Cutting fan leaves

harinama said:

To me it seems as if fan leaves do not store up the energy of the plant as commonly thought,....

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Commonly thought? You and your buds need to read some books on botany and general horticulture. Fan leaves don't store carbos, they manufacture them which drives plant material production and maintenance. Roots store the carbos that leaves produce as does stems/trunk to a degree.

.... but they actually TAKE energy away from the budding joints.

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Is that right? I guess if someone says it and another repeats it, "it" must be right.

.....from the mouth of babes!

interesting
i have tried it has is everyone talking from what they heard and read or what thay have tried just curious

i dont want to get into this battle of the know it alls but this is a cut and paste from golden seeds a mj info and seed site


"Interesting facts" THEORIES WHY TO TRIM FAN LEAVES
Increase Lower Bud Development
The fan leaves shade lower buds and that these buds do not develop to there full potential because of a reduction in lighting intensity due to shading from upper fan leaves.

To conserve energy for upper bud development
Trimming fan leaves and lower, shaded branches focuses the plant’s development on main top buds. A plant wastes precious energy several ways. A tall plant needs to use energy to build extra stem, and then use extra energy to move water up higher, this is why I believe "scrog" methods are productive. An untrimmed bushy plant causes the plant to expend energy to build elaborate branches and leaves, and then has to use excess energy to supply all these structures. Careful trimming to remove unnecessary branches (which wont produce nice buds) and unproductive suckers will leave more energy for a larger yield. Suckers do exactly as their name suggests, they suck needless energy from the plant which can be put to better use, towards yield.


i hope everyone likes it
1 Luv

isnt this thread should be in newbie central?

Dwezelitsame said:

interesting
i have tried it has is everyone talking from what they heard and read or what thay have tried just curious

i dont want to get into this battle of the know it alls but this is a cut and paste from golden seeds a mj info and seed site


"Interesting facts" THEORIES WHY TO TRIM FAN LEAVES
Increase Lower Bud Development
The fan leaves shade lower buds and that these buds do not develop to there full potential because of a reduction in lighting intensity due to shading from upper fan leaves.

To conserve energy for upper bud development
Trimming fan leaves and lower, shaded branches focuses the plant’s development on main top buds. A plant wastes precious energy several ways. A tall plant needs to use energy to build extra stem, and then use extra energy to move water up higher, this is why I believe "scrog" methods are productive. An untrimmed bushy plant causes the plant to expend energy to build elaborate branches and leaves, and then has to use excess energy to supply all these structures. Careful trimming to remove unnecessary branches (which wont produce nice buds) and unproductive suckers will leave more energy for a larger yield. Suckers do exactly as their name suggests, they suck needless energy from the plant which can be put to better use, towards yield.


i hope everyone likes it
1 Luv

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it's a nice story, but i'm not buying it. doesnt work for master kush(see pics prev page). i'll do a couple purple wreck side by side in a few