Anybody Want To Double Their Yield?- Desertrat's Top and Prune?

DaveCoulier said:

Desertrat, Im all for people experimenting to see if something works or not, but using plants from seed for this experiment can easily invalidate your findings, not to mention sample size as well. The results you got could give you enough 'evidence' to try it with clones, but until you try it with clones, you really haven't proven anything.

You could easily grow out 9 seeds from the same strain, and 1/3rd could have great branching, 1/3rd moderate branching, and 1/3rd poor branching, and Im sure you are smart enough to know this.

I will be looking forward to any results from a clone run though.

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agreed best to use clones but I didn't have that option until I finished my second grow room about a month ago. Growing my first mother plants as we speak. As for sample size, this is the fifth plant to plant comparison I've done, all with the same result, which gives some scientific validity to this notion even without clones. Also, i posted so other people will try it, getting even more data points. Frankly the results have been so clear that I'm not that excited about "wasting" plants by not pruning, but I suppose for the general good I can do a couple more.

Uncle Ben said:

I have been posting to cannabis forums for over 10 years and have never seen any forum "experiment" or journal that subscribes to standard empirical testing procedures.

People see what they expect or choose to see.

UB

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And I have been a professional research and development engineer for 30 years and know how to run a controlled experiment in my sleep. That "see what they expect to see" dig misses the target when I have hard results. That would be 14 grams to 10, so far.

I already stated 20 pages back that this will most likely NOT be good for clones. Especially if the nodes are widely spaced due to the nodes growing offset. I believe you will need every leaf for clones.

Then again if you have the right strain, or the right phenotype of a real bushy plant, then it might work. You really need to have those nodes close because if you don't have enough "store rooms" for your plant then you might as well kill it.

I also believe this experiment is strain dependent as mine failed to work with my purple haze. I actually had a few grams less on the pruned one.

It takes 15 leaves to properly ripen one cluster of grapes.

Uncle Ben said:

I have been posting to cannabis forums for over 10 years and have never seen any forum "experiment" or journal that subscribes to standard empirical testing procedures.

People see what they expect or choose to see.

UB

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You should read my journal then, that documents a topped vs untopped 18 plant experiment where YOUR topping method yielded substantially more. Its done under the same conditions in the same environment at the same time on the same nutrients etc etc etc.... I was tired of your thread being 54 pages long with nobody knowing if it worked better or not, so I tested it.

People posting on the boards generally cant reference anything, though. Such as the vegging 18/6 instead of 24/0 -- people say its proven 18/6 is better, nobody can say why. People say that HPS and MH at the same time in flowering are better, yet nobody tries it with two HPS and one HPS/MH in a test. IF someone could do a comparitive side by side of all the growing techniques and methods, which would take YEARS to do, then one system would come out as the best way to grow -- period. But we arent at that point, and likely wont be for a very long time. RIU is loaded with smaller grows. Most growers here dont grow on a large scale (I think of large as being 10,000 watts or more). The large scale growers is who all the little guys should watch for tips.

researchkitty said:

You should read my journal then, that documents a topped vs untopped 18 plant experiment where YOUR topping method yielded substantially more.

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Well done. Also note I don't remove leaves with the 4 colas drill, no matter what the situation. I assume you left the leaves intact and tried to maintain them in a functional fashion until harvest?

You make some great points too about the he said she saids. BTW, the experiment needs to be replicated at least 3 times to be considered valid, 'constants' aside.

Tio

UB: The leaves I remove were only if the leaves were dead. Out of 18 plants, I'd say there was about 10-15 leaves removed from the beginning of flowering until the end of flowering. No removal of any green, just yellow crispy leaves. Green = Bud = Happy, so I leave it all of that I can. I never understand why people grow plants 3x as tall as they need to be only to trim the bottom of the plant away. Grow em shorter, and use ALL the green!

Trying to decide the next experiment, got 4 lights worth of plants just finishing germination........... I like the idea of foliar vs non foliar spray test, but that's pretty boring to me. Gotta find something more fun than that!

Very interesting points on both sides. And way to handle a controlled argument gentlemen. This has been a interesting read. Im currently flowering all of my clone mothers that have been topped at every new shoot for 4-6 sets of clones. I never removed any fan leaves as im in the know about them being solar energy receptors. Now my point is that even though I have some major bushing going on the lower buds and budsites are developing unifomly with the rest of the plant. Fan leaves doing there job IMHO.

Many points have been made about light being blocked. Why not get some bamboo rods and spread out the canopy a bit. Works well for me.

