Defoliation: Hi-Yield Technique?

[bs0]

Wish I had pics
From my experience defoliation is usefull and useless depending your type of grow
For example in Stadium Growing i.e. like seats in a stadium your shelves would be, Here NO defoliation is necessary as light reaches the whole plant quite evenly. Also I have noticed I can grow less plants with equal or higher yeilds using Stadiums Style Growing.

On the other hand, when I grew on the floor I had to defoliate my girls so that light would get into the lower branches. My yeild on a 6 light system went up by a whole pound when I started to defoliate.

To all the theoretical shit on this thread ONLY experience speaks, and it speaks volumes. IF any you have never personally experienced defoliation results then please please get the @#$% off your high horse.

Defoliation has not reduced quality by a single iota. Again experience

please explain the benefit of having lower branches that get no light?????? Pruning them off will not make your higher branches any larger to justify the prune(Prune your immediate bottom branches that are scrage). So the only answer is light.

Any idiot that has studied BOTANY would know that for every 1% increase in light a 1% increase of yeild can be noticed. This apparent for most plants such as Tomatoes, Peppers, Cuc's. If you would like to argue this then realize that British Columbia Hot House Growers have the WORLDS highest yeilds. Are techniques are second to none, especially Oxford, Florida or whoever wants to spout off at the mouth.
So I strongly suggest contact the BC Hot House Society or whatever the are called and get a growers manual for Tomatoes, Peppers or Cuc's and learn for yourselves what Defoliation is all about and why it is beneficial.

Grat3 I mean this when I say it you are the biggest distorter of truth I have ever come across.

Thought that this one needed to be re-stated.

 

[bs0]

Defoliation should never be recommended in Veg, trust me I tried it and it was stupid.

I have experienced the same.

 

[dominicangreen]

ok i havent done this before but i dont think it cant hurt anyway because i start flushing in 2 days and cut 7 days later buds are done producing but i want the bottom buds to get more light so i started pulling all fan leaves..my thing is since i'm 9 days from harvest will the bottom buds get a benefit grow alittle bigger or are the plants going into shock.i was also seeing the fact that i have cut half of the plant off before and let the bottom for a extra week to get light and no shock was done,sorry people i problely just answered my own question

 

[bs0]

Im all about efficiency.. so statements like stunting your grow on purpose or using this technique to increase bud sites....Is highly inefficient and stupid in my opinion.

I am never surprised. I know what to expect from my actions becuase i have been there,done that. This test will begin after Christmas.

I do everything I can to AVOID stunting my plants. This is why I have to determine how many leaves each plant can lose without stunting by trial and error. Nobody should be deliberately stunting their plant. If you are stunting your plant you are losing opportunity cost of the time lost. Every chance I get I tell people to take defol easy and to not strip all the leaves. If you want to try it just start with like 10% or 20%.

The people who overdo it seem to remind me a lot of the people who have never used chemical fertilizers before: they assume that more will be better and end up burning their plants to the plants detriment.

Plants need leaves. Why else would they grow them? If you take all the leaves from your plant during flowering you will harm your plant.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

^

defoliation works to make it finish early, but you are sacrificing quality. Removing all the leaves is removing the plants food factories, so of course it will starve to death earlier. it doesnt make it yield more though. what makes the bottom nugs yield more because more light gets there. so you are better off keeping your bottom area cleaned out so the light can focus only on the canopy in the effective light range, and or do a double harvest (cut the top finished nugs first); but this is only true for some strains. For instance my sensi star needed a clean under brush to focus on canopy, but my lvpk that I grow is the opposite. She distributes her energy better. it doesnt matter if the bottom nugs get light or not, they are just as dense as the top. the sacrifice is that i dont get arm sized colas, but over all she has a great yield.

this is how it works

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

ok i havent done this before but i dont think it cant hurt anyway because i start flushing in 2 days and cut 7 days later buds are done producing but i want the bottom buds to get more light so i started pulling all fan leaves..my thing is since i'm 9 days from harvest will the bottom buds get a benefit grow alittle bigger or are the plants going into shock.i was also seeing the fact that i have cut half of the plant off before and let the bottom for a extra week to get light and no shock was done,sorry people i problely just answered my own question

if they arnt dying fast enough then do this starting in about day 3 of flush, but dont go crazy with it, just as with everything there is a balance. the reason is for flavor, and potency. plants need to be able to use leaves for photosynthesis which is what makes it metabolize it last nutrients and most importantly it's last sugars.

