To defoliate or, not to defoliate...

[Teh_Baker]

So here is the deal. I have been a grower for several years, and for the last 3 years at least i have been doing selective defoliation on shade/fan/water leaves once girls make it to flower. My process is to take all fan leaves up to the 4th node from the meristem or tip top of each cola. This provides me with very good aeration and sun penetration. Because my personal preference is to have the largest densest nugs i pull off most of the lowest popcorn nugs as well. As the plants continue to stretch i continue the process of pinching off fan leaves.

Well i just read up on defoliation during the vegetative stage and throughout by k33ftr33z https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=174163
He touts the ability to keep a plant at a managable size, while still increasing the yield and yield quality. I totally believe him based on my results of only de-leafing in flower stage. I am not going to make any arguments against him.

What i am going to do is this. A side by side comparison of the same strain in the same conditions. I'll start defoliating one now as they are starting to get beafy, and then ill save the rest to do my normal MO on. At the end, we will do a side by side comparison of factors that matter to me. Ie. finishing plant size, size of buds, overall weight, and managability vs time available. Please keep in mind that i have a fulltime job, and certainly am not blessed enough to dedicate all of my time to my stash garden. I do devote around 3-5 hours per week to the garden, more time closer to harvest obviously. I see the plants at the very least every 3 days, and usually see leaves that i missed the last time out, so i pinch leaves almost every time out.

What we have to test this round is MAZAR, which is a legendary monster. I already know i am in for a ton of tying and training later in the season with plants capable of easily hitting 12ft, so its worth a try to make a more managable plant that still produces the same weight. Ill do some more research to see if THC Snow is a taller plant and make a decision to do this with one of them also.

Please chime in with your own thoughts and experiences along the way. Lets make this a fun experiment!

Here is my current Mazar, you can see she would already benefit from a healthy haircut if you will.

Grown outdoors, nutes a mix of GH maxi-gro, Humbolts snowstorm, Humbolts magnum, and a weekly dose of azamax to keep the creepy crawlies away.

 

[Teh_Baker]

Here you go, the proof is in the pudding. Went home last night and did as i said. Trimmed up one of the Mazar, lifted up all the skirts on the rest of the girls to prevent muddy buddies later in the season. This also encourages vertical growth which i want to a certain point. And since my autos are flowering i went ahead and thinned them out also.
Before

After

 

[plantingplants]

If you take fan leaves off, afaik, you are removing 1) a source of translocatable nutrients and 2) indicators of deficiency. That said, fan leaves can block a lot of light to new growth. Where i'm at with it is leaving bottom leaves as indicators, and tucking detrimental fan leaves out of the way of new growth... or removing them.

 

[Limeygreen]

Depends when and what you remove and how much of a root system you have. Removing smaller branches early on promotes more airflow, better light penetration as well as allows resources to go to the branches you leave instead of small branches more blocked by the other foliage that are just sinks rather than sources. If your have a well established root system, removing too much will promote suckering as well leading to needing for more pruning as the larger root system can produce and has more cytokinins. Total leaf area needs to be considered for what you are doing to maximize growth and production but what you have done looks good to me, good air flow below the main branches will pay off later in the season by not stopping the air movement below them causing stagnation and things like mildew, botrytis, fusarium etc. For defoliation I think a simple rule will suffice, plant structure first then leaves overlapping or being blocked by other leaves from receiving sun and then older leaves that are no longer sources but have become sinks, minor defoliation on a regular basis should be more beneficial than huge rounds of defoliation in infrequent sessions. that is my opinion.

 

[troutman]

I sometimes do this to induce branch forming.
But I only take one pair of leaves off at a time and wait for a while before taking more off.
If too many leaves are taken off at once will greatly slow your plant's growth rate.

 

[Bobbo4200]

Gonna tag a long if that's okay!

 

[HazyBulldog]

Imagine what the plant looks like at harvest. All the insides cleaned out, maybe the bottoms taken off.