Desertrat. I can see how your tech would be helpful in a scrog where you want to keep an even canopy across a large area. That and the secondary growth becomes the focus of energy until it catches up to the primary growth. Interesting theory but, nothing bending over the leading branches cant duplicate.

Anyways it looks like things are working out for ya so do what ya do. and good luck with the final results. Peace 1BMM

researchkitty said:

UB: The leaves I remove were only if the leaves were dead. Out of 18 plants, I'd say there was about 10-15 leaves removed from the beginning of flowering until the end of flowering. No removal of any green, just yellow crispy leaves. Green = Bud = Happy, so I leave it all of that I can. I never understand why people grow plants 3x as tall as they need to be only to trim the bottom of the plant away. Grow em shorter, and use ALL the green!

Trying to decide the next experiment, got 4 lights worth of plants just finishing germination........... I like the idea of foliar vs non foliar spray test, but that's pretty boring to me. Gotta find something more fun than that!

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Kitty, I think you are like me. Id love to do a bunch of tests to find out whats best for our plants, and what doesn't really work. Shit, Ive been making a list of things I want to test when I expand in the future. Im gonna read your journal to check out the topping vs not topping, but I was already sold on it after my first grow, which involved topping.

With regards to your previous post about light schedules, rest periods I believe are essential. Check out my journal, and you'll find a good post where I show plants under 24/0, then under 12/12. The dark periods really accelerated their growth and put an end to the nutrient deficiencies they were experiencing.

1badmasonman said:

Many points have been made about light being blocked. Why not get some bamboo rods and spread out the canopy a bit. Works well for me.

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A leaf will only absorb roughly 15% of the light that strikes it and the remaining roughly 85% passes through to then strike lower leaves so leaves do not actually block as much light as some people believe they do. If the lower portions of plants are not receiving adequate light then it is almost certain that the lighting is just inadequate to begin with and removing healthy leaves is not the best way to make up for inadequate lighting.

those are bob ass plants everyone

Brick Top said:

A leaf will only absorb roughly 15% of the light that strikes it and the remaining roughly 85% passes through to then strike lower leaves so leaves do not actually block as much light as some people believe they do. If the lower portions of plants are not receiving adequate light then it is almost certain that the lighting is just inadequate to begin with and removing healthy leaves is not the best way to make up for inadequate lighting.

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Agreed Brick Top..

what he said (bricktop) ^^^^^^ I have a ditty in my nuggets that explains how shade leaves are actualy more productive

no disrespect to your technique desert

researchkitty said:

Trying to decide the next experiment, got 4 lights worth of plants just finishing germination........... I like the idea of foliar vs non foliar spray test, but that's pretty boring to me. Gotta find something more fun than that!

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You understand botany, good on ya!

Next experiment? Temperature variance regarding diurnal swings as it affects health/vigor? How about an observation of a day/night swing of 5F or 0F versus 20F. Might be hard to control though.

I have to laugh when I read a bank's description about finishing times for a mutt. They give this black and white version of X weeks never taking into account the botanical factors such as temps. Needless to say, a cold garden will finish far later than a garden kept warm.

UB

Uncle Ben said:

a cold garden will finish far later than a garden kept warm.
UB

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Aw man, its very true. My greenhouse outdoor garden is in the only place I can have it on my property and that is on the coast of Northern California. My garden can get quite cold, windy, foggy, and wet but when those nice days come, my plants go through serious growth spurts. Although I know my plants would do better in a warmer area possibly farther on the mainland, I don't have the option of moving them. I'll keep the forums updates on how my crop turns out in this cooler coastal climate

you go away for a day and everyone hijacks the thread. there's no disagreement on topping, the question at hand is pruning. i think most people are missing the point of this thread - that pruning does indeed "injure" the plant, and in this case the injury is intentional. you want the main stem to slow down and pruning does just that. you want the side branches to accelerate in growth, and pruning does that. what you get is a bunch of growth tips all at the same height, and that is what this technique accomplishes. why do you want all of the growth tips at the same height? physics - i don't think people realize the implication of the inverse square law for light intensity in indoor grows. for instance, with a 600 watt hps light you have a three inch window to maximize your growth between 11,000 lumens per square foot at 21 inches away from the bulb and 7,000 lumens per square foot at 24 inches away. outside that 3 inch window your plant is getting too much or too little light. this small window is the factor that impacts light penetration much more so than leaves blocking light. this small window is why pruning works. that simple.

