Should you cut off fan leaves during flowering

Your plant may not generate much new energy with fan leaves during flowering, but the yellowing indicates that your plant is taking nitrogen away from the fan leaves and using is to feed the budleaves. On my outdoor grows I have trimmed the huge leaves from higher up, but with careful planning during veg you can avoid this.
By pruning off the leaves that will shade buds when they are tiny and hardly developed, you girls will put the energy elsewhere. Like topping and dimming.

Plants take better to being pruned during veg when they are growing like weeds.

You could also hang some cfls into the lower canopy to fatten up that lower buds.

YES YOU CAN CUT SOME FANS OFF stupid hippies think plants r people or something tga subcool says its ok i think hes knows what hes doing
TGA Subcool Seeds Deep Purple is a strain that was created to lock down more of the Urkle dominant traits and bring out more of the musty grape taste that Urk is famous for.
Deep Purple produces a wide range of female plants and not all of them will exhibit colours at all. The ones that do however are highly sought after and several people consider their Purple Grape females among their best Indicas strains. Deep Purple can be cultivated both indoors and outdoors and flowering for cannabis seeds take between 50-60 days. Best way to grow is long veg and remove some shade leaves to allow light under. Not a huge producer or a fast growing plant but it makes up for it in taste and high quality. Deep Purple is calming, relaxing and very fun to smoke there ya go straight copy and paste

yep, if u got heavy veg,
start at the bottom and
start letting in the light, a node a day or two
but only after 2-3 weeks into 12/12, when
its past the growth spurt

The leaf is what is creating the food for the bud through photosynthesis. The flowers do not have to be in the direct light because they are not doing much photosynthesizing because of the small amount of green leaves in the buds. Don't remove leaves until they have been exhausted of their nutrients and yellow. The plant will give up the leaf when it is not needed.
Stripping the food factories from the plant at a time when it needs the most energy is counterproductive to good growth. If you were really hungry would you prefer an adult portion or a child's plate? This is a much debated topic, but if you look at recommendations by top growers they will always say, leave it alone. Some people will say they are fertilizing, so they don't need the leaves. For your information, the chemical structure of the fertilizer as applied has to be converted to usable energy through the photosynthetic process.

Afka said:

So much garbage misinformation on these forums, bullshit non-researched 2cents tidbits from morons who don't understand how plants work.



Keep pulling off those leaves which you spent all that time GROWING DURING VEG.


How the hell can pulling leaves "not affect yield" and improve taste?


INTERNET RAGE.

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with all due respect, during veg I am interested in cultivating bud sites , not big leaves

removal is a process ,,anything over 5 inches off main stem and everything over 4 inches on side limbs...seems like plenty left over...



just an opinion

jointsallday said:

with all due respect, during veg I am interested in cultivating bud sites , not big leaves

removal is a process ,,anything over 5 inches off main stem and everything over 4 inches on side limbs...seems like plenty left over...

just an opinion

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AMEN!! Proper pruning during vegetative growth will almost always assure that you don't have to consider it in the flowering stage. Pruning encourages vigorous new growth if done properly. You can prune alternating node branches to keep a plant somewhat flat. This allows you to train the remaining branches up on a single trellis, all receiving good light.

There are sooo many readers on this site that do not understand pruning at all. Some of the pics I see of flowering plants look silly all bushed up, with only the cola getting sufficient light. If you prune and stake your girls with some care, you'll get a lot more yield then no pruning and letting them grow "naturally"

+REP

i would. it helps get light to bud sites.

stealthymurph said:

i would. it helps get light to bud sites.

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This is the misconception being propagated by this thread. Light on the leaves is what gives the energy to the flower for growth. Light on the flower is not making the flower larger.

Serapis and Jointsallday are talking about pruning techniques during veg that are used for shaping and opening the plant to light and to encourage branching, this is much different than the people who advocate stripping their branches of fan leaves to encourage larger growth in the flowers.

Ok. A few questions for you all to think over, so that you can further your own understandings. Do the bud sites have their own leaves? Are those leaves closer to the bud than the other fan leaves you want to remove? Do nutrients get to the buds faster and/or more efficiently when their personal leaves are receiving maximum light as opposed to being shaded and having fan leaves receive the maximum light? Is it more efficient to have less leaves in an attempt to proportionally distribute nutrients [from the roots] and energy [produced by a lower number of leaves that will eventually grow in size] to a smaller plant? Or, is it more efficient to have as many leaves as possible, despite whether ot not they cover a sizeable portion of the remaining leaves?

iNCoGNiTiX said:

Ok. A few questions for you all to think over, so that you can further your own understandings. Do the bud sites have their own leaves? Are those leaves closer to the bud than the other fan leaves you want to remove? Do nutrients get to the buds faster and/or more efficiently when their personal leaves are receiving maximum light as opposed to being shaded and having fan leaves receive the maximum light? Is it more efficient to have less leaves in an attempt to proportionally distribute nutrients [from the roots] and energy [produced by a lower number of leaves that will eventually grow in size] to a smaller plant? Or, is it more efficient to have as many leaves as possible, despite whether ot not they cover a sizeable portion of the remaining leaves?

