Defoliation: Hi-Yield Technique?

[St3ve]

hmm better numbers now to be honest truthfully most of those pictures i have seen have bin more to the sativa side which gives you thinner leafs etc
This thread reminds me of them dummy pills doctors give out to pill popping junkies yup doctor gives them these useless pills and they feel better right away ) there are 1000's of posts i have seen on ICM where growers defoiled and lost yields now if your growing for your self and every piece of shake matters then by all means skin your plants but Scientifically, proven it is wrong to do this. I am not going to sit here banging my head hahaha giver shit folks skin your plant alive like i really give a fck really
for me its about yield and consistency

Continuing to show us your nice bud pictures doesn't change the fact that we all pull better numbers with proper defoliation.

now ^^^ is one of the funniest things i herd again scroll around IC , and see real yields that are comming out sure the hell not from skinning a plant lmao

What if I showed you two five gallon buckets full of dried bud from the same strain and grown in the same room. One bucket has 12oz of bud colas only, and the other bucket had 14oz of nothing but golf ball nugs of dense bud. If upon inspection the buds look the same, and if they were both the same price, which would you buy?

could you please ^^^ show us two 5 gallon buckets then may-be i will show you oh hell i will show you a 43 gallon bucket full of consistent sized buds but for now here 1 plant trim i think i was like a 0z under 2 pounds 36 x 72 screen and from not skinning a plant
anyways St3vo you sound like them guys that like to talk the talk and not walk the walk happy growing
PS: not only do i make almost 5 pounds (4.75) off 5 plants but i also made 3/4 pound of hash with trimmings , and shake
so to think about almost 6 pounds of goods from 5 plants that my friend is what growing is all about

I feel bad.. all this time we've been trying educate you. I didn't realize that you were incapable of such things.

You glaze over my questions cherry picking the sentences you feel like you can come at me with. How silly.

Why are you still here? There are countless ppl in here who have had success yet you run around with your hands over your ears screaming "lalalalala i can't hear you". I'm sorry you can't make this tech work, but trying to convince ppl that their yield will suffer, while they are busy counting the bennies is retarded. I am officially done with you man.. and that sucks, because you seem to actually know stuff. To bad all your knowledge is trapped in a pig headed know it all. Good luck with that.

 

[St3ve]

Not accidentally, those who've tried this, and still think it sucks, will forever be unmentionable negrepped pariahs. Closed-mindedness is universal.

That would be true if it were as simple as that. But, sorry dude but you are over generalizing. The first time I tried DWC or LST or even cloning I sucked at it. If I quit right then where would I be? What if I said to you, "you can't grow a plant from clones!" Well that's how it sounds to those of us that have actually spent the time and effort to fully understand and apply this technique.

The people who can't make it work, are probably doing it wrong. Its not easy, its an advanced technique. It takes time to master it in your environment... just like everything else. I've done my best to try and coach ppl along who fail at it, and guess what? Every single time I figure out what went wrong and can correct it for them. Thats a big difference from saying "it's opposite of how I understand plant biology so it can't work"

Experience my friend.. wins every time.

 

[St3ve]

um maybe i'm missing the point here, but isn't it possible that some plants respond to this and some don't? Or that the densest leaf covered plants will gain the most from this as opposed to a plant that won't crowd itself out naturally?

I have had results both ways.

Obviously if you take off too many leaves the plant will be hurt. And the time of when you do this changes how the plant is affected.

I think plants are made to lose leaves just like they have other defense techniques. Maybe The ones with too many leaves have lots of buggers eating their leaves like they come from a forest where the ones with less leaves grow out in the open.

theres way more to it than how much do i get with defoliation or without?

I don't know.. the OP originally said that.. "certain plants may not respond well" sort of thing but he could have just been covering his bases since he couldn't have tried this tech on every plant out there.


Me personally.. I feel it works well, and works similarly with all my plants. I have mostly hybrids tho, some heavy indica, and some mostly sativa but no pures. But again, I haven't tried it with every plant either so who knows.

 

[St3ve]

Bassy if you took off too much leaf from the whole plant (at one time) it would hurt the plant, correct?

I defoliate 3 or 4 leaves every time i touch a plant and I've never noticed a slow down, maybe even the opposite.

