sixstring2112
Well-Known Member
are you telling me there is no easter bunny? WTF? brick top you should have been a writer,maybe you are but good explanation.
Anybody Want To Double Their Yield?- Desertrat's Top and Prune?
- Thread starter desertrat
- Start date
Brick Top
New Member
Funny you should mention that but from 7th grade through college almost every teacher and professor I had told me I should become a writer. Being the uber-intelligent person that I am I naturally became a car dealer and a boat dealer and ended up part owner in a nursery rather than a writer.
I think what stopped me is for all my education I never really fully got the hang of comas and things. I believe that every single teacher and professor that told me I should become a writer then added that I would of course need someone to correct my punctuation and to trim my run-on sentences into numerous paragraphs and sentences. (Things like word processors and spell and grammar checkers did not exist way back when so a backup person would have been very needed indeed.)
desertrat
Well-Known Member
You're projecting again. It is you who is avoiding addressing my points. As you will. Don't worry, i'll get to everybody's worthwhile post, as I always do. Just scurrying around getting ready to be gone for 8 days. Might be a couple of weeks before I get back here, might get a chance on the road, but be assured I will respond. God willing.
And that would be my nist certified zero to 40,000 foot-candle light meter. Will you take my word for that or are you going to question my integrity again? I guess I could take a pic of the certification document. And you get exactly the same answer if you do the geometry, so the meter's for people who don't understand the physics.
What you refuse to get is that I respect your botany knowledge and experience a lot, but that does not mean that there is nothing left to learn in the field of applied botany in the indoor cultivation of cannabis. I think this is a case where the unique environment of an indoor grow caused by the physics of artificial light makes what would be a stupid strategy outdoors to at least be an approach worth careful testing. You are showing your closed-mindedness by not carefully considering that there may be something here.
I want to think you're better than that.
dtp5150
Well-Known Member
my theory:
why does marijuana grow fan leaves?
energy storage : as long as we keep pumping her full of nutes she wont need much stored energy
light : all those fan leaves block light that could be going to lower nodes, and anything green creates photosynthesis, so remove those fan leaves while in veg, and everything will bush up instead of just the top of the plant. also helps if you tie down some plant main stems after topping
what else can absorb light? green buds! so when the plant is flowering, it is essentially replacing all the fan leaves with buds instead to collect sunlight
why does marijuana grow fan leaves?
energy storage : as long as we keep pumping her full of nutes she wont need much stored energy
light : all those fan leaves block light that could be going to lower nodes, and anything green creates photosynthesis, so remove those fan leaves while in veg, and everything will bush up instead of just the top of the plant. also helps if you tie down some plant main stems after topping
what else can absorb light? green buds! so when the plant is flowering, it is essentially replacing all the fan leaves with buds instead to collect sunlight
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
You are a good poster Brick Top, I respect the amount of time that you put into your posts.
I think part of the answer here is that we are not talking about a finite amount of energy. If you want bigger plants you veg them longer. Less energy over a longer period of time still provides enough energy to get the job done.
Now, IMO what desert rat is doing is sacrificing some of that energy and some of that time to cause the plant to change from a christmas tree shape to something more adaptable to lower light levels. This allows the plant to absorb more energy at later stages of life due to its more bushy shape. ER: the light can be closer to the bulk of the plant.
I can see how both arguments could still be consistent with the data provided.
DaveCoulier
Well-Known Member
Yeah our buds are green, so they contain chlorophyll, but I bet if you removed every single leaf, your buds wont grow very well if even at all. Buds are supplied their sugars and whatnot for growth from the nearest fan leaves. Id like to have those large fan leaves attached to my budsites personally.
Besides, it just doesn't make sense for buds to take over photosynthesis for flowering as you suggested. Thats not their job. Its to reproduce. Why would nature want to double her workload? She wouldn't.
I like to think of the buds as queens, and the fan leaves and bud leaves are her servants. Those queens need someone to prepare food for her to eat, and well by god she's too regal to do it herself.
colonuggs
Well-Known Member
As the plant progresses in flower ...its turns its energy from leaf production to flower production thats why the leaves start loosing their color and turn yellow
I know i personally will strip almost all fan leaves for the last 2 weeks of flower... it allows the light to penetrate more and your buds get fatter
I know i personally will strip almost all fan leaves for the last 2 weeks of flower... it allows the light to penetrate more and your buds get fatter
Nitegazer
Well-Known Member
It's fascinating for me how much resistance there is to accept that pruning fan leaves can lead to advantageous redirection of growth. Topping is the removal of healthy tissue (the apical meristem for chrissakes); air pruning kills off the growing tips of the roots--- both of these are accepted at boosting yield even though they damage the plant. So there is not an inherrant conflict between plant 'damage' and boost of yield.
