Defoliation: Hi-Yield Technique?

[iampolluted]

all my buds are bigger buds. why waste it when you can grow it to it's full potential while the tops get the same treatment? i'm not fond of wasting time, energy and money to cut off something i can smoke.

 

[Bud buster]

34 lbs = 544oz
200 plants, 544oz, = 2.72oz per plant ..er tree? wow, impressive. (you sure smoked my 10.43 oz plant)

You realize that going by d9's average results he would yield 163 POUNDS with the same 200 plants? And I'm not calling his 18.38oz dry yield from a single plant (8 week veg) his average (post #1101)

You keep throwing out so many conflicting numbers I tend to think almost everything you type is fabricated or just plain untrue. It's so hard to keep up with all the lies and not screw up the numbers isn't it?

Now lets see why you don't need to read the thread:

Post #153: Several posters have suggested that they would like to see a side by side. Unfortunately it is not
as easy as that. Defoliation allows plants to intertwine. It is not advisable to defoliate and train one and
allow the neighboring plant to leaf out and get tall. The leafy one will shade out direct and reflective light
and the comparison would be invalid.

Post #562: Just a few ideas.
In nature, plants undergo leaf senescence as part of their strategy to survive. Senescence can be described
in plants as a change process as much as a dying process.
At some point in flower, I believe it is at the end of stretch, when maximum root and shoot mass have been
achieved, I think the fan leaves radically slow down photosynthetic production, starting with the bottom
leaves first.
Outdoors, uncultivated plants, which usually have had to make a meager living from whatever nutrients
occur naturally in the soil, begin consuming the nutrients stored in their leaves for flower production. This is
mostly true of indicas as they usually have a much shorter season than sativas and grow in areas with
pronounced wet/dry cycles. Usually wet during the vegetative stage and dry during the flowering stage.
This is important as the roots are not as effective at extracting nutrients from the soil in dry cycles. The
energy stored in the fan leaves becomes a food bank during those times. I have seen research papers that
indicate a direct relationship between soil moisture and nitrogen uptake, for example.
Indoors, cultivated plants are still getting fed high quality nutrients and do not need the stored leaf nutrients
as much.
I strip the fan leaves at the end of stretch because I am looking for maximum plant mass. I have strong
vertical lighting and a 10 ft ceiling.
K33ftr33z and most other indoor growers, are using horizontal lighting with height restraints. As they need to
keep the plants shorter they can use vegetative defoliating as a means of restricting plant height. As
k33ftr33z has demonstrated, restricting height does not necessarily equate to lower bud count. So the point
at which you defoliate is dependent upon your technique.
The decision to defoliate or not is dependent upon your strain. My plant reacts well to it. Some won't.
As the cannabis plant can only propagate in the wild by seed, seed production is it's primary function. It is genetically programmed to produce seeds at all cost. Since we usually don't allow seeds this energy gets
focused on flower development. The plant will grow flowers, no matter what you do to it.
Research has demonstrated that almost all parts of a plant are capable of photosynthesis. When the large
fan leaves are stripped, the plant shifts whatever photosynthetic production is needed to other plant parts.
And immediately begins new leaf growth. As the fan leaves are now gone and the only option left is the bud
leaves, growth occurs there.
I believe the same hormonal stimuli that redirects growth to the bud leaves causes enhanced bud production.
The fans leaves of an uncultivated plant are there primarily for developing plant mass and to store nutrients
for flower production.

Gee, gosh, wow, you mean to say we're feeding more and better nutrients to the roots daily than a naturally grown plant will get in the normal outdoor in the wild soil? So the leaves don't have to store nutrients indoors because the roots are eating constantly? whodafuckinthunk?

Post#1169:
k33ftr33z and lifeless, thanks for the compliments on the monster!

i just weighed last weeks plant and it only went 15.80. i guess i screwed up somewhere.

so my last five consecutive defoliated plants went 11.96, 12.35, 14.74, 18.38, and 15.80 for a total of 73.23 or an average of 14.65 each.

my last 5 plants before defoliation averaged 10.49, or 52.45 total oz's.

a total difference of 20.78 or 4.16 zips per plant.

i have been doing a series of changes over the last year to drive up yield and this one, defoliating, has made the largest difference.

at this point i'll stop posting pics and weight here as i think i have proven this technique.

thanks k33ftr33z!

Do I really need to add more to refute your claims?

