Young Giver
Member
this is a very interesting technique i shall have 2 try this on my new crop
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Defoliation: Hi-Yield Technique?
- Thread starter k33ftr33z
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ya'll are crazy. it's called tucking. tuck the leaves so they're out of the way of the nugs. very simple. plants use leaves to absorb the light for photosynthesis and move all of those nutrients throughout the plant. I am of the firm belief that leaves should stay on the plant until they are no longer useful to it.
it's like someone saying "hey take those solar panels off of the roof so we can have a skylight to heat this room up" well if you take the solar panels off you're losing a lot of energy from the rest of the house to create a bit of energy in one spot.
when was the last time you saw an outdoor grower or commercial grower plucking leaves to increase yield? afterall that is what those type of growers are after, you'd think a commercial grow would have a team of "defoliators" constantly stripping leaves so the nugs get light.
okay, so your lower nugs don't get light... solution.... strip the lower branches. problem solved. why sacrifice the engine of your colas to possibly beef up a few other nugs?
it's like someone saying "hey take those solar panels off of the roof so we can have a skylight to heat this room up" well if you take the solar panels off you're losing a lot of energy from the rest of the house to create a bit of energy in one spot.
when was the last time you saw an outdoor grower or commercial grower plucking leaves to increase yield? afterall that is what those type of growers are after, you'd think a commercial grow would have a team of "defoliators" constantly stripping leaves so the nugs get light.
okay, so your lower nugs don't get light... solution.... strip the lower branches. problem solved. why sacrifice the engine of your colas to possibly beef up a few other nugs?
So how much trim time do you save.... vs. all this leaf picking time? With the additional branching it creates... even more leaves are created. Aren't you spending 'more' time trimming now, just not a lot at the harvest end?
Im interested in seeing this in two situations...
Vertical
SOG with a full on LollyPop strain. No branches just donkey dick, no leaves.
Tucking and just snipping the leaves in half has always worked fine too. I think DeFoli is more a direct approach like whipping them into WORKING. No fan leaves play time.
Vertical
SOG with a full on LollyPop strain. No branches just donkey dick, no leaves.
Tucking and just snipping the leaves in half has always worked fine too. I think DeFoli is more a direct approach like whipping them into WORKING. No fan leaves play time.
TexasToker
Member
It actually makes them use LESS water from what I have seen.
I have not run side by side, but have run a strain that I am familiar with. It did appear that the trichome coverage was greater when stripping leaves; although, I did not notice any increase in potency.
bs0
Active member
I haven't seen increased top growth in the past when I have removed the lower branches and grown single colas. Have you done a comparison?
We've been experimenting with the practice. I think it has its time and place. Do you think that lower leaves should be retained if they are shaded by 4-5 leaves above them? In that case they merely store sugars. One might hypothesis that removing the extra nutrient storage leaves may force the plant to store those nutrients in the buds? I'm not saying that hypothesis is true, just that its possible that plants can grow redundant leaves.
To put that in your solar panels analogy, what happens when your solar panels produce more electricity than your home needs? With solar panels you can run the energy back to the power company, with a plant what can it do to? Use the extra photosynthesis to grow more leaves?
That's the angle I think about it from, and honestly if my test sucks I'll be honest and say it sucked. Keeftrees showed earlier in the thread some positive results. For what it is worth both keeftrees and I grow hydro.
If 'commercial growers' had something against removing the leaves I'd imagine it would be due to it being time intensive, and you get sticky fingers like nobody's business.
I'm glad you are thinking about it and the repercussions! Growing seems to be one of those arts where everyone kinda matches their style to their strain and their environment, and what works for one person may not work for someone else if their overall setup varies significantly.
Believability
Believability
"I am of the firm belief..."
I have no beliefs.
I am firmly backing up all of this with experience and photos. Check them out. WHy would I mislead anyone and if you have photos of leafed out plants as compact and as hi-yielding as these I am interested. These colas are as large and dense as if the same strain were allowed to leaf out. There are just a hell of a lot more of them. and they are all firm and as indistinguishable from top buds. Your suggestion to remove lower branches is a completely different method which I still challenge to create more production per square ft. This is called a hi-yield technique for a reason.
Thanks for your post and for checking this out.
Believability
"I am of the firm belief..."
I have no beliefs.