If you're only taking away that much at a time then you're probably not getting much benefit from it. Have you observed a change in the plant structure from doing it?

I strip the plants almost bare. I don't touch leaves that are still coming out but if it has a petiole (stem) then its gone. I only do this once every 5-7 days. Then I let the plant recover until next round.

If you don't veg in a separate area from your flower then I may reconsider using this technique. It only really shines when you have an extra week (or more) to veg. If you have to add a week to your grow then it will defeat the purpose of added yield. (because you'll lose out on a harvest per year)

 

[TGT]

I defoliate but not the same way most are explaining here. I only take leaves off if they are blocking light from a developing bud and if can't be tucked out of the way instead. I do end up removing quite a few leaves but not nearly enough to even half way strip the plant of large leaves. I have found it has increased bud size and yield - at least for the plants I conistantly use.

TGT

 

[Bassy59]

That would be true if it were as simple as that. But, sorry dude but you are over generalizing. The first time I tried DWC or LST or even cloning I sucked at it. If I quit right then where would I be? What if I said to you, "you can't grow a plant from clones!" Well that's how it sounds to those of us that have actually spent the time and effort to fully understand and apply this technique.

The people who can't make it work, are probably doing it wrong. Its not easy, its an advanced technique. It takes time to master it in your environment... just like everything else. I've done my best to try and coach ppl along who fail at it, and guess what? Every single time I figure out what went wrong and can correct it for them. Thats a big difference from saying "it's opposite of how I understand plant biology so it can't work"

Experience my friend.. wins every time.

So very well said. +rep on that.

 

[Bassy59]

Bassy if you took off too much leaf from the whole plant (at one time) it would hurt the plant, correct?

I defoliate 3 or 4 leaves every time i touch a plant and I've never noticed a slow down, maybe even the opposite.

taking 3-4 leaves of a plant is not defoliation in the context of the subject in this thread. I nearly filled a 5 gal bucket on the first strip in flower in my current grow (4 plants). This will slow UPWARD growth, but not bud development. In fact, I defoliated 3-4 days before the end of stretch, which is NOT suggested, because I knew it would shut down stretch and I need to do that because they were too damn close to my 1k hpw and the light was at max height. All because I knowingly let them get too tall in veg. So it was my fault.

Regardless, the bud sites got shit tons more light and developed much better throughout the plants.

I'm fairly certain I'll do better than 1gpw this grow, yet I can also tell you I lost a substantial amount of yield with some other screwups on my part.

1. I totally broke one of two main branches to unrepairable state. I tried to repair it with tape and string support but it didnt survive. Easily lost 3oz from that branch alone.

2. I grew these girls too tall in veg and didnt have them trained laterally enough going into flower. As such, with them being so close to the light at max adjustment, I couldn't get width of light spread and even with them bent as much as possible, they were too crowded in the middle and I lost but loads on penetration.

As k33f, the OP in this thread suggests, setting your girls up properly in veg for this routine is of high importance. My current grow should see itself being chopped soon. My next grow is in veg and has been properly setup for this technique. Those girls will be ready for flower right on time with the harvest of my current grow and should surpass this grow substantially.

I highly suggest one reads the pdf from page 1 and at least refer back to each post that k33f answered to get a better understanding and proper context before ever even commenting on the subject. I personally read the entire thread for two weeks before I ever made a comment. I took notes to remind myself and better learn. Using the pdf as a reference, I was able to look back and have a few "ahah" moments when I wasn't sure on some aspect.

 

[MiMedicineMan]

note taken dude, after 200 orso pages the info starts to get melted Into my dome with everything else. I think you answered my question properly.

what I meant is for the first few weeks of flowering I take off a few to several leaves every time I touch (water) a plant and by the time they're done stretching they are nice and opened up. I would be scared to fill up a 5 gallon bucket at once for fear that I might lose 3 oz or something else bad

mad props to k33f for putting this out there for us

 

[St3ve]

note taken dude, after 200 orso pages the info starts to get melted Into my dome with everything else. I think you answered my question properly.