Bassy put this post together a few pages back it explains why your leaf isn't feeding plants if you are feeding the roots constantly they feed the plant all it needs and by removing leaves you open up the canopy thus giving the branches light and hormones that replace the leaf mass in 3 days to grow more dense that gives more yield versus a plant with little branching and farther spacing between bud sites giving less weight.

before after 70 hours later
Comparing one room or grower to another only matters if they are in identical setups including temp, strain, light,ect.
Your various growing styles, genetics, numbers and environments play the biggest role in a successful room that can be greatly improved with defoliation it really isn't much different than listing or supercroping all will help develop branching but none as well as defoliation alone combine them all then you would see some fire.

The only people arguing against it are people that haven't tried it those of us that have usually swear by it or are on the fence till they figure it out like any other training technique. You can argue all the theory you want it means nothing compared to experiments.

 

[siftedunity]

i didn't say a 4 month veg time....you're not paying attention obviously.read your own posts.

actually, my plants are 24" tall, or bigger usually. i flower @ a foot, no less. any less and it's not worth it, i've tried it. mostly though, that depends on genetics and stretch.fair enough

you guys seem to have missed the point where a leaf is a leaf regardless of size. that 2" leaf still produces the same shit a 10" leaf does.produces the same food but 10'' produces 5x more
just like every person is made up of the same molecular structure.?? it's the same in every leaf. i, personally, don't strip em all, but a few here and a few there over the course of a couple weeks. they still grow vertically, and tend to branch a little. i don't want a lot of branching but i do want em to start a branch to produce more larger nuggets on the ends, than little buds farther down. pinch out the lower buds
my branches average 4"-6" and it ends up almost all bud,pics? the only leave are the one below the branch. op has large long branches and imo is wasting bud space. i'm growing bud, not sticks and leaves.

more leaf does NOT equal more bud.. it equals more leaf/shade. i dont grow buds in the shade i lollypop and/or scrog
skinning plants does not equal less food. it does it equals less shade. small leaves still produce food for the plant.yup but not as much.
less growth? wtfe, it looks different, it doesn't mean it's growing less. it looks like its got less bud, more sticks.
airy bud? you must be on crack. not on crack lol light penetration = denser buds. shaded areas = larf. pics??
simple fact? bullshit!

dr....little leaves are still transpiring, still producing food. how much energy is being used trying to sustain the greenery in a larger leaf?none it sustains itself and enough food for the plant too.
it's not getting bigger, it's staying the same size, only to fall off at some point.all leaves fall off at some point.
how many smaller leaves do you lose throughout the grow? my guess is very little, if any. that is until they reach full growth and stop. why are the oldest leaves the 1st ones to fall off? hmmmm seems like they stop producing food for the plant at some point and the plant rids itself of excess weight and energy loss trying to keep it when it doesn't need it exactly the plant will get rid of leaves which are not functioning fully. hence theres no need to defoliate

....kinda like when a body builder drops weight before a show. to reach it's peak physical condition. in their eyes, water weight is wasted weight, and that is exactly what a larger leaf is...water weight. bodybuilders drop bodyfat and excess water for shows to thin the skin and to expose all the muscle they can.
bodybuilders are at their weakest and least healthy point at a show and eitherway are nothing like cannabis plants anyway.

there was so much wrong with your post i had to answer in bold.

 

[siftedunity]

Bassy put this post together a few pages back it explains why your leaf isn't feeding plants if you are feeding the roots constantly they feed the plant all it needs and by removing leaves you open up the canopy thus giving the branches light and hormones that replace the leaf mass in 3 days to grow more dense that gives more yield versus a plant with little branching and farther spacing between bud sites giving less weight.

before[URL="https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=40230&pictureid=951849&thumb=1"]View Image[/URL]after [URL="https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=40230&pictureid=951855&thumb=1"]View Image[/URL] 70 hours later[URL="https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=40230&pictureid=952863&thumb=1"]View Image[/URL]
Comparing one room or grower to another only matters if they are in identical setups including temp, strain, light,ect.
Your various growing styles, genetics, numbers and environments play the biggest role in a successful room that can be greatly improved with defoliation it really isn't much different than listing or supercroping all will help develop branching but none as well as defoliation alone combine them all then you would see some fire.

The only people arguing against it are people that haven't tried it those of us that have usually swear by it or are on the fence till they figure it out like any other training technique. You can argue all the theory you want it means nothing compared to experiments.

plants mainly store starch in the leaves, not nutrients.