Desertrat has run a simple experiment; no, it does not take place in a lab in a perfectly controlled environment, but it has produced interesting results, which I think invites more experimentation. Instead of arguing how the result could not be valid, some of the experienced growers here would do well to try the experiment themselves. Nothing would validate this approach more than a fervent non-believer switching sides. It would be like Nixon going to China, lol.
Desertrat has run a simple experiment; no, it does not take place in a lab in a perfectly controlled environment, but it has produced interesting results, which I think invites more experimentation. Instead of arguing how the result could not be valid, some of the experienced growers here would do well to try the experiment themselves. Nothing would validate this approach more than a fervent non-believer switching sides. It would be like Nixon going to China, lol.
Uncle Ben
Well-Known Member
desertrat, with all due respect, the following is the mindset you're endorsing and promoting for noobs that don't understand botany but instead want to believe in some gimmicktry. I'll address the following ill conceived comments, since they fall in line with your recommendations to make my point. (I see my comment about ripening grapes went over everyone's head).
Extremely efficient Photon collectors, yes. Why do you think they extend so far out from the plant on long petioles and are so large?
Like I said before, "green buds" do NOT contain sufficient green surface area, leaf mass, to be of any REAL world benefit to the plant regarding good photosynthesis resulting in the production of bud.
You guys are more enamored with theories and fallacies than learning what makes a plant tick. You have to be (horticulturally) ignorant to think that by removing the very unit that produces bud, you'll get more bud.
UB
Nutes? No. Nutes aka salts are used by the fan leaves for producing proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, enzymes, etc.
Extremely efficient Photon collectors, yes. Why do you think they extend so far out from the plant on long petioles and are so large?
Wrong, they do not block light, they collect it. An apple will ripen, shaded by the branches and leaf mass above it.
No it is not. If you're losing most of your fan leaves by harvest, it's YOUR fault. In spite of another popular paradigm parroted by The Herd around here, you are not applying good culture if you lose most of your fans leaves by harvest, it means you don't know what you're doing and/or are following the wrong advice.
Like I said before, "green buds" do NOT contain sufficient green surface area, leaf mass, to be of any REAL world benefit to the plant regarding good photosynthesis resulting in the production of bud.
You guys are more enamored with theories and fallacies than learning what makes a plant tick. You have to be (horticulturally) ignorant to think that by removing the very unit that produces bud, you'll get more bud.
UB
desertrat
Well-Known Member
Uncle Ben, with all due respect, that's why I reply to almost all of those kinds of posts with caveats as to why I don't think someone's take on it is correct. Go back and look at the thread. I can lead a horse to water but it is not my fault if they drown in it. Just like anything in life, there are a few ways to do pruning right and millions of ways to prune wrong. Topping is one way to prune correctly. I think the removal of 5 or 6 fan leaves below the topped node will prove to be another. Let's let the results speak for the technique and please stop with the digs, questions about my integrity or my ability to run a valid experiment. I promise to continue to respect your knowledge of botany.
Uncle Ben
Well-Known Member
IF, it results in leaf mass replacement equal to or greater than the initial removal. It's all in the balance.
And with what result? I don't think he is talking about topping, a training technique. He is talking about the wholesale removal of the very unit that produces bud (for chrissakes).
....and induces (or should) foliar output from the axial node sites. So, what have you gained? You've removed plant material only to have it replaced? Doesn't make sense to me.
What's really funny, upon further examination of "the technique", if you top above the 4th node (step #1), you NO LONGER HAVE A "MAIN BRANCH". duh........ Instead of having one or two dominant leaders (main colas), you now have 8 secondarys. Your "main branch" is sitting there on the compost pile.
You'd know better if you understood what makes a plant tick, if you understood plant hormonal responses which I have elaborated on in my sticky topping thread.
I've seen this kinda of voodoo bullshit in its various forms for many years and lo and behold, you can count on every new crop of cannabis forum noobs to want to believe in something other than common botanical sense. It's human nature to be dreamers, be lazy, follow The Herd so you can be a party to it and get a feeling of acceptance. Popular opinion does not mean it's so. In fact, most popular opinions found in cannabis forums are ill conceived and flat ass wrong.
BTW, desertrat is parroting someone else which is what folks do. It's the message I'm dissing, not necessarily him (the messenger).
UB
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
It is normal to follow the herd yet you mock him for making his own path?
I dont know jack shit about botany. I am dumb as a post about growing plants. The ones around me are lucky that they might make it to the end. I am not trying to speak as an expert grower or an expert botanist.
What I will ask is... How did botany develop? I mean the science of botany? Wasnt it trial and error and recording the observations of such in a scientific environment with a scientific method? Didnt it develop like all other sciences with the sharing of ideas in an effort to understand plant life? Wasnt there some point at which the science of botany did not exist and it simply grew (pardon the pun) from the base of observation?
