O
otis33
I ate the chicken, then I ate the egg.
1. To deprive (a plant, tree, or forest) of leaves.
2. To cause the leaves of (a plant, tree, or forest) to fall off, especially by the use of chemicals.
I've been biting my tongue, but I want to say my bit, as it will be short.
I really despise the term defoliation.
Cotton farmers defoliate at the end of the season, and their are other uses as in the case of bonsai trees.
What bothers me is that I believe people are misusing the word. Defoliation is drastic, ie >70% leaf removal. That's what by definition defoliation is, you are depriving(key word) the plant of leafs which are what your plant uses for growth. Why would you want to deprive your plant of its vital growth engines.
Pruning is the proper term, and when you say that, the professionals are less likely to immediately scoff.
Pruning will increase your yield period. There's not even an argument about that. The disagreement comes from when and how much.
IMHO, no more than 30% of the plant at once, but preferably over 3 days to a week in veg.
In flower, I try to not interfere with stretch, so I do a hard prune 3 days prior to flip, let them stretch, and then go back in to clean up again. Throughout flower they get touched up, mostly large leafs resting on buds, and then the last week I begin a true defoliation where I start plucking 10-15% of the foliage per day, starting with leafs closest to the light.
^that is what I call it.
when growing horizontally I'd do a very hard strip day 1 of bloom, I'd then clean up the lowers a 2nd time around Day 14. I wouldnt really touch the plants after that. This seems to be the opposite of what many recommend, but my plants seemed to respond to it without stall. The result was massive (2L size colas). I cant say it yielded more, but what was there was definitely top shelf bud with great bag appeal and a much easier harvest.
This was a heavy strip all the way to dominant top flower sites. I guess most wouldn't call this defoliation, but rather lolli-popping as I was taking all lower flower sites as well. They were however more prone to bud rot so I scaled back and allowed some of the lowers to stay.
Since going vert I've been letting them go natural.. usually dense all the way down. Maybe thin their backsides a bit. Taking down a un-defoiled crop now and looks to be heavy weight, but time will tell. As others state.. your mileage may vary. At the end of the day.. who really cares what the science is. You either like to do it and feel it benefits or you don't.
I'm still up in the air. I'm curious if all of those sub-par buds are "extra" on top of the similar weight I'd get either way. If so.. its all free hash making goodies anyways if you're one to work through it.
Just my 2c.
I will say, that a lot of the pictures I see on IC of heavy defoliators... look rather weak and unimpressive. They'll claim good yields and praise their raping of leaves, but I certainly can't see their claimed results. Most of the times their gardens look sparse and un-full, yet I still yield less covering almost every sq inch of space around the lamp.
Note - Not referring to anyone in particular.. Just what I've observed across ICmag and other forums.
howdy brotha bobble! how the hell are ya? your garden looks happy bro your an inspiration dude...fuckin smartest dude on IC...and your totally out of your everlovin' mind! batshit crazy mad scientist that wont settle for anything less than the best...keep doin what you do bro...you do it well
its the journey not the destination...your havin one hell of a journey dude!
peace and love, i will be around more often
I just love when people with zero experience on the subject of defoliation want to bring in some college dipshits "scientific" reasoning as proof against it.
Interestingly, not a fucking one of those college dipshits is referring to a study done on our plant, indoors, under our types of controlled conditions.
Why? Because other than at Ols Miss, where the only federally supported MJ grow is in the USA, MJ isnt even allowed to be studied for ANY reason whatsoever!
Why? Because it's still a fucking schedule 1 "no medical benefit" substance. And as long as that's the case, the studies every other dipshit MJ grower wants to claim as scientific proof are those that are not MJ, nor controlled grows anything like ours indoors.
It's so funny how only the inexperienced, or those that had shit tons of other issues going on are the ones that claim without a doubt it doesnt work. Even in light of evidence by TONS of growers that have been quietly doing this for years.
Sometimes, a learned book education is a bad thing. Experience is the best teacher of all.
Your argument sounds intelligent... Thank you for your contribution...
I suppose if I told you about how we all evolved from proteins and bacteria you would probably call bullshit on that too. Its okay.
Knowledge + Experience = Greatness.
One without the other, and you're just a fool yappin.
yo bassy you make it sound like usa is only cultivator of mj whats the chances most US Growers either got there seeds via Canada , UK or Europe seed suppliers ???? hmm wonder and if you really want to talk about it lets see Pakistan is legal to grow china , Portugal i believe still are number 1 and 2 producers of mj seeds for there oil properties
Albania is one of Europe's greatest producers of cannabis
Organics can work great, if you know how to manipulate the rhizosphere. Synthetic ferts are the same salts that are derived from organics. All you have to do is know how to make those salts available to the plants. Everything is more likely to stay balanced in the rhizosphere, as opposed to giving the plant w/e nutrients YOU think it needs. What makes us so much better than nature? I think its just our lack of understanding of nature that leads us to believe we can do better than nature.
And I have the EXPERIENCE using the defoliation techniques (or pruning as some would describe) and increasing yields by huge amounts. As do many others here on icmag and many other sites. Yet this site is the only one I am aware of where there is so much ignorance and ego that absolutely refuse to accept this technique used by others as proof it works for them.
Another definition would be "ignorance". I suggest you look it up. Wiki it even.
So bring me the fucking studies on defoliation or heavy pruning from these places where it's been "scientifically" proven to not work with mj. Guess what? You wont find any!
But you want to use "peer reviews" from universities as your evidence to rebuke. Yet NONE, not a single fucking one of them is growing mj, indoors, like we do here on this site and others.
I'm sure my op on the subject is way too far over your head.