dively, you have not posted any facts, just YOUR experience. you have provided zero scientific backing to your claims. here is an example, if a city gets its energy from natural gas and coal, and you take one of those away, or part of them away, does this mean the city will have more energy? no it does not. whether you like it or not, your buds need energy to grow. taking fan leafs off, which account for the MAJORITY of energy supplied to the plant through photosynthesis, makes there be less energy to make buds. yes, you can take every single leaf off your plant and just leave bud sites, but i guarantee that you will have hardly any bud on that plant.
Perhaps there is another process you are not considering that will offset this loss of photosynthetic energy when a leaf is removed.
The largest fan leafs are the furthest distance from their respective stalk.
The largest leafs require a greatest amount of energy for the transport of nutrition needed for health and cell maintenance.
Large leafs can capture the most amount of energy.
Smaller leafs are closer to their stems.
Smaller leafs have the lowest energy requirements to transport nutrition needed for health and cell maintenance.
Smaller leafs capture less energy.
Removing a large fan leaf that is covering several smaller fan leafs results in very little net energy loss. The lower fan leafs still gather up the energy but now the plant spends less energy moving nutrition. Much of the energy that has been lost, due to removal of the leaf, would have been dedicated back into the leaf which is no longer present.
The smaller leafs that are receiving a greater deal of energy (than before) will be able to focus the available energy directly into the side branch nodes. This results in each side branch generating more new mass than they would have while slowing the top growth. When you consider the entire plant, this results in greater overall gains in the total mass of the plant.
Perhaps I can persuade others towards my logic with this mental exercise:
One large leaf lays atop 4 smaller leafs. The total amount of energy generated is (for discussions sake) 100 "points", and the cost of energy required to maintain these leafs is 50 "points" (25 points for the small ones, 25 points for the big one). This is a total gain of 50 points.
The large fan leaf is removed from the pile of leafs. The 4 leafs now capture the energy. The generated energy is less than before, but not dramatically, 85 points (15% less). The cost of maintenance is now 25 points. This results in a total gain of 60 points of energy.
Each side branch can contain several leafs. These leafs, if given the opportunity, will fill out and create a larger surface area for absorption and "spend" less energy doing work like mobilizing nutrients and water. Over time this results in an increase in vigor. As the plant hardens from the stress reaction and hormones released this vigor becomes exponential after a point, and more frequent defoliation leading up to flowering is necessary.
In a short period of time, less than 100 hours the plant will have completely rebounded from a defoliation. Here is a day by day progression of several plants in various states of training all being defoliated to demonstrate the time it takes for recovery.
Baseline
Right after defoliation
24 hours later
48 hours later
72 hours later
500 hours after defoliation pictured, and after 2 other defoliations not pictured. (2 weeks from the first picture).
I lost the first 72 hours to the rebound. During these three days the immature side branches became more mature than they would have otherwise. Eventually the plants turned into these just massive bushes nearly 2 feet wide. The plants are too big even! I have a solid 8 square feet of canopy using 3 plants (could have done it with two) And you can't see the coco from the top.
I'm dying to see a plant of your own, which hasn't been defoliated at all, that can compare to this after 40 days Veg under a 400w system. ~4 square foot canopy and over a dozen tops.
I cannot argue against the science that yes, leafs use light to create energy.
What I'm asking you to be open minded to is that the loss of a single leaf doesn't necessarily translate into a gross loss of vigor.
The methods might be equal when you consider the time requirements, harvesting the same weight in a year, but what that means is that defoliation does not cripple a plant in the ways I'm hearing.
You can't argue with the bud sites, and yet you are saying that I should have fewer than I do based on your logic. Each site is even, mature, and has several large leafs of its own. The canopy is EXCEPTIONALLY dense and this has set up a great foundation for flowering. I'm very happy with this plant and would enjoy having more like it in my garden. Wouldn't you?
Defoliation stops after the first week of flowering because the plant does need the leafs left around to generate energy. It is best to be applied only during vegetative growth when the focus of the plant is on leaf mass. Once flowers are the primary focus then the grower should most definitely stop removing leafs and let those flowers plump up.
. But the only way to settle this once and for all is to collaborate with others and irrefutably prove it with a repeatable experiment. Pictures alone don't really prove anything. Nor does telling people you have done it thousands of times before.
. And the most convincing DEFOLIATION threads I have seen talk about extra veg time. TO MAKE UP FOR THE FACT THAT YOU ARE BUTCHERING YOUR PLANT. A plant needs extra time to grow when you take its leaves off because, guess what, the plant needs leaves to grow. Personally I grow the plants big and few, because of plant limitations.