Now, in this scenario I see a poster "desert rat" trying an *experiment* on his plants. He has a control group and he has a pruned group. And it appears at least for him that the pruned group outperforms the control group. You are bashing him for following the same process that developed the science of botany in the first place. Dont you think that is a tad hypocritical? Do you think that everything about botany ever to be discovered already has and the book is closed?
He is not trying to sell this info, he has nothing to personally gain from being right, in fact he is risking alot because he has no control over the experiments other people do and their success or more likely failure based on outside forces making the growing conditions not equal. In addition, there will always be people that will immediately attack his results based on their vast knowledge of (botany, growing, etc...) and say that it simply would not work that way.
What I appreciate is that he is taking the time to attempt experiments using the scientific method and publishing them for discussion. That is the most fundamental part of the scientific process. It generates thought and discussion and spins off further experiments. And even if all of them are done in this imperfect petri dish of outlaw growers there is a good chance that certain techniques could still increase yield on plants.
I dont know if I will ever try this technique or not, I am still trying to muddle through my first grow...
Thanks DR + rep for the effort.
Brick Top
New Member
Going back to the 12th century AD when it all began yes botanical science was nothing more than observation, trial and error but we have stepped out of the pre-dark ages and into the light of present day modern science. Going back to the days of looking, guessing and making decisions based on little or nothing more is not true scientific experimentation by today's standards and as shocking as it might be to some, we live in the now, today is where we exist. Such old-time ways proves nothing, especially when what is believed to be discovered through observation and assumption that is pure guesswork and nothing more flies in the face of proven botanical science.
If you wanted to build an aircraft would you ignore all the years and decades of advancement in aircraft design or would you instead ignore all of it and instead try to design and build something along the lines of what Orville and Wilbur Wright built?
What if NASA were given the task to return to the moon, rather than its latest given task, to help make the Muslim world feel better about itself, would NASA not bother to use what it has learned and instead attempt to recreate something along the lines of the Apollo space craft?
Why not just accept proven botanical facts rather than going back and attempt to recreate the wheel, and in doing so make it square rather than round?
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
Those proven botanical facts have been around since the same time people were SURE the earth was flat and the sun rotated around it because the earth was the center of the universe. It was science back then. Happily, things have changed.
Science is a process.... A never ending process.
Uncle Ben
Well-Known Member
He's not making his path. He is parroting what someone else did, as I said in the last line of my previous post. READ
Then it's time you learn, it's time you empowered yourself........ or wander around here blindly following crap advice, nutes, rip off products, etc.
Happy muddling,
UB
riddleme
Well-Known Member
I love experiments and I am currently sub'd to this one and the CO2 one. I, like UB and BT do not endorse removing fan leaves but admit lots of folks do it and I see thier post as trying to point out certain things to new growers rather than a slam on this experiment.
I say to Desertrat, keep doing what your doing and nevermind the debate, it is after all your experiment and what others draw from it will be up to them. If we stop experimenting we will eventually stagnate, while there is no holy grail to induce huge buds there are techniques that have proven sucessful and those techniques were discovered thru expermintation
kudos for not only making your own path but also for sharing your journey!
I say to Desertrat, keep doing what your doing and nevermind the debate, it is after all your experiment and what others draw from it will be up to them. If we stop experimenting we will eventually stagnate, while there is no holy grail to induce huge buds there are techniques that have proven sucessful and those techniques were discovered thru expermintation
kudos for not only making your own path but also for sharing your journey!
Nitegazer
Well-Known Member
UB,
I think we can safely all agree that leaves help the plant grow and removal at least temporarily reduces the plants ability to produce energy. Your arguments do not, however, address the experiment that has been conducted.
I would state the hypothesis Desertrat is working on as follows: Removing select fan leaves early in development promotes branching at the expense of short term plant growth; the resulting increased branching will lead to higher yields in some grow room setups (probably lower wattage indoor grows ie. <1000W).
A brief scan of research through Google brought up other experiments that could support or undermine Desertrats approach. Note that these were just quick finds, and may not truly apply to the questions at hand.
Leaf Removal and the Apparent Affects of Architectural Constraints on Development in Capsicum Annuum (Green Peppers) Lisa P. Thomas and Maxine Watson. -- Removing leaves within a branch system resulted in a significant decrease in further sympodial growth by that branch
The effect of leaf and shoot tip removal and explant orientation on axillary shoot proliferation of Codiaeum variegatum Blume var. pictum Muell. Arg. cv. Excellent (Caladium) - Teresa Orlikowska, , Izabela Saba a and Danuta Kucharska
The removal of all developed leaves from 1 to 1.5 cm shoots of Codiaeum variegatum Blume var. pictum Muell. Arg. Excellent doubled the number of axillary shoots in comparison to non-defoliated controls.