what I meant is for the first few weeks of flowering I take off a few to several leaves every time I touch (water) a plant and by the time they're done stretching they are nice and opened up. I would be scared to fill up a 5 gallon bucket at once for fear that I might lose 3 oz or something else bad

mad props to k33f for putting this out there for us

Oh ok, I hear you. I do the same thing really. I hit them so aggressively before the flip there isn't a ton back anyway. I then only pick and choose based on stems overgrowing. (just like how you mentioned)

 

[Bassy59]

Oh ok, I hear you. I do the same thing really. I hit them so aggressively before the flip there isn't a ton back anyway. I then only pick and choose based on stems overgrowing. (just like how you mentioned)

Now that there kinda goes against the grain of this technique per k33f's idea. Not that it wouldn't work I mean. But he does mention entering 12/12 some days well after a stripping when they have fully recovered their slowdown from the strip. Then hitting them hard at end of stretch, or basically 21 days.

I found on one grow where I stripped them semi-hard just before flip, the stretch took a while longer, but I don't recall how long it took to begin the flowering. I think it took a bit extra, but I can't recall for sure.

I do know that this current grow I got going, I entered 12/12 some 10-12 days or so after defoliation and they flipped to flower very fast coming off of Gas Lantern Routine in veg. They stretched well and I actually had to shut down stretch by stripping them at day 18 because they were too tall!

 

[St3ve]

Now that there kinda goes against the grain of this technique per k33f's idea. Not that it wouldn't work I mean. But he does mention entering 12/12 some days well after a stripping when they have fully recovered their slowdown from the strip. Then hitting them hard at end of stretch, or basically 21 days.

I found on one grow where I stripped them semi-hard just before flip, the stretch took a while longer, but I don't recall how long it took to begin the flowering. I think it took a bit extra, but I can't recall for sure.

I do know that this current grow I got going, I entered 12/12 some 10-12 days or so after defoliation and they flipped to flower very fast coming off of Gas Lantern Routine in veg. They stretched well and I actually had to shut down stretch by stripping them at day 18 because they were too tall!

I don't really follow what you mean how it goes against the grain. I strip them to nothing 5-7 days before flip, then by the end of flip I take out the big fans.. but there is just not as many of them since I raped them before flip. I don't take the bud leaves if they are not shading anything.. only fans. So if you don't mind, please clarify for me what you mean exactly.

 

[Bassy59]

I don't really follow what you mean how it goes against the grain. I strip them to nothing 5-7 days before flip, then by the end of flip I take out the big fans.. but there is just not as many of them since I raped them before flip. I don't take the bud leaves if they are not shading anything.. only fans. So if you don't mind, please clarify for me what you mean exactly.

HUGE difference between 5-7 days before the flip and "right before" the flip. They reveg easily in that 5-7 days. I always suggest 7-10 to folks in general. But by saying "right before" it may give the impression like the day before or upon a 30 hr dark period transition. Doing so in these time frames will slow down transition. Which in turn will slow stretch and have people defoliating possibly at 21 days but a week before stretch has ended or just plain unhappy with how it went.

Catch my meaning?

 

[St3ve]

HUGE difference between 5-7 days before the flip and "right before" the flip. They reveg easily in that 5-7 days. I always suggest 7-10 to folks in general. But by saying "right before" it may give the impression like the day before or upon a 30 hr dark period transition. Doing so in these time frames will slow down transition. Which in turn will slow stretch and have people defoliating possibly at 21 days but a week before stretch has ended or just plain unhappy with how it went.

Catch my meaning?

I agree about saying "right before" does imply the same day or one day before. I don't see where I said that tho, I usually just say "before".... which probably isn't helping on its own I guess.

And I agree with everything you posted.. I would never strip them a day or so before flip. Usually I take my clones the weekend before I flip.. Sat or Sun. While I'm in there taking clones (from the bottom of the plant) I'm also taking sucker branches and defoliating. Then I let them recover without touching them at all and flip them the next weekend. By that time they are fully recovered and growing happy again.

 

[Bassy59]

I agree about saying "right before" does imply the same day or one day before. I don't see where I said that tho, I usually just say "before".... which probably isn't helping on its own I guess.

And I agree with everything you posted.. I would never strip them a day or so before flip. Usually I take my clones the weekend before I flip.. Sat or Sun. While I'm in there taking clones (from the bottom of the plant) I'm also taking sucker branches and defoliating. Then I let them recover without touching them at all and flip them the next weekend. By that time they are fully recovered and growing happy again.