 

[bs0]

Perhaps it's time to set up a Bonsai cannabis forum for anyone who's interested in shocking their plants every few weeks so much that it stunts growth and prematurely ends flowering.

As it's become clear that this isn't a "high yield" technique, and it's not specific to hydro, shouldn't this thread be moved somewhere more appropriate and given a more appropriate name? Something like:
"Defoliation - a fancy word for pulling the leaves off your plant and adding an extra six weeks to your grow cycle".

We need a proper forum with no room for "haters" who dare to question the gospel of defoliation. A place where defoliators can share their pictures of severely brutalised plants without the negative vibes from people who aren't willing to believe and keep babbling on about things like side by side comparisons.

If you stunt your plants you are doing it wrong.

Adding 6 weeks to my grow cycle? If my plants go more than 9 weeks I axe the strain.

 

[bs0]

So it can work sometimes for some people, but for some people it won't work and it will reduce their yield. But they have to find out for themselves whether it works for them because you can't test it because yield varies so much naturally. Despite this you know that it works for you.

If you replace 'people' with 'strains' I agree with you 100%.
What is so hard to understand about different strains having different tolerances and tendencies?

Now if you are a person getting mold on your plants though, I don't think that any strain will make any difference.

 

[ShroomDr]

Thats certainly not the way i interpret what my plants are telling me.

What i see is lower bud sites do better because they are getting direct light. Removing fan leaves also appears to me to slow the stretch. Remove the fan leaves from the main stem, and watch the 'lower branches' catch up. Some phenos and/or situations benefit from the stretch, some do not.

If you have never removed a leaf, and then one day remove 80% of them, your gonna have a stall.

 

[bs0]

but when defoliated, look at the structure.

do you like it?

for you experienced nay-sayers... how much bud can this little girl produce?

...

Whats interesting to me in this thread is the huge discrepancy between the people who defol in veg and the people who don't. My plants are only vegged for 3 weeks max after cloning so if I did what you did to them I would never be able to flower a plant reasonably.

Now if you plan to train that plant for weeks more, maybe you will see an increased per-plant yield but I think that you will take more time per plant.

 

[dominicangreen]

if they arnt dying fast enough then do this starting in about day 3 of flush, but dont go crazy with it, just as with everything there is a balance. the reason is for flavor, and potency. plants need to be able to use leaves for photosynthesis which is what makes it metabolize it last nutrients and most importantly it's last sugars.

i was thinking the same in finnish produce may not finnish off right but these plants are loaded with carbs sugars so i guess it cant hurt to try i realy mean i can cut right now so i will give it a shot.like i said a have cut the whole top of a plant and left the bottom half for another week and no harm was done in fact the shit smoked and hit alittle harder stoney because it stayed longer.so you would think a few leaves may shock so what about half a plant missing

 

[bs0]

If you have not noticed, El Toker only posts after H3ad does. My guess is, he is in love with him and wants to imitate his answers. Nothing original, just one-sided hate. Ignorance is what I call it.

I actually like h3ad's posts.

Outside of when he argues definitions, he really knows what he is talking about (edit: he's not wrong about his definition arguments, just nonproductive). I don't see hate, I see nit-picking, and honestly if I don't have answers to his questions I do pursue answers. Part of discussion is talking about viewpoints that don't fall within your experience.

There is nothing at all wrong with asking questions or trying to understanding what people are offering as their experience.

Now what is irritating in this thread is the few people who just say the same thing over and over.

"do a side by side, do a side by side, do a side by side"

If your plants aren't crowded and you take away all it's leaves you will lower the plants potential. This is why a side by side isn't feasible.

