look at it as surface area. what will capture more light? A fan leaf the size of your hand or a bud site? the fan leaves primary function is photosynthesis. Stems have other primary functions. So does the bud sites. Trimming early will NEVER help. Also even trimming late leaves you with the small bud leaves covered up which means almost no photosynthesis action coming from these. After a few months of experimenting defoliating at different stages, I discovered that defoliation works best just right before flushing, This never helped with yields, it just helped with getting the buds to finish faster. This particular plant would easily make fan leaves that would dwarf my large sized hands. its the reason I experimented with defoliating. I found that by tying off the fan leafs in a manner that would allow more light to the bud sites made for much higher yields. Instead of defoliating I challenge you to train your plants properly, completely trim off the entire bottom 1/3 of the plant just before light flip(if not using 1000 watt lights, of if growing trees indoor) and tie branches off in ways that allows more light to penetrate deeper into the plants
again not arguing defoliation. I dont really care either way.
Its a technique. one that works well (best imo) if you are using inferior lighting (like flowering under 216w of t5, 150-200w cfl, or a low wattage led)
I noticed slowed growth, for sure, but the ability to have cfl's or t5s right next to the buds can help overall quality/potential. I tried flowering a plant under a t5, and the plant outgrew the light. only the top 2/3 of the chollas grew right. Calyxes were dense, frosty, and swelling. the bottom 1/3 were sparsely covered in trichs and most the calyxes weren't swelling. minor defoliation and some added cfls next to the lucky buds and trich density and budswell increased. Overall in my low wattage experience, I noticed anywhere from 5-10% loss in yield weight, but 6-12 grams is rather negligible. It also seemed to raise trich density maybe 3-5%. Again I like this technique for low wattage, and have not found much reason to do this with mh/hps. Simple lollipoping increases top weight enough that i feel no shame and have no qualms about cutting oversize "suckers." (in fact, i kind of enjoy cutting branches, makes me smile seeing a "sucker" with as fat a stem as the main stems of so many new growers plants on here.)
I personally do just about everything, defoliation being about the least commonly practiced in my garden. I can be mean to my bitches, but always in a caring and thoughtful way. I just did the first topping to 8 of this years play-toys.
They're on the 6th node and decided to top to the 3rd like in mainlining but i left 4 "tops" instead of 2. on the first (largest) I found a hollow stem. by the seventh noticed how easily i could bend the stems. So in number 8 I removed the bottom 4 shoots and leaves and bent the stem. it touched itself without snapping! It was end of light cycle so next lights on i'm going to tie it to its own stem loosely by a leaf with some twine.
These plants are just for fun mostly because the only local soil when i started these was stay-green garden soil. 8 qts of perlite later and the only complaints im having are mostly visual and self fixing. One plant does have urea or chlorine burn. one has a calcium abundance. all are showing slight mag def,with slight p abundance. Basically its only 2-3 steps up from mg, but its kicking ass. They also have some water-spot light burn, but thats my fault.
I havent decided whether to scrog'n'flower these in a few weeks or whether to veg for next season about 4.5 months away, which is a little hard to do when you need to order some grow nutes......
my leaves are transpiring so much theres water buildup where they touch. should i be worried during seedling stage? my humidifier broke and my temp solution has been keeping the rh between 65-78%......
sorry to ramble and threadjack, i find it happening often nowadays, after the hash but before the sleep. my bad. goodnight.