The sooner you can pull that growth that will eventually get pulled anyway, the plant will transfer the energy to other parts of the plant. Pruning becomes less effective when you wait for a branch to get 4 feet long, then decide it has to go. Lots of wasted energy.

 

[Noonin NorCal]

I would have left it for now, it looks like it had plenty of air flow before cutting all the shit off it

 

[hooddro]

I feel like you should have waited a few weeks before you start stripping your plant. There is no doubt that a plant will respond positively to defoliation, but when you start so soon you are removing a high # of your solar panels and reduce photosynthesis. Also, like Noonin Norcal stated, the plant had plenty of airflow before. Last thing is I see people every year remove the bottom third of their plant because they dont want buds hanging on the ground. This greatly reduces your total yield. I want to see buds laying on the ground and have NEVER seen mold on any of these buds that we call ground fruit. After they are dried and trimmed you would never know...

 

[MountainBudz]

From personal experience, defoliation can be a good or bad thing.

I always trim up the skirts and lowers of my girls, this is not really considered defoliation but it does help focus growth to the tops of the plants instead of the bottom.

Now, one thing I have learned is its best to defoliate during veg (give plant time to grow back out and do its thing) before you start flowering. Your better off using LST outdoors in my opinion because there is really no reason to do defoliation. LST works amazingly well outside.

I have defoliated before during early to mid flower and in my opinion it did cost me some yield. I usually only do it now a little here and there when my flower room is over crowded and I need more light penetration around my girls and deeper into their lush jungle of love.

One thing I have started doing lately is removing the fan leaves or any leaf for that matter that is overlapping/covering a bud, or any leaves that is blocking light from the lower buds a week to two at the MOST before harvest. I let my buds fill in first and only do this in the last two weeks of flowering and the results have always been outstanding and have never failed me yet with any strain that I have have experimented on. They get harder, denser, finish quicker.

But outdoors? I'd never defoliate, maybe on a monster cropped plant a bit here and there to prevent mold and encourage better airflow.

But I will stand by and watch this.

 

[Noonin NorCal]

I lollipop my outdoor, i don't really mess with fan leafs unless its a really heavy indica leaning plant and thats just to help with better air flow. when i lollipop it doesn't happen till its been outside for a good month or more at the least or right at the beginning of flowering

 

[Teh_Baker]

I appreciate everyone's input. Still the topic seems drastically divided. Thats the whoke reason i decided to experiment with my own plants. As i said before, i do defoliate on my flowering plants and have with success for years. I have never thought to do it during the veg season to keep them more compact. That was one of the things that K33ftr33z tried to emphasise. If you defoliate early on, a plant will not stetch as bad because all of the nodes/budsites-to-be are exposed to airflow and stronger light.

 

[Limeygreen]

That is true about being more compact sure, if you take too many leaves you will cause a stretched and weak plant as well, would have to be quite drastic, good balance of leaf area is key, dark weather versus bright weather also can determine how much leaf area you would need. If you know you are having a dark week you may want to be slightly more aggressive if you plan to defoliate to penetrate the crop more with the low light, if you are having a couple of days not a big deal, bright light you might like to be less aggressive to maximize photosynthesis and assimilate production, just enough to thin out weaker growth and promote the strong vegetative growth, will depend on each strain, growing style etc so your experimenting is a great thing and I am glad you're posting it, keep it up.

 

[Teh_Baker]

I feel like you should have waited a few weeks before you start stripping your plant. There is no doubt that a plant will respond positively to defoliation, but when you start so soon you are removing a high # of your solar panels and reduce photosynthesis. Also, like Noonin Norcal stated, the plant had plenty of airflow before. Last thing is I see people every year remove the bottom third of their plant because they dont want buds hanging on the ground. This greatly reduces your total yield. I want to see buds laying on the ground and have NEVER seen mold on any of these buds that we call ground fruit. After they are dried and trimmed you would never know...