Defol isn't the be-all end-all. It's simply a tool that works in some situations. When it works, it works tremendously. Just as some plants are great in SOG and bad in SCROG, some plants respond to topping well and some do not.

For the life of me I don't understand why some people insist that either it works in all case or it never works.

 

[slowandeasy]

I actually like h3ad's posts.

Outside of when he argues definitions, he really knows what he is talking about (edit: he's not wrong about his definition arguments, just nonproductive). I don't see hate, I see nit-picking, and honestly if I don't have answers to his questions I do pursue answers. Part of discussion is talking about viewpoints that don't fall within your experience.

There is nothing at all wrong with asking questions or trying to understanding what people are offering as their experience.

Now what is irritating in this thread is the few people who just say the same thing over and over.

"do a side by side, do a side by side, do a side by side"

If your plants aren't crowded and you take away all it's leaves you will lower the plants potential. This is why a side by side isn't feasible.

Defol isn't the be-all end-all. It's simply a tool that works in some situations. When it works, it works tremendously. Just as some plants are great in SOG and bad in SCROG, some plants respond to topping well and some do not.

For the life of me I don't understand why some people insist that either it works in all case or it never works.

I agree with you 100%. But for some reason it is hard for 90% of the people who post in this thread to understand. I hear the same demands over and over. But for some reason the people who post their experiences get called liars and spend more time defending themselves than anything. Sad that people cannot see gray...only black and white.

 

[grapeman]

AS a farmer by trade for over 40 years I have "leafed" millions of vines over the years for a variety of reasons. So leaf removal is nothing new to me. It is in fact a standard practice on most all table grape varieties.

Having said that, I tried this technique on an entire grow of many plants of several strains from veg thru flower.

My conclusion is that I would never do this again as it did not accomplish anything as advertised. Actually, it was one of the poorest crops ever.

But, I'm glad I tried it as that is the only way to learn anything.

 

[disciple]

 

[disciple]

 

[staff11]

Thats certainly not the way i interpret what my plants are telling me.

What i see is lower bud sites do better because they are getting direct light. Removing fan leaves also appears to me to slow the stretch. Remove the fan leaves from the main stem, and watch the 'lower branches' catch up. Some phenos and/or situations benefit from the stretch, some do not.

If you have never removed a leaf, and then one day remove 80% of them, your gonna have a stall.

This is EXACTLY what happens, it completely shuts down vertical growth on the shoots you remove fan leaves from. I will say I have this giant bush looking plant I just put into flower, and it is only 10 inches tall(about 15 inches wide...lol)vegging for almost 5 weeks. As an example I put the other two plants I had in veg with this one 5 weeks ago (same strain) and they are now about 2 feet tall and halfway done. So really if you have limited ceiling height in your veg area like I do, I can see this helping by stretching out the veg time while keeping the plant short. But you can accomplish the same thing by topping/training all while not adding the extra 2-3 weeks in veg.

 

[disciple]

 

[bs0]

I'm a bit partial to the original KTM (k33ftr33z method) where the defoliation is started early in veg.

there are (2) different objectives.

those who defol only in flower are (?) working to get more light on existing bud sites.

the others who start in veg (what I do) are trying to encourage the plant to setup more bud sites as the first priority and then have it balanced enough structure wise to also get more light on those bud-sites once they exist.

If a flowering plant has, say (9) branches and is 4' tall then it becomes harder to get the whole plant in optimum light.

If a gardener can get (9) fully developed branches on a 2.5' tall plant in flower then it is easier to get most of the plant in full light.

Same root mass, same branch count, same node count (or more on the KTM plant) but lower profile means more in premium light and more bud.

Thank you.

But at the cost of time. Honestly, you could just lst for weeks and weeks in veg and get similar results.

But, if what you are doing leads you to the results you desire, keep at it. My plants get 2 or 3 weeks veg Max. If I stripped them like I saw done to a small plant like one page ago they would spend all my veg time stunted recovering. But that is just my personal situation, if i had longer cycles then your method might be useful to me.

 

[disciple]