What’s up DGC? First time grow looking for some input on defoliation during week 3 flower. The pictures are from day 17 of flower. I’m growing three pineapple sorbet clones in 7 gal pots of coast of Maine soil, running two HLG qb288 V2 Rspec diy leds. Most of veg was water only but i ended up running out of gas and had to start giving them synthetic nutes mixed with top dressing fish bone meal. I finished lollipoping last week and was wondering if i should do any defoliation. I’ve been listening to this show religiously all day at work 5 days a week and its its really helped my grow shit probably saved my grow. when you guys interviewed jeff lowenfels his input was basically never to defoliate and i know guru’s philosophy is only defoliate if the leaf is blocking a larger surface area. So from my pictures can anyone point out what i should do or do different next run? Thanks in advance you guys are killing it easily the most reliable source for growing out there.
Man that’s up to you and how you want to grow. I pull leaves throughout the grow up until week 6 of flower usually, haven’t had issues from it.
Why oh why can’t I bring myself to flip my plants when they are this size. Mine are in 7 gals but I barely have room to raise my lights and just flipped. I am gonna try and be on top of that next time. I always have some issue or question that makes me veg way to long.
The leaves that are blocking bud sites have to go. Like the second picture a bud is trying to poke out could use a leaf or two removed right above it. Also leaves further from the light will never produce the amount of plant available nutrition as a leaf at the top. The main reason why we defoliate indoors as opposed to outdoors. Also defoliation can be essential when controlling canopy density to avoid bud rot and powdery mildew. Be sure to have adequate airflow through the canopy.
I personally think not to many people in the cannabis industry agree with Jeff on his stance. There is enough anecdotal evidence from top growers that show it does not affect yield and more importantly quite the opposite. Like coach said its up to you and your style, but for me between days 14-21 of flower my plants get stripped almost bare with the exception of smaller sugar leaves around bud sites. Not only does this help with light penetration and making harvest time less of a bear, but my opinion contrary to Jeff’s is yes they are giant solar panels, but what are they feeding? I feel that leaves and the location of them provide energy to surrounding growth and not the entire plant. Maybe i’m wrong but if the goal of a leaf was to provide energy to the whole plant and not the flower it is adjacent too, wouldn’t plant evolution create a plant with those “solar Panels” in a location where they just gathered light up top and dispersed it evenly to the whole plant? That fact that nodes and flower sites have adjacent leaves leads me to believe that its the solar panel for the bud/stem its attached to.
Again could be wrong but the in the information age of computers and everyone putting thier grows online, I feel that defol is a positive thing if you don’t go and strip the plant down to nothing at the end of flower but those first three weeks stripping here is like pressing the reset button and it forces to utilize the light it gathers to the corresponding buds. After that Like coach said I pluck leaves here and there as need but not more than 10% of the plant at time. Example If I have 200 fan leaves then I wouldn’t pluck more than 20 on any given day in mid to late flower.
Trust me when I say its mighty nice to harvest without a bush of a plant. Really cuts the time in half when trimming and manicuring.
Again just my opinion.
thanks everyone for the input I’m going to clean up a some bud sites that are shaded out and clean up the bottom some more.