel that defoliation (I am not talking total defoliation) is beneficial because the leaves closest to the bud will get more light and more of that energy will be put into the bud.

I guess my basis for the argument is the cannabis plant does not care how many unpollinated flowers it has, only the number of pollinated flowers. I believe that the leaves closest to the buds produce most of the energy that goes into the buds themselves, whereas larger fan and shade leaves put most of their energy into reserves for seed production. I realize I have no peer reviewed literature or a scientific study to prove this to you.. all I have is my experience which you can take it or leave it.

I have found that when a number of fan + shade leaves are removed, more light hits the bud sites which grow much larger than they would w/o fan leaves being removed. The negative of removing fan leaves is outweighed by the fact that the bud sites are larger (which is our goal, as humans).
But then that's a lighting problem right? By removing top fan leaves... all its happening is that you are removing deposits of energy which will affect the development of the upper buds... Unless you can prove that even by removing upper fan leafs you still get the same results on the top cola which goes against scientific data to this day... Removing those leaves will causes stress... Stress causes shock to an extend... Shock :waste of energy... U know where i'm getting to? some people just move the leafs are of he way... But people that defoliates claim that now because have more light to lower bud sites you will harvest bigger yields... Now you see a lot of pictures here and then... Where plant look like there's buds everywhere... But none of them even close to a well develop cola... I mean might as well go 12/12 from the get go like member here and get a small plant that receives enough light and buds all over... Why waste the time to develop foliage and roots to get the ultimate colas if you are going to remove what you are trying to get in the first place... I have come to the conclusion that people who defoliates was never able to keep a healthy foliage till harvest... And seems like that's the hard part about growing weed
 

Slab

Well-Known Member
Hahaha, yes bro, what's the range of transmittance of 600w hps? 4 feet? Cuz the lights are about 4 and a couple inches... I'm just super curious about this
I had my outdoors yellow at the bottom, only fed once in 3 months. that's why I mentioned upping the N.
I feed every third watering, and trippled the amount avail. N. with that regiment I don't think salt build would be an issue.
wth that being said, transmittance will go through plenty of leaf.







what strain is that if you don't mind answering ?:lol:

wanted to add I would back those lights off, you get growth spurt and u got burned cola.
 

PJ Diaz

Well-Known Member
I'm not saying that I support or or don't support the theory one way or the other, however aside from light, there is another theoretical reason to remove older fan leaves which are still green. The theory is that floral inhibitors are stored in the older fan leaves. Actually it's not a theory , it's a fact. The question is, does removing these inhibitor containing leaves outweigh the benefit of their photosynthetic activity?

Of course there's also the fact, which I've mentioned before, that deleafing does help with air circulation.
 

elkukupanda

Active Member
I had my outdoors yellow at the bottom, only fed once in 3 months. that's why I mentioned upping the N.
I feed every third watering, and trippled the amount avail. N. with that regiment I don't think salt build would be an issue.
wth that being said, transmittance will go through plenty of leaf.







what strain is that if you don't mind answering ?:lol:

wanted to add I would back those lights off, you get growth spurt and u got burned cola.
its white widow by Dutch passion man, yes haha, I'm there every time the lights go on like a creeper
hmm I think I feed every third watering as well but that time I fed twice in a row.. This plant drinks like a champ so every 3 days I'm watering..... She expanded to the sides a lot tho and drank those nuts really quick but the 3 bottom leaves were affected... I'm assuming cuz they are the ones taking care of the roots or something... So the build up reflected down there... But Ill be watering tonight so that should give her a break.... There is one leaf left so tomorrow will be exciting.
 

elkukupanda

Active Member
I had my outdoors yellow at the bottom, only fed once in 3 months. that's why I mentioned upping the N.
I feed every third watering, and trippled the amount avail. N. with that regiment I don't think salt build would be an issue.
wth that being said, transmittance will go through plenty of leaf.







what strain is that if you don't mind answering ?:lol:

wanted to add I would back those lights off, you get growth spurt and u got burned cola.
oh my plant is not 4 feet..They are like 2 something... 4 and few inches is where my lights is at... I can't wait to grow outdoors man.
 