I am firmly backing up all of this with experience and photos. Check them out. WHy would I mislead anyone and if you have photos of leafed out plants as compact and as hi-yielding as these I am interested. These colas are as large and dense as if the same strain were allowed to leaf out. There are just a hell of a lot more of them. and they are all firm and as indistinguishable from top buds. Your suggestion to remove lower branches is a completely different method which I still challenge to create more production per square ft. This is called a hi-yield technique for a reason.
Thanks for your post and for checking this out.
bs0
Active member
"Proper pruning has many benefits, especially for those growers located in the regions with shorter growing seasons. Pruning the leaves off of a plant maximizes the amount of photosynthesized sugar that goes into fruit formation. This means an overall increase in the quality of the fruits. Compared to non-pruned tomatoes, pruned plants will be slightly bigger and better tasting. They will also be formed quicker because they’re the only parts of the plant that are growing. But unfortunately, all these benefits do not come for free. They come at the cost of decreased overall fruit production, because there are less leaves remaining on the plant to photosynthesize sugar (to form fruits) in the long run. Determinate tomato varieties should not be pruned at all, because they grow to a fixed size and produce a fixed amount of fruits. Pruning is most effective near the end of the season, where you want to pinch off all newly formed suckers and the main growing tip to expedite the formation and ripening of the remaining fruits.
Alas, if you choose to prune, it can be the most labor intensive process in the art of growing tomatoes, especially for big indeterminate varieties like Cherokee Purple and some Beefsteak varieties. During the heat of the summer, a whole heaping lot of suckers need to be removed. But depending on conditions, the rewards of pruning tomatoes may be well worth the effort."
http://www.growing-tomato.com/Pruning_Tomatoes_A_Guide_to_Pruning_Tomato_Plants.html
My comment on the relation to tomato pruning is that it may not be a total analogy, due to their plant continuing to stretch during flowering growth. They also described in that article that what they are pruning is 'suckers' which are new branch growth.
Alas, if you choose to prune, it can be the most labor intensive process in the art of growing tomatoes, especially for big indeterminate varieties like Cherokee Purple and some Beefsteak varieties. During the heat of the summer, a whole heaping lot of suckers need to be removed. But depending on conditions, the rewards of pruning tomatoes may be well worth the effort."
http://www.growing-tomato.com/Pruning_Tomatoes_A_Guide_to_Pruning_Tomato_Plants.html
My comment on the relation to tomato pruning is that it may not be a total analogy, due to their plant continuing to stretch during flowering growth. They also described in that article that what they are pruning is 'suckers' which are new branch growth.
Reset
Reset
I want to clarify a few things before any misunderstanding.
This method is for creating a bush at minimum 32" cubed. I have found that this is an optimal minimum for most strains. I have done SOG setups for years but tired of the numbers both for tedium and for legal ramifications. This defoliation method was originally refined in SOG at 6"-8" spacing.
SOG became a battle of crowding so gradually spacing was increased to what it is today 32". Even 24" was too crowded once plants were allowed to get a little groove on. I now think SOG is totally old school and only applicable in very small sets where someone wants more than one or two varieties. That is my opinion. What works for one's comfort is best for them.
So getting back to clarification, if you are thinking of following this method from the beginning and not as SOG maintenence, you should be planning for 32" plants.
These 32" plants should yield 8-12 oz. Mine are averaging 10.This is done with a light allocation of 266 watts per plant. That's a little over 1gpw for the average. I know this can be pushed to 1.5 consistently with refined training and even better strains that are out there.
Reset
I want to clarify a few things before any misunderstanding.
This method is for creating a bush at minimum 32" cubed. I have found that this is an optimal minimum for most strains. I have done SOG setups for years but tired of the numbers both for tedium and for legal ramifications. This defoliation method was originally refined in SOG at 6"-8" spacing.
SOG became a battle of crowding so gradually spacing was increased to what it is today 32". Even 24" was too crowded once plants were allowed to get a little groove on. I now think SOG is totally old school and only applicable in very small sets where someone wants more than one or two varieties. That is my opinion. What works for one's comfort is best for them.
So getting back to clarification, if you are thinking of following this method from the beginning and not as SOG maintenence, you should be planning for 32" plants.