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those are a lot of really really good questions... honestly...... i think this will be debated forever.. lol. i think theres good adn bad in cuttin ghtem off... i usually do trim off the big fan leaves anywhere from 4-6 weeks into flowering.. then like 1-2 weeks b4 harvest.. i usually trim off any leaves that arent "attached" to the buds.. adn my plants seem to turn out fine..but like i said.. i think this debate will never be settled. lol

chb444220 said:

those are a lot of really really good questions... honestly...... i think this will be debated forever.. lol. i think theres good adn bad in cuttin ghtem off... i usually do trim off the big fan leaves anywhere from 4-6 weeks into flowering.. then like 1-2 weeks b4 harvest.. i usually trim off any leaves that arent "attached" to the buds.. adn my plants seem to turn out fine..but like i said.. i think this debate will never be settled. lol

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Glad you respect the questions. I agree that it's another seemingly neverending debate. I have done late trimming. I do notice delayed growth right after removal, but that does not last long. I had removed some fan leaves and lower branches. Everything gets at least pretty good light. The key is a balance between fan leaf light and bud leaf light. One is not more important the other until you can prove it.

A lot of this depends on the size of your plant as well. A small plant you pushed through a short veg cycle will have less leaves and therefore depend more heavily on each one. By the time my indicas are halfway through flower they are 5-6ft tall and I can cut a number of leaves off them without any ill effect.

That having been said, I'd spot light a grow with florescents before I'd start hacking away at it if I needed more light.

I've read a lot about this, and done some experiments of my own, and usually do some moderate defoliation towards the end of the bloom cycle, especially of yellowing leaves.

What I notice about this never-ending-debate is that you've got true believers at both ends. Some guys swear by extreme defoliation, others cherish every leaf no matter how yellowed. Looking at that, my take away is that it probably doesn't matter all that much. If there were a clear harm or benefit to either approach this issue would have been resolved a long long time ago.

three things to look at. your lighting, your plant size, and whats done to the plant. a bit of tying down gives you lots of new light angles. are you running multiple or single lights? not an easy question or an easy answer here. aside from that, if this is done, would there be need to remove anything nice and green?

yeaaa i agree.. there is going to be a never ending debate.. i usually trim leaves off thoughout the grow cycle... an dhavent had any problems... one thing to know tho. is if ur gonna do sum trimming.. jsut say for example.. your gonna trim 30 leaves. try to do like 10 1 day. 10 another day.. adn the last 10 sum other day.. cuz i know if u do TOO much trimming at once. it "can" cause your plant alot of stress..a dn turn it into a hermie... =/

I've got a huge bush atm ^_^ Shes flowering nicely and generally havent taken anything off it other than what was already dying, My early opinion is if it looks yellowed or browed or wilted give it a gentle pull if the leaf disconnects from its node easily then you've just done what the plant was planning to do already, I cant say im an expert or that my opinion is right, but if you pull on a healthy leaf it will resist pull on a dying one and it comes off with ease...

This is actually some great advice in my opinion. Considering that the plants are with us from 3-5 months, there should be no rush to remove leaves. Everytime I add water to my Waterfarms, I pluck some leaves to allow light in or to encourage a node to branch. I have had more new growth generated on lower branches that have had their leaves removed than not. If you are looking to get some cuttings from a plant and only have tops, pluck some lower fan leaves, about a fourth of the way up your plant, to encourage new growth. Of course, in flowering, you would have already of done this, and shouldn't need to defoliate the bottom, except for suckers that might grow ( I call them 'cuttings' when the plant is in vegetation cycle).

The reason is we want to focus our growth and resources on the top of the plant, the portion that bears the fruit of our labor. By selectively removing leaves, a few here and there, you are truly benefiting the plant. Air will move more freely, light will penetrate further and you will stimulate growth. It certainly seems like a win win situation to me.

I understand the naturalists too, and I respect their view, as long as they don't make claims of larger harvests due to not removing leaves. It has been my own personal experience that the strain I'm currently working with for the last year responds great to defoliation. Keep in mind, we probably should have little to no reason to defoliate a true sativa plant, as it is limited on leaves as it is. Defoliation is done more to indica varieties than sativas generally.

chb444220 said:

yeaaa i agree.. there is going to be a never ending debate.. i usually trim leaves off thoughout the grow cycle... an dhavent had any problems... one thing to know tho. is if ur gonna do sum trimming.. jsut say for example.. your gonna trim 30 leaves. try to do like 10 1 day. 10 another day.. adn the last 10 sum other day.. cuz i know if u do TOO much trimming at once. it "can" cause your plant alot of stress..a dn turn it into a hermie... =/

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I was told that if u take leaves off while in flowering stage the plant wastes energy repairing damage than using it for growth.

I look at it this way: If I can tuck the fan leaf under the bud site then I do. If there is a bud site with a fan leaf in the way which is to far or in such a position that I can't tuck it under the bud site, then I leave it alone and wish that bud site the best of luck (often they get tall enough after a few days that I can tuck them under).

In nature the plant thinks that fan leaf is important enough to keep until for some reason it can't. If the plant thinks its in its own best interest to have the fan leaf, then I do too.