PJ Diaz

Well-Known Member
I had my outdoors yellow at the bottom, only fed once in 3 months. that's why I mentioned upping the N.
I feed every third watering, and trippled the amount avail. N. with that regiment I don't think salt build would be an issue.
wth that being said, transmittance will go through plenty of leaf.







what strain is that if you don't mind answering ?:lol:

wanted to add I would back those lights off, you get growth spurt and u got burned cola.
oh my plant is not 4 feet..They are like 2 something... 4 and few inches is where my lights is at... I can't wait to grow outdoors man.
4 feet from the top of the plants? That's way too far man. Maybe you mean 4 feet from the bottom?
 

akula

Active Member
Once again your response is really all over the place with no direct line of thought laying out your position or argument. It is a bit frustrating since your claim as someone that directly works in the field of botany with a degree should be able to lay down a more simple and straight forward position. But I will try and dissect and address your points.


How often are plants not pollinated in their natural environments? Since the entire source of existence is reproduction.. I disagree that unpollinated females are abundant in natural environments.

What? Who said anything about this being abundant? What I said was that it was part of the natural process of the plant to preserve its survival. It may be extremely rare, or it may be extremely common depending on the contemporaneous local environment.


Sure, the wild bee dieoff has caused this problem but it is rare in nature. Sure, endangered species which do not have many males around certainly have more unfertilized females.

Again what?? This is what I am talking about. Your claim as having a degree in botany and working directly in the industry and that alone should alleviate you mistaking a global problem (dieing bee population) with a natural process of a plant that strives to reproduce at all cost having to do with its immediate local environment. There are two million and one reasons why a healthy female cannabis plant does not get pollinated in a timely manner (or ever). It happens in all varieties of plant life. How could you even mistake this for a global only problem? Mind boggeling.




Let me ask you this. If an pollinated cannabis plant is putting all of it's energy into flower + resin production, how on earth do you think it will have the energy left to create healthy seeds if it is eventually pollinated?

Again I shake my head. You actually answer your question in you very next sentence, but simply dismiss it.......why? But anyways I will answer the point I dont think you really understand you even asking....its just thoughts kinda jumbled up. If a cannabis plant finally does get pollinated after that “event horizon” point or point of no return, the point where it has exhausted all its resources and stores to the point that it couldn't produce viable seeds before it died? What happens then? It dies.... Come on man. Life tries to continue until there is no life left. That is a pretty basic concept.




The plant obviously stores energy in reserve in case it does get pollinated.

Yep pretty elementary stuff here.


This reserve energy must be generated somewhere,

WHAT?? Its stored in the plant. You just stated it yourself. But photosynthesis doesn't just stop. WTF?


which exact place is up for debate as it requires extensive scientific study.
Not it is not. We know exactly how photosynthesis in plants converts light into sugars, stores them, transports them and reconverts them for energy. This is not up for debate at all.....


One thing people have agreed upon, is fan leaves are a place for energy storage as well as photosynthetic production. One generally accepted principle is all living things try to evolve as efficiently as possible. Therefore, it is reasoable to assume plants try and reduce the distance energy (food,water,minerals) travels. Based upon this idea, I feel that defoliation (I am not talking total defoliation) is beneficial because the leaves closest to the bud will get more light and more of that energy will be put into the bud.

I was half way with you here until you jumped from efficiency to defoliation is good. Here is the thing, plants do not actually worry about efficiency as much as priority. The stems, leaves and roots are the main storage centers, yet the flowers (calyxes) are the priority resources. If efficiency was was the goal, then they would also be the primary storage.


Also since you already admitted that the fan leaves are the primary photosynthesizers, you need to then come up with a mathematical equation that shows how transport of these resources would degrade greater then the loss of energy production with the proportional loss of those producers. Anything else is simply conjecture. And as far as my elementary knowledge of botany goes, there is little to no loss of resources in the priority based transportation system. But common sense in me dictates that it would be much greater then this loss percentage based on main energy producers. But a solid math equation would settle it.


I have found that when a number of fan + shade leaves are removed, more light hits the bud sites which grow much larger than they would w/o fan leaves being removed. The negative of removing fan leaves is outweighed by the fact that the bud sites are larger (which is our goal, as humans).

Again, math equation or your just spouting hot air. It should be real easy to do.


I want to really get something here that would prove defoliation as positive, but so far I have seen nothing but conjecture, anecdotal evidence, and a few unrelated studies.
 

elkukupanda

Active Member
4 feet from the top of the plants? That's way too far man. Maybe you mean 4 feet from the bottom?
sorry bro I think didn't explain myself clearly.. Lights are about 4 feet and few inches.. And plants are about two feet and some inches.. Almost three feet now... I just go as long as my hand doesn't fell uncomfortable.. I put them as close as possible..
 
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