I am certainly not removing a 3rd of my plants finishing mass, perhaps at this time a did remove a 3rd, but in fact what you see removed is the 4 lowest branches and several leaves that were hiding nodes/potential bud sites. And those 4 branches only had 3 nodes at 18in length overall. To me thats a waste, these are never going to make sizeable buds.

Eveyone has to grow to their own style and parameters. What i mean is i have a limited size garden with near max plant numbers for comfort and ease of gardening. The last thing i want is a 5ft branch laying on the ground when a 3in rainstorm hits in late august to september(or 20 5ft branches!). This is what i was refering to as "muddy BUDdies". And no matter what you think, you certainly can tell when buds have gotten mud in them. Especially when you try to make butter with the lowest quality buds. This pic should give you some idea of my plot size.

And sorry for the sideways pic, im having issues uploading from my phone...

The idea with this experiment for ME, is to see if i can make a 4-5ft mazar produce the same yield as its 12ft sister. I have never hit 12ft, but i can tell you 12 8footers is a logistical nightmare when they all finish within 3 days of each other. These plants have legendary genetics from the land of Kush buds. They are dominantly Afghanis and givin the right condition have no problem hitting 4m or over 12 ft.

To all, please stick around. I will continue to post comparisons of these plants. I know this might have been a somewhat redundant thread. But its an experiment im doing nevertheless, and i thought maybe someone else could learn something alongside me.

 

[hooddro]

I think I now understand a little better what your trying to do. So do you really think that a fan leaf blocking a node in veg is going to slow growth? Never really thought about it like that. Also I see that your starting from seed. Are you planning on topping?

 

[Teh_Baker]

I think I now understand a little better what your trying to do. So do you really think that a fan leaf blocking a node in veg is going to slow growth? Never really thought about it like that. Also I see that your starting from seed. Are you planning on topping?

In fact, I'm thinking almost exactly the opposite. K33ftr33z's thread on defoliation is where i started thinking more seriously about this topic. His theory, is that the plants stretch because they have a lack of light or air flow at the node sites. Therefore, if we remove some of the leaves then perhaps the plant won't stretch as much.

I wonder if defoliate is perhaps too strong of a word for people to realize what we are doing. Nothing against what you said HoodDro, but so many people on other threads lose their minds at the thought of removing some leaves. Maybe by reading defoliate they think we are removing every leaf on the plant? I might as well foliar feed with round-up if i were going to do that.

As always, the proof is in the pudding, put yer buds where your mouth is, etc. Here are the pics you're waiting for. First we have a control Mazar, and she is already a bushy bitch! You can see several shaded nodes in he picture.

And here is the test subject. She is doing quite well after her haircut 4 days ago. Her newest growth on top seems twice as compact as her other sisters. Today she only had 2 leaves removed and looks beautiful.

 

[VonBudí]

the tldr of these heavy defoliation threads always seems to be = pheno dependent, and when if it goes wrong "oh you didnt do it at the right time".

i do it it lightly for aeration and has resulted in a huge drop in stem rot. subbed & goodluck.

also same strain mean same cut?

 

[wildkender]

outdoors don't need to defoliate.

 

[Teh_Baker]

also same strain mean same cut?

No same strain as in same strain. They are Mazar from seeds.

And wildkender, thanks for stopping by feel free to stick around and watch the progress. I'm not doing this because i think i NEED to. Im doing it to see how the plant will respond to limited and targeted leaf removal. What will this do to both overall plant and bud structure? It is an experiment...

 

[Teh_Baker]

Well, i would say that this experiment is progressing well. Even though i am only a couple weeks in, i can see a noticeable difference in the girls. The untrimmed Mazar, are continuing to stretch and become bushier. The test subject is at least 4in shorter than her sisters now. But she has not slowed down growing. Her nodes closest the tips of each branch are stacking much closer than the untrimmed girls. I believe this just might accomplish what i was hoping for. Only time will tell. Here is the proof-pudding
Test subject

Control