 

[siftedunity]

to be honest the only way to get your point across in this thread is to constantly spoon feed most of you information which you should have already got off your ass and read.

at least half of the science given here in defence of defoliation is made up or guesswork. it is not the real science behind it all. how can you have a decent opinion when you cant even be bothered to read up on the facts first?
fair enough if you understand the science, then you find defoliation works...if that was the case id even try it.

but the fact is your trying to support it with no respect for the science and with a complete lack of whats going on at a molecular/atomic level.

 

[Jbonez]

Just a fundamental understanding of transpiration, and photosynthesis will conflict with defoliation, I guess what the thread is trying to say is that alot of the leaves arent needed..

There isnt any objective info here on this, and where are the preharvest pics with fat nugs at the bottom without the leaves.. You could pull the leaves before the chop take a pic and youd have some proof, but thats not the case, I could be wrong, didnt sift through the whole thread...

I tried this in vert, didnt really do anything, but I guess I wasnt pulling as many leaves as I thought...

 

[siftedunity]

Just a fundamental understanding of transpiration, and photosynthesis will conflict with defoliation, I guess what the thread is trying to say is that alot of the leaves arent needed..

There isnt any objective info here on this, and where are the preharvest pics with fat nugs at the bottom without the leaves.. You could pull the leaves before the chop take a pic and youd have some proof, but thats not the case, I could be wrong, didnt sift through the whole thread...

I tried this in vert, didnt really do anything, but I guess I wasnt pulling as many leaves as I thought...

yup good points. ive yet to see a fat dense bottom bud which is what these people are claiming. and the last pic looked pretty bare of leaves and bud

 

[Jbonez]

yup good points. ive yet to see a fat dense bottom bud which is what these people are claiming. and the last pic looked pretty bare of leaves and bud

I dont know man, I tried it, but I was apparently just "manicuring" and didnt see any gains or loss's..

All I see is pics with stripped plants.

The inverse square as it pertains to lights is going to fuck up defoliation theory as well, as 2 feet below the canopy, even without leaves to block the light, the light is still considerably weaker than at the top..

These guys arent hitting some of the vert numbers Ive seen proof of with my own eyes, but even then, anyone growing a critical mass plant or mcfly or something is gonna get numbers, so much more into yield than anyone "technique"...

A vertical Urkel (low yielder) grow and a overhead critical mass grow should yield about the same...

 

[siftedunity]

I dont know man, I tried it, but I was apparently just "manicuring" and didnt see any gains or loss's..

All I see is pics with stripped plants.

The inverse square as it pertains to lights is going to fuck up defoliation theory as well, as 2 feet below the canopy, even without leaves to block the light, the light is still considerably weaker than at the top..

These guys arent hitting some of the vert numbers Ive seen proof of with my own eyes, but even then, anyone growing a critical mass plant or mcfly or something is gonna get numbers, so much more into yield than anyone "technique"...

A vertical Urkel grow and a overhead critical mass grow should yield about the same...

yup all the notoriously big yielding grows are vert. same as double d and heath etc. and as you say even if you to get more light penetration, its weaker and has less intensity further down.

genetics definately play a role. although im pretty sure most strains wouldnt be too happy to be stripped bare. i mean why would plants have leaves if they are pointless? if it was more beneficial, plants would have evolved that way. if it makes them yield more, then what is the mechanism?? still waiting for all these answers in this thread.

 

[Bud buster]

to be honest the only way to get your point across in this thread is to constantly spoon feed most of you information which you should have already got off your ass and read.

at least half of the science given here in defence of defoliation is made up or guesswork. it is not the real science behind it all. how can you have a decent opinion when you cant even be bothered to read up on the facts first?
fair enough if you understand the science, then you find defoliation works...if that was the case id even try it.

but the fact is your trying to support it with no respect for the science and with a complete lack of whats going on at a molecular/atomic level.

Again your talking theory without ever trying it yourself it's that kind of closed minded "science" that had us believing the Earth was flat for centuries despite plenty of proof to the contrary.

You talk science photosynthesis with more leaves only maters if they are all getting light and most are not they are shading bud sites that will eventually branch with large spacing producing little bud that many will cut off wasting time and energy also.