I haven't been taking clones this year since I've been using some new seeds and strains. But I think I want to clone my Master Kush and Kosher Kush. I'll be flipping Master Kush when I harvest the current Kosher Kush. Then I'll drop a cpl KK seeds too.

I wonder, if I am only going to take 1-2 clones from each plant, just before flower flip. Will I see any slower transition effect? I'd think not, but wonder if anyone knows for sure.

 

[St3ve]

I've taken a few clones PLENTY of times right before, or even a day or two AFTER flip. No way will removing one or two branches going to slow it down.

That said.. I make sure to take clones from the bottom branches. I wouldn't want to take clones from the top or main before flip.

 

[Bassy59]

Good to know St3ve, thanks.

 

[señorsloth]

I defoliate but not the same way most are explaining here. I only take leaves off if they are blocking light from a developing bud and if can't be tucked out of the way instead. I do end up removing quite a few leaves but not nearly enough to even half way strip the plant of large leaves. I have found it has increased bud size and yield - at least for the plants I conistantly use.

thats the same way i do it! sure as some say it's not the way the thread starter originally proposed it but believe it or not the original thread poster was also not god...he had a good idea and spent a lot of time developing it, but now that it's been widely shared, thousands more people are experimenting with it and to think that the thread starter stumbled on the 100% best most perfect way to apply it right away is just madness...no offense to him but other people have found variations they like better, the same as with all other techniques..

i grow in super tight sogs, ~18 plants per square foot, i flower from clone with no veg and don't start defoliating until stretch stops, so that i don't stunt root growth, then i try to take no more than a leaf or two a week from each plant, by the end of budding they have very few fan leaves, so that as the buds thicken and block light the leaves thin out and allow the light to continue reaching the plants.

i also think it has applications where it will greatly increase yield, where it wont affect yield at all, and where it will hurt your yields. MOST people don't seem to get that, they think, clip off all the leaves and your plant will magically grow more bud, that will NEVER HAPPEN! if you take one small plant, put it under 1000 watts and defoliate it, well it's not gonna yield as much, or maybe just about as much, as it would have left alone...HOWEVER if you were to pack 30 plants under that same light, so tight that without defoliation light would never reach the soil? THAT'S where the benefits are imo, by taking leaves off you can get your plants tighter together than ever before...

look at my grow for instance...in my signature...i was growing at 24 plants per grow bed, with little defoliation, because they didn't need it, the average plant was about 5 grams...now i am growing 39 plants in those same beds with rather extensive defoliation and they are the exact same size they are EVERY SINGLE MONTH! i see hundreds of the same exact 5 gram clones in a given 6 month period and i know exactly what they should look like, the only difference to my grow is that with defoliation i was able to almost double the amount of plants i could fit under my light, without sacrificing any individual plant yield i was able to almost double my overall yield.

It WONT increase the yield of a plant, the point is that it wont hurt it much, if you just defoliate your normal garden then you wont see an increase, but if you defoliate AND increase your plant numbers or the size of your plants before budding so growth is much denser than you certainly WILL see a major yield increase...defoliating a plant doesn't increase it's yield, defoliating SEVERAL plants and putting them in a space where only one leafy plant would fit before? now your getting somewhere!

so what happens when you cramp them that tight together and don't defoliate? humidity issues, powder mold, not so much a decrease in yield but a propensity for the plant to form smaller, less ripe buds at the bottom and bigger, heavier buds near the top, because the tops get lots of light and bottoms get almost none. the plants natural plan is too concentrate it's growth only on the buds getting the most light. For instance:

a friend of mine, has my same clones in his garden, when they reached 8 feet they were poking above the corn he had surrounding them as cover, he tied them all over...now the side buds are big and fat, he has one c99 that is easily over half a pound which isn't bad for my state imo, but my point is the top of this 8 foot monster, that was tied down week 3 of budding, well it completely stopped budding, right then and there, even though it is only a foot lower than the rest of the buds, and it was originally designated to have one hell of a massive donkey dick on it before it was tied...the top was still probably getting more light than my buds do indoors, but the plant wasn't doing the math like i was, it was comparing the strength of the light a foot or two above, in the main canopy of buds, to the strength of the light below. Even though in theory it would probably be more than enough light to bud it indoors the plant decided to concentrate its energy on the buds that received the most light and consciously decided to give up on the ones that didn't receive as much light, because it only had so much energy to make buds. It would be bad evolutionary theory to imagine a plant that would spread its buds equally from top to bottom regardless of the amount of light it received when it could increase top buds and give up on the lower branches that were recieving no light and would likely not spread genetics as far as the top buds will...i think the lower buds are probably evolution of these plants fighting in dense bushes, they make more branches and more leaves than they need to try to fight their way to the top, because if one of those lower branches does find a pocket of light, the plant can increase the buds to that branch, while basically giving up on any branches that didn't make it into the canopy. my buddys garden is a good example of this, all the branches below the canopy are spindly, the buds almost not even there, he eventually clipped them but it was as if the plants had pruned themselves.

here are a few pics of some local hemp as another example, you can clearly see that though they made lots of bottom branches, and a light meter would certainly say those branches got plenty of light(after all they are growing atop a 20 foot tall hill)the plant made no buds on them and only worked on the top buds, almost like a grower would do indoors, yet we try to enhance this natural process through pruning and defoliating, so that the plant makes no fluff buds at all, and concentrates on the nice full buds.you will see in the pics some plants that had plenty of soil and water grew fat buds all the way to the bottom, but the ones that were limited by something knew they had to conserve what they had. outdoors their limitation was water, these hills they are growing on are piles of boulders, removed from nearby sod fields before tilling, so water drains away quickly, indoors your limitation is light, to reach the power of the sun you would need like 130w of hps per square foot, and with heat under 85 degrees, it's just not feasible...to imagine the sun can produce that at 93 million miles...

the problem is that to maximize yields you need very dense plant growth, with leaves on it creates a very large disparity between the amount of light the top buds get and the amount the bottom buds get...the plants will naturally recognize this and EVEN THOUGH THE BOTTOM BUDS GET ENOUGH LIGHT IN THEORY the plant consciously decides to put more effort into the top buds anyway, just like they evolved to do over thousands of years. defoliation comes in when you pack plants much closer together than you naturally would find and force them to work together, you allow light to the bottom buds so that you end up with slightly smaller top buds, but much bigger bottom buds, so you don't end up with 2 ounces of fat buds and 2 ounces of tiny buds, you end up with 1 ounce of fat buds and 3 ounces of medium buds...while simultaneously lowering humidity and mold issues, and allowing for more plants or bigger plants in the same area.

 

[DrFever]

look at my grow for instance...in my signature...i was growing at 24 plants per grow bed, with little defoliation, because they didn't need it, the average plant was about 5 grams...now i am growing 39 plants in those same beds with rather extensive defoliation and they are the exact same size they are EVERY SINGLE MONTH! i see hundreds of the same exact 5 gram clones in a given 6 month period and i know exactly what they should look like, the only difference to my grow is that i with defoliation i was able to almost double the amount of plants i could fit under my light, without sacrificing any individual plant yield i was able to almost double my overall yield.
So you ever think that instead packing 18 plants and getting 5 grams per plant with your 18 plants per Sq foot growing a few less like may-be 1 per square foot and don't bother defoilating anything in other words instead of you 90 grams per you get
double ????? there are allot better techniques in achieving yield then defoilating

 

[señorsloth]

So you ever think that instead packing 18 plants and getting 5 grams per plant with your 18 plants per Sq foot growing a few less like may-be 1 per square foot and don't bother defoilating anything in other words instead of you 90 grams per you get
double ????? there are allot better techniques in achieving yield then defoilating