A modeling exploration of branch extension, defoliation responses, and carbohydrate physiology in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.)- David Thornby, Jim Hanan
Experiments showed that the development rate of cotton seedlings main stems was not affected by defoliation regimes of varying severity (25-65%)
Botany does not support the broad claim that any leaf removal reduces yield. If Desertrats experiment is being refuted with botany, than some sort of real analysis of the available literature is in order. Specifically, I would look for experiments with fruiting annuals where subtending leafs are removed and effects on branching are noted.
I think we can safely all agree that leaves help the plant grow and removal at least temporarily reduces the plants ability to produce energy. Your arguments do not, however, address the experiment that has been conducted.
I would state the hypothesis Desertrat is working on as follows: Removing select fan leaves early in development promotes branching at the expense of short term plant growth; the resulting increased branching will lead to higher yields in some grow room setups (probably lower wattage indoor grows ie. <1000W).
A brief scan of research through Google brought up other experiments that could support or undermine Desertrats approach. Note that these were just quick finds, and may not truly apply to the questions at hand.
Leaf Removal and the Apparent Affects of Architectural Constraints on Development in Capsicum Annuum (Green Peppers) Lisa P. Thomas and Maxine Watson. -- Removing leaves within a branch system resulted in a significant decrease in further sympodial growth by that branch
The effect of leaf and shoot tip removal and explant orientation on axillary shoot proliferation of Codiaeum variegatum Blume var. pictum Muell. Arg. cv. Excellent (Caladium) - Teresa Orlikowska, , Izabela Saba a and Danuta Kucharska
The removal of all developed leaves from 1 to 1.5 cm shoots of Codiaeum variegatum Blume var. pictum Muell. Arg. Excellent doubled the number of axillary shoots in comparison to non-defoliated controls.
A modeling exploration of branch extension, defoliation responses, and carbohydrate physiology in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.)- David Thornby, Jim Hanan
Experiments showed that the development rate of cotton seedlings main stems was not affected by defoliation regimes of varying severity (25-65%)
Botany does not support the broad claim that any leaf removal reduces yield. If Desertrats experiment is being refuted with botany, than some sort of real analysis of the available literature is in order. Specifically, I would look for experiments with fruiting annuals where subtending leafs are removed and effects on branching are noted.
Uncle Ben
Well-Known Member
I love experiments too, been doing them for decades. How do you think the UB topping to get 2-4 colas came about? I just get rubbed the wrong way when someone fishes for noobie interest in a forum by starting a thread with a dreamie title of "anybody want to double their yields?" as if they've found some new fangled method. Ever thought that it could actually reduce your yields by half? Forums are full of such threads, there's a new now in Advanced. Trust me, whatever you do, it's been done before in some form or fashion. If you want to get the skinny on some bonafide empirical research conducted by a University, then buy Mel Frank's MJ Insiders Guide.
I presented my arguments, pointing out the fallacy that topping above the 4th node and you'll still have a "main branch". That's just not true, only noobs will fall for such crap. What's with the stair step drill, botanically? If removal of some fans is super duper, then it seems to me that removal of all is better.
Every time someone starts another one of these boring "remove fan leaves" threads I tell 'em now to remove all of them.
I "leaf" grape vines, but that is a drill for entirely different results. Removing leaves around the clusters for exposure to UV before the clusters have closed gives you a less herbaeous taste in a wine, toughens up the skin, and greatly improves skin anthocyanin production. Apples and oranges compared to cannabis.
I presented my arguments, pointing out the fallacy that topping above the 4th node and you'll still have a "main branch". That's just not true, only noobs will fall for such crap. What's with the stair step drill, botanically? If removal of some fans is super duper, then it seems to me that removal of all is better.
Every time someone starts another one of these boring "remove fan leaves" threads I tell 'em now to remove all of them.
I "leaf" grape vines, but that is a drill for entirely different results. Removing leaves around the clusters for exposure to UV before the clusters have closed gives you a less herbaeous taste in a wine, toughens up the skin, and greatly improves skin anthocyanin production. Apples and oranges compared to cannabis.
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
Well then he is parroting something someone else did that is enhancing his grow apparently. Isnt that what we all do here? Dont you advise people to parrot your growing techniques for success?
I am learning every day through trial and error and experimentation. That is how botany and the other sciences were created. To assume that we know everything about botany is more than a little presumptuous.
There are more than two options...
Thanks, it has been a blast so far...
Uncle Ben
Well-Known Member
Here's another thread that belongs in the Cannabis Hall of Fame of Quackery: https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/346874-monster-cropping-increasing-yield.html
...and another: https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/339989-how-grow-biggest-buds-ever.html
They're a dime a dozen.
UB
...and another: https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/339989-how-grow-biggest-buds-ever.html
They're a dime a dozen.
UB