After a few years of reading on this and other MJ grow forums I have come to the conclusion that 90% of the info given is crap!!! There is a handful of people here and on the other forums who do know what they are talking about and they seem to keep quiet for the most part. The ones who really do not know much seem to post the most and argue the most!!!
I have found that reading grow forums not related to MJ have the best info. A plant is a plant and they all need the same general "stuff" in order to grow properly.
In all honesty, the hardest part to growing one of these plant's is to ignore all of the hype you read and just grow your plant! Defoliation will always be a subject of abuse...
I do not claim to be a great grower and will never claim to be. I do however do my own experiments to see what happens. I throw away plants all the time after seeing what happens when you remove leafs, over water, underwater, over nute, under nute, bend and break branches....I let 4 strains flower for 120 days to see what they would do and tossed them into the compost pile when I was done.... It is the only true way to learn what happens.