My pictures show that in three days my plants have more leaf mass then before but better leaves coming off inner branches driving there growth to produce more bud sites fed by there own smaller leaves until they get really big and they come off again and the tiny little inner branches grow fast to fill the space and replace the leaf mass while growing many more bud sites.

Again until you do it yourself your theory means nothing. Your telling me the world is flat and I'm showing you it's not.

 

[DrFever]

bottom line them lower bud sites on any plant unless you are getting decent light to them are sucker buds sucking energy away from the upper bud development so why keep them there???
even when you chop if you notice them lower buds are not even close to being harvest ready in reality so what do they become you know when someone buys 1/2 pound or what ever first thing they look at is the buds if there small airy thats junk price drops
if they look on bottom of bag and see shake PRICE DROPS if you were to buy a bag of weed what are you looking for ????? are you not looking for decent sized very tightly uniformed buds rather then little tiny shit ????
bottom line were are on a site to help others and a retarded thread like this and so many of you that are believers to stubborn to look at how a plant actually works dead set at looking at your skinned plant and going wow look at all these little buds i am doing so good hahahaha when in reality your not
this is not the way to grow oh god dam should of skinned my out door corn crop could of made better yield ??????
only thing you are doing here is showing the newbies on this site how to stress a plant and make a hermie that's about it

MJ has bin around hell of allot longer then humans millions of years there only process is to produce off spring ( Seed ) inreality one would think after millions of year of evolution a plant would naturally drop its leafs in flowering if that was the case so that it would produce more????
guess what people they don;t every other living organisms and what ever has changed slightly only thing has changed in mj is the cross breeding of genetic strains that's it
pruning is one thing but skinning a plant is plain stupid period i will be transplanting shortly some clones and will challenge any defoilater in comparing our grows after 2-3 weeks veg any takers ????

owe here is a pic 18 days vegged untouched presently in flower this pic was taken like day 8 so total 26 days from a 3" clone plant is 4 feet tall

 

[Jbonez]

bottom line them lower bud sites on any plant unless you are getting decent light to them are sucker buds sucking energy away from the upper bud development so why keep them there???
even when you chop if you notice them lower buds are not even close to being harvest ready in reality so what do they become you know when someone buys 1/2 pound or what ever first thing they look at is the buds if there small airy thats junk price drops
if they look on bottom of bag and see shake PRICE DROPS if you were to buy a bag of weed what are you looking for ????? are you not looking for decent sized very tightly uniformed buds rather then little tiny shit ????
bottom line were are on a site to help others and a retarded thread like this and so many of you that are believers to stubborn to look at how a plant actually works dead set at looking at your skinned plant and going wow look at all these little buds i am doing so good hahahaha when in reality your not
this is not the way to grow oh god dam should of skinned my out door corn crop could of made better yield ??????
only thing you are doing here is showing the newbies on this site how to stress a plant and make a hermie that's about it

Id say the "uniformity" of the golf ball nugs on this vertically grown Pre98 are not ever going to happend in overhead..

The sun doesnt sit over top of plants in nature, it comes from the side at 360 degrees..

 

[Jbonez]

Again your talking theory without ever trying it yourself it's that kind of closed minded "science" that had us believing the Earth was flat for centuries despite plenty of proof to the contrary.

You talk science photosynthesis with more leaves only maters if they are all getting light and most are not they are shading bud sites that will eventually branch with large spacing producing little bud that many will cut off wasting time and energy also.

My pictures show that in three days my plants have more leaf mass then before but better leaves coming off inner branches driving there growth to produce more bud sites fed by there own smaller leaves until they get really big and they come off again and the tiny little inner branches grow fast to fill the space and replace the leaf mass while growing many more bud sites.

Again until you do it yourself your theory means nothing. Your telling me the world is flat and I'm showing you it's not.

So what are your numbers like? For perspective of course.

Id hardly compare yourself to Aristotle my friend, his results were intuited tho he only offered subjective proof, yours are not, rather, its a test you personally find favorable.. Subjectivity, unfortunately is only perceived to be objective buy the perpetuate of the theory...

 

[DrFever]

jbonz i am on wrong pc my pics are on my other pc i will load them up tomorrow and show you some lower bud sites that are huge lol and joined up from over head horizontal growing again penetration power also in process of setting up V scrog style grow 6 k four 1000 watt vert and two 1000 horizontal

 

[Bud buster]

Agreed Jbonez the vertical buds that get light will be a good size anywhere in the light zone but shade them and you get larf something the guys who don't defoliate know all to well especially with overhead lighting.