no offense dr.fever but you can't yield double that i'm getting ...it's simply impossible...basically double the 90 grams per square foot you quoted and you get 180 grams per foot, or over 1600 grams per meter...nobody in the world can do that. no of course i don't think my way is the only way to achieve super high yields, it's just A way, one that i prefer because it involves no vegging, you can achieve the same yields with bushes, vertical, scrogs, or coliseums, and while some may have more potential than others i think unless you are a growing professionally on a large scale it comes down to personal preference, i like mine because i figure if i can get the same yield per watt as just about anybody else on here, but i don't have to spend a month or two vegging in another chamber that i don't even have space for...and without training them to a screen with zip ties and pruning or up a trellis or something for vert...i just plant my clones, throw them into flower, and 56 days later i get a nice harvest, i do a little defoliating and i trim the bottom three inches of nodes off but they do the rest, i'm lazy and this method suits me cause it's fairly low effort. i think a lot of people are wary of it because of the inherent risk of growing so many tiny plants, the government doesn't care if it's 78 five gram clones in my grow cab or 78 bushes in a house...the newspapers will report it the same and i'll go to jail for just as long either way...it's based on plant numbers i am pretty sure...

and as to the part about lot better techniques to achieving yield then defoliating...can you think of another way that i could have gotten an almost 40 percent increase in potential yield? i say potential because each month i do better than the last, but at this point it comes down to mainly getting all of my clones to take off, just a couple runts can hurt the yield but each harvest more and more of them reach the average yeild, and some surpassing it, this month i have 3 runts, next month i don't think i have any, they are at 3 weeks and by all accounts will all be 5 gram plants...at 2 trays of 39 plants at 5 grams a plant...well the math is good, and totally feasible...almost nearly 1 gram per watt. not to mention my yields so far haven't been to shabby by anybody's standards and every month they go up. if you could name me a method for getting one gram per watt that didn't involve making a veg chamber or training plants i might be interested... frankly though, as is, i don't see how a little lst and a little defoliation don't go hand in hand to getting a nice dense canopy, and maximizing yield and quality, from the top buds down to the bottom buds, regardless as to whether you do a vert or scrog or bushes or a sog, it allows you to fit more plants into the budding zone near the light, than you otherwise could, plain and simple. im sure thats been proven enough times to be accepted on a level that lst and supercropping are...10 bushes under a light natural would yield similar or a little more than 10 bushes defoliated under the same light, IF the spacing was the same in both instances, but it's pretty easy to see that 10 bushes natural under a light would not be able to out-yield 20 bushes, defoliated and packed into the same space...even if the yield is not double, it WILL be more just because no light will be wasted...if i can get 18 plants in a square foot there are a lot of growers out there that could certainly pack more bushes into their grow than they are now, but without defoliation they would likely have humidity issues, and problems with huge ass top buds and buttloads of tiny fluffy buds

here are a few pics to show this, the first one is a harvest from a month ago, largely undefoliated, at 24 plants per bed, i had been growing at that number for several months and thought it was as tight as i should go, until the last week when flush kills off all the sun leaves, and i'm left with tons of space between rows of clones...
the second picture is my grow as of a few days or a week ago, at the same point in the grow, but with no fan leaves left, and packed almost twice as tight, the buds are almost identical, despite these getting half as much space and having no main fan leaves by the end of bloom, in the past i tended to pick my crop in stages and never took full yield weights, but from now on i plan to carefully record my overall weights and individual plant weights, and from my experience, this yield will be around .7 to .8 grams per watt and the next should be close to 1 gram per watt. my getting a new hood i reduced the stretchy stadium effect you see in the first picture, caused by the crappy cool tube, the plants yielded similarly, whether they were 14 inches tall under the bulb or 22 inches tall in the back...also as you can see even though each plant on the right has no fans and each plant on the left has at least half, if not all their fans, the defoliated canopy seems to have much more leaves and a much more efficient canopy, because the bud leaves are doing all the work, and they don't block out the surrounding plants like the fan leaves are designed by evolution to do. oh, and the fan leaves on the right side of the right picture are from the other bed of clones next to it, at week three, that are just starting defoliation today, so they still have all their leaves, it's a dense mess in there.