These 32" plants should yield 8-12 oz. Mine are averaging 10.This is done with a light allocation of 266 watts per plant. That's a little over 1gpw for the average. I know this can be pushed to 1.5 consistently with refined training and even better strains that are out there.
rant
Some people are so against plucking leaves with no evidence against it except their own ideas of how a plant works. Listen folks - unless you're a botanist or have some qualification, I would keep my mind open to new ideas rather than holding on to an ideal belief I have. It's funny how we simplify the plant so much that some of you guys feel you know it well enough to totally ignore potentially useful techniques.
Perhaps keeping a fan leave costs the plant more energy than the leaf stores. So why would the plant keep the leaf at all? perhaps because outdoors, the leaf provides protection from predators and the weather, and so it IS cost effective to keep it around. I'm not saying this is true, and in fact I just came up with this example right now, but I'm just showing you that there are other ways of thinking about things and from anecdotal reports, I at least suggest trying this method on a few plants before just coming in here and posting that this method cannot possibly work in accordance with the laws of nature due to this or that.
It's like believing in vitalism. Ridiculous. There was a TED talk about this titled "on what we think we know." I highly recommend it, or at least skip to the "homework" questions at the end.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_drori_on_what_we_think_we_know.html
Some people are so against plucking leaves with no evidence against it except their own ideas of how a plant works. Listen folks - unless you're a botanist or have some qualification, I would keep my mind open to new ideas rather than holding on to an ideal belief I have. It's funny how we simplify the plant so much that some of you guys feel you know it well enough to totally ignore potentially useful techniques.
Perhaps keeping a fan leave costs the plant more energy than the leaf stores. So why would the plant keep the leaf at all? perhaps because outdoors, the leaf provides protection from predators and the weather, and so it IS cost effective to keep it around. I'm not saying this is true, and in fact I just came up with this example right now, but I'm just showing you that there are other ways of thinking about things and from anecdotal reports, I at least suggest trying this method on a few plants before just coming in here and posting that this method cannot possibly work in accordance with the laws of nature due to this or that.
It's like believing in vitalism. Ridiculous. There was a TED talk about this titled "on what we think we know." I highly recommend it, or at least skip to the "homework" questions at the end.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_drori_on_what_we_think_we_know.html
Apples and Oranges. Tomatoes are a completely different plant with different needs for producing fruit.
Cannabis produces flowers. Even their tomato test is not a fair controlled group to make such a broad conclusion. It is assuming a constant on the size or structure of the tomato plant which can be manipulated in nursery stage before putting out for summer fruiting.
Anyway, I hope this will not degenerate into a slew of technical and overly wordy document links. I've read them and they have validity but a mostly narrow in scope and short on the essence, a real world example. What I am posting is far beyond trial unless the evidence shown in photos look experimental, fluke and not replicable.
Spot-on, bro
I like your proposition that leaves can serve the function of expendability. I had never considered that. In nature a plant should provide AMPLE vegetation as sacrificial to browsers. All plants have the ability to overcome damage from weather and grazing.
I also dig the link. Thinking what one knows creates the framework for a limited view of potentially challenging knowledge.
Examine and challenge your indoctrination.
Everything I've read about human physiology says that fat is for energy storage and therefore people who have accumulated excess fat must be doing so for very good reasons. Although you may get ripped by eating a low calorie diet and exercising, it doesn't happen 'naturally' and therefore should probably be avoided. After all, nature is a little smarter than you and if it wanted you to get completely ripped instead of being a fat sack of crap we'd have been born doing crunches.
I agree. Maybe you should create a dead simple guide on how to do this (or I will go through the thread and try to make such a guide from your posts), easy enough that others here can spare a few plants for testing. As of now, to get all the details, one needs to go through the thread which can be turning off a lot of people.
I'm testing this method myself but won't be able to provide results for awhile.
Dorje113
Member
Cool, I get 1.37 g / W (3lbs per 1000W) without defoliating, and only growing 4 plants per 1 kW light.
I use supercropping, LST and some limited defoliation well into flowering. I mainly tuck the fan leaves.
For me, the main advantage I can see is if it helps with the flush. I use soil at the rate of 50 gal per plant (I reuse it indefinitely), so I never flush water through the soil at all, just reduce nutes so they are at a low level before harvest. Near harvest, the plant takes in sugars from the fan leaves and they turn yellow and start dying. At that point if you start defoliating I can see how the flush would go faster.
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