You should trim suckers that are out of the light zone at the bottom nobody denies this but if you defoliate there is less, so less wasted growth to throw away but that has more to do with grow style like scrog where you strip so much undergrowth.

The inverse light rule doesn't change but with defoliation you get denser plants with tighter spacing allowing more light to penetrate in a shorter space = more intensity plus you remove large leaves when needed to allow more intense light to more bud sites that have been created so it's a double win.

Again your theory means nothing versus experiments if you haven't done it a couple of times your "Theories" don't have a leg to stand on.

 

[iampolluted]

i have 4 stacked 1k's. the bottom of the plant gets as much as the top. i'm not cutting lower buds, because i can fucking smoke em and it's not larf that weighs nothing. the bottom produces if provided adequate light. having a stacked light set up and removing leaves that end up shading bud, you get light to every part of the plant, not just the top 1/2. the light distance from the top of the plant and the bottom of the plant, in my set up, is less than a 2" difference depending on it's position in the rack. that means the bottoms of my plants are getting 1k worth of light @ a 20" distance. tell me again my "larf" is worth cutting and tossing...then look at your larf.

the plants in these pics were not defoliated. they didn't need to be. they weren't leafy, and didn't shade anything.

sifted....i'll get to your post in a second...

 

[Jbonez]

jbonz i am on wrong pc my pics are on my other pc i will load them up tomorrow and show you some lower bud sites that are huge lol and joined up from over head horizontal growing again penetration power also in process of setting up V scrog style grow 6 k four 1000 watt vert and two 1000 horizontal

Ill be waiting to see that, tho Ive no use for anything but pics of a plant that is visibly naked of leaves right before the chop with large fat nugs all the way down, as Ive yet to bear witness to this phenomenon...

If by joined up you mean the distance between the budsites, well, pre98 will just never do that, overhead or not, besides, the math is overwhelmingly against this theory, it requires a reflector and about an extra 10% intensity loss if glass is used in the reflector, By removing the leaves, mathematically the plant is losing ability to photosynthesize at the capacity it could with more leaves, this is not something I simply just know, its an objective observation, you cannot tell me that by removing leaves will ever contribute to the carbohydrates that are being produced, as energy through photosynthesis..

Its not that we dont want to believe it, but its a laughable theory because it makes no sense.. We grow em a little more similar to the way in nature, and we yield more because of it. simple.

 

[DrFever]

Id say the "uniformity" of the golf ball nugs on this vertically grown Pre98 are not ever going to happend in overhead..

The sun doesnt sit over top of plants in nature, it comes from the side at 360 degrees..

View Image

jbonez i really never worry about lower bud sites in reality i cut all that stuff out i worry about the 600 plus bud sites on my even canopy using reflector giving me both sides of the bulbs power to them i so can;t wait till my girls are totally in flower and buds are getting bigger so i can post some more pics lol you J click on my signature have a scroll thru that thread ??

 

[Jbonez]

Agreed Jbonez the vertical buds that get light will be a good size anywhere in the light zone but shade them and you get larf something the guys who don't defoliate know all to well especially with overhead lighting.

You should trim suckers that are out of the light zone at the bottom nobody denies this but if you defoliate there is less, so less wasted growth to throw away but that has more to do with grow style like scrog where you strip so much undergrowth.

The inverse light rule doesn't change but with defoliation you get denser plants with tighter spacing allowing more light to penetrate in a shorter space = more intensity plus you remove large leaves when needed to allow more intense light to more bud sites that have been created so it's a double win.

Again your theory means nothing versus experiments if you haven't done it a couple of times your "Theories" don't have a leg to stand on.

Ive no theory to support bro, Im messin with other dudes hitting way over a gpw on average, and its not because we are pulling leaves bro..

Id still like to hear what the gpw is on some of these harvests with defoliated plants.

 

[Jbonez]

jbonez i really never worry about lower bud sites in reality i cut all that stuff out i worry about the 600 plus bud sites on my even canopy using reflector giving me both sides of the bulbs power to them i so can;t wait till my girls are totally in flower and buds are getting bigger so i can post some more pics lol you J click on my signature have a scroll thru that thread ??

shit man, nice scrog! you really thinkin youll pull 3 per light? Ive seen that personally, but Overhead the only way I could see that is like you are doing, def gonna subscribe man...