 

[DrFever]

no offense dr.fever but you can't yield double that i'm getting ...it's simply impossible...basically double the 90 grams per square foot you quoted and you get 180 grams per foot, or over 1600 grams per meter...nobody in the world can do that. no of course i don't think my way is the only way to achieve super high yields, it's just A way, one that i prefer because it involves no vegging, you can achieve the same yields with bushes, vertical, scrogs, or coliseums, and while some may have more potential than others i think unless you are a growing professionally on a large scale it comes down to personal preference, i like mine because i figure if i can get the same yield per watt as just about anybody else on here, but i don't have to spend a month or two vegging in another chamber that i don't even have space for...and without training them to a screen with zip ties and pruning or up a trellis or something for vert...i just plant my clones, throw them into flower, and 56 days later i get a nice harvest, i do a little defoliating and i trim the bottom three inches of nodes off but they do the rest, i'm lazy and this method suits me cause it's fairly low effort. i think a lot of people are wary of it because of the inherent risk of growing so many tiny plants, the government doesn't care if it's 78 five gram clones in my grow cab or 78 bushes in a house...the newspapers will report it the same and i'll go to jail for just as long either way...it's based on plant numbers i am pretty sure...

and as to the part about lot better techniques to achieving yield then defoliating...can you think of another way that i could have gotten an almost 40 percent increase in potential yield? i say potential because each month i do better than the last, but at this point it comes down to mainly getting all of my clones to take off, just a couple runts can hurt the yield but each harvest more and more of them reach the average yeild, and some surpassing it, this month i have 3 runts, next month i don't think i have any, they are at 3 weeks and by all accounts will all be 5 gram plants...at 2 trays of 39 plants at 5 grams a plant...well the math is good, and totally feasible...almost nearly 1 gram per watt. not to mention my yields so far haven't been to shabby by anybody's standards and every month they go up. if you could name me a method for getting one gram per watt that didn't involve making a veg chamber or training plants i might be interested... frankly though, as is, i don't see how a little lst and a little defoliation don't go hand in hand to getting a nice dense canopy, and maximizing yield and quality, from the top buds down to the bottom buds, regardless as to whether you do a vert or scrog or bushes or a sog, it allows you to fit more plants into the budding zone near the light, than you otherwise could, plain and simple. im sure thats been proven enough times to be accepted on a level that lst and supercropping are...10 bushes under a light natural would yield similar or a little more than 10 bushes defoliated under the same light, IF the spacing was the same in both instances, but it's pretty easy to see that 10 bushes natural under a light would not be able to out-yield 20 bushes, defoliated and packed into the same space...even if the yield is not double, it WILL be more just because no light will be wasted...if i can get 18 plants in a square foot there are a lot of growers out there that could certainly pack more bushes into their grow than they are now, but without defoliation they would likely have humidity issues, and problems with huge ass top buds and buttloads of tiny fluffy buds

here are a few pics to show this, the first one is a harvest from a month ago, largely undefoliated, at 24 plants per bed, i had been growing at that number for several months and thought it was as tight as i should go, until the last week when flush kills off all the sun leaves, and i'm left with tons of space between rows of clones...
the second picture is my grow as of a few days or a week ago, at the same point in the grow, but with no fan leaves left, and packed almost twice as tight, the buds are almost identical, despite these getting half as much space and having no main fan leaves by the end of bloom, in the past i tended to pick my crop in stages and never took full yield weights, but from now on i plan to carefully record my overall weights and individual plant weights, and from my experience, this yield will be around .7 to .8 grams per watt and the next should be close to 1 gram per watt. my getting a new hood i reduced the stretchy stadium effect you see in the first picture, caused by the crappy cool tube, the plants yielded similarly, whether they were 14 inches tall under the bulb or 22 inches tall in the back...also as you can see even though each plant on the right has no fans and each plant on the left has at least half, if not all their fans, the defoliated canopy seems to have much more leaves and a much more efficient canopy, because the bud leaves are doing all the work, and they don't block out the surrounding plants like the fan leaves are designed by evolution to do. oh, and the fan leaves on the right side of the right picture are from the other bed of clones next to it, at week three, that are just starting defoliation today, so they still have all their leaves, it's a dense mess in there.

Looks good


i just achieved 4.75 pounds non c02 in a 5x8 scrog 5 plants this grow i am doing now will be 12 plants 5 x 15 will be 40 + more yield as i am running co2 my guess is 7 to 10 pound harvest running this style worst case scenerio i make 7pounds 4 runs of this gives me 21 pounds 4 shots of your style gives you 480 grams does it make sense to me it doesn;t hell i should just throw into flower 1200 clones or better yet 10,000 for my room but then again 25 years in jail for that many plant count
here is a 200 gram bud on a 5 gallon pail