desertrat said:

you go away for a day and everyone hijacks the thread. there's no disagreement on topping, the question at hand is pruning. i think most people are missing the point of this thread - that pruning does indeed "injure" the plant, and in this case the injury is intentional. you want the main stem to slow down and pruning does just that. you want the side branches to accelerate in growth, and pruning does that. what you get is a bunch of growth tips all at the same height, and that is what this technique accomplishes. why do you want all of the growth tips at the same height? physics - i don't think people realize the implication of the inverse square law for light intensity in indoor grows. for instance, with a 600 watt hps light you have a three inch window to maximize your growth between 11,000 lumens per square foot at 21 inches away from the bulb and 7,000 lumens per square foot at 24 inches away. outside that 3 inch window your plant is getting too much or too little light. this small window is the factor that impacts light penetration much more so than leaves blocking light. this small window is why pruning works. that simple.

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What remains questionable is how someone can reduce the amount of energy a plant can create by removing healthy leaves and how when healthy foliage is removed from a healthy plant a healthy plant will always attempt to replace the lost foliage so it will redirect energy that would otherwise go to other existing growth to replacing the lost foliage.

So how does the combination of decreased energy production and lost energy storage and redirected plant energy then used to replace lost healthy foliage equate to increased amounts of energy for growth? Someone who removes healthy leaves reduces the total amount of energy a plant can create and store so while energy will be diverted by trimming, just as with topping, there is also a net loss of total energy the plant will have to rely on for growth.

The belief of removing healthy leaves for bud development is based in flawed logic. Someone cannot increase plant energy by reducing it.

If the purpose is only to create shorter plants with thicker growth there is some logic behind what is claimed because energy will be redirected but even then it is questionable as to if it really is more beneficial than it is harmful and home experiments are not really conclusive proof in that the claimed outcome is always only based in what can be observed and what can be sensed when sampled. Due to genetic differences in plants that can appear to the human eye to be the same phenotype but really are not any observed results cannot be positively proven in a home experiment. All such results can only observed and sensed at best but never accurately tested and proved unless someone has access to a sophisticated lab and knows various testing procedures and carries them out at different stages of growth and documents anything and everything that occurs.

The question of how someone can increase plant energy by reducing a plant's ability to create and store energy still remains even when only talking about trimming while in a vegetative stage of growth. How does one add by performing subtraction?

Possibly the idea is sacrifice now for something else, possibly more, later. (Which could only occur if new growth after the initial trimming is not removed.) Even with that the question of is there an actual overall net gain or an overall net loss remains and real plant research says there should not be an overall net gain.

It all comes down to the simple basic question of how can someone add by performing subtraction?

Brick Top said:

What remains questionable is how someone can reduce the amount of energy a plant can create by removing healthy leaves and how when healthy foliage is removed from a healthy plant a healthy plant will always attempt to replace the lost foliage so it will redirect energy that would otherwise go to other existing growth to replacing the lost foliage.

So how does the combination of decreased energy production and lost energy storage and redirected plant energy then used to replace lost healthy foliage equate to increased amounts of energy for growth? Someone who removes healthy leaves reduces the total amount of energy a plant can create and store so while energy will be diverted by trimming, just as with topping, there is also a net loss of total energy the plant will have to rely on for growth.

The belief of removing healthy leaves for bud development is based in flawed logic. Someone cannot increase plant energy by reducing it.

If the purpose is only to create shorter plants with thicker growth there is some logic behind what is claimed because energy will be redirected but even then it is questionable as to if it really is more beneficial than it is harmful and home experiments are not really conclusive proof in that the claimed outcome is always only based in what can be observed and what can be sensed when sampled. Due to genetic differences in plants that can appear to the human eye to be the same phenotype but really are not any observed results cannot be positively proven in a home experiment. All such results can only observed and sensed at best but never accurately tested and proved unless someone has access to a sophisticated lab and knows various testing procedures and carries them out at different stages of growth and documents anything and everything that occurs.

The question of how someone can increase plant energy by reducing a plant's ability to create and store energy still remains even when only talking about trimming while in a vegetative stage of growth. How does one add by performing subtraction?

Possibly the idea is sacrifice now for something else, possibly more, later. (Which could only occur if new growth after the initial trimming is not removed.) Even with that the question of is there an actual overall net gain or an overall net loss remains and real plant research says there should not be an overall net gain.

It all comes down to the simple basic question of how can someone add by performing subtraction?

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My advantage in this discussion is that I know absolutely nothing about botany but know more than 99% of population about physics. A very simple example, take your basic plant sunning itself under a 600 watt light. It's a three foot tall female and you have your lights exactly 22 inches away from all four of your topped colas and they are getting 10,000 lumens per square inch. Brilliant job. Now let's look at those first few nodes and their colas. They might be a quarter the size of one of your main colas? Why? Well they would be on average 40 inches away from the bulb - and getting less than 3,000 lumens per square foot(by memory, might be a little off).

All we are debating is whether you gain more by injuring the plant to create equidistant growth tips or does the injury to the plant overcome the benefit of increased light efficiency. My results so far say the benefit outweighs the injury.

Agree 100%. Lots of people will gladly disagree with that logic.

You see plants all the time being pruned, Marijuana is a plant and all it does is grow.

desertrat said:

My advantage in this discussion is that I know absolutely nothing about botany

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Your advantage, eh? Bullshit, you need to learn what makes a plant tick and stop the theatrics and gimmicks. No better time to start than now, and while you're at it, learn what a plant's light saturation point means. What does physics have to do with anything? What light meter do you use relative to your nutrition program?

There is no such thing as "injury" when it comes to removing leaves. It becomes an issue of the redirection of auxins and the loss of photosynthetic carbo production, either temporarily or permanently.

You're sitting here dodging BT's valid questions.

UB

ColaFarmer said:

Agree 100%. Lots of people will gladly disagree with that logic.

You see plants all the time being pruned, Marijuana is a plant and all it does is grow.

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The Chinese bound the feet of female children resulting in deformed feet that were fashionable. Because it was common did that make it good and or better than not binding feet?

The point is not what a light puts out in lumens or distance from plants/leaves/buds but instead that of a plant's ability to absorb and process the light it has access to, to create energy. If leaves are removed the ability to absorb and process light to create energy is reduced and nothing will ever change that fact.

It is like having a home that is 100% solar and in an effort to increase the amount of energy the home's solar system can create someone removes their largest most efficient solar panels.

Addition cannot be performed by subtraction. Redirection of energy will occur in plants when topping and or trimming is performed but what is then being redirected is redirected from a lesser total overall amount of energy. There cannot be an overall net gain of energy creation as a result of reducing a plant's ability to absorb light rays and create and store energy.

A plant has a limited ability to absorb and process light regardless of the source of light or distance from the light. Call the total amount of energy a healthy complete/not trimmed plant can absorb and create for growth 'X.' When healthy leaves are removed that reduces the total amount of light able to be collected, processed and available for growth to say 'P.' So now rather than 'X' energy you have 'P' energy. From 'P' a certain amount will be directed to replace the lost healthy foliage leaving what might be called 'K' amount of energy for the remaining portion of a plant to rely on.

By removing healthy leaves you go from the total amount of energy 'X' to the total amount of energy reduced to 'P' and part of that goes to regain what was removed leaving only 'K' amount of energy for the rest of the plant.

Where is the true gain of energy supposed to be found in an overall amount that has to have been reduced through loss of collection and processing and storage of energy? Regardless of lumens and physics that will never change. This is a situation where botanical science holds the trump card over physics and what is believed to be observed and sensed by someone when they look at their plants and sample them.

Cannabis plants are rough tough plants even though they can give some people fits at times and growing them is as easy as falling off a log but growing them to their full genetic potential is about as easy as peeling a turtle and not many of us ever manage to grow our plants to their full genetic potential.

Since some prefer to attempt to keep a separation between botanical science and cannabis plants they will always see various different methods of growing as being perfectly viable options but in the end it comes down to how close to growing a plant to its full genetic potential is someone satisfied with and is gimmick-growing more important to them than final results only because it appeals to them for some reason and the reasons behind growing that way seem to be logical to them regardless of the facts they refuse to accept?

People will believe something they read or are told that is not actually accurate and if it is questioned by some they will then often times set out to prove their belief to be accurate. When someone does that it is inevitable that their perceived facts will be shaped to fit their previously accepted theory rather than the true facts shaping and creating a valid theory. What they see and sense will only be in many cases exactly what they want to see and sense and any inconvenient facts will be dismissed for being nothing more than a trivial insignificant anomaly.

People are of course free to believe whatever they wish to believe. Myself I would really like to believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the missile shield and strippers with a heart of gold but unfortunately for me since I know certain proven facts I am forced to accept those proven facts and the things I would love to believe in I am unable to believe in and the same goes for gimmick-growing methods.

But everyone needs to be happy with what they do so they can of course carry on as normal if that is where they find happiness, contentment, fulfillment and where they find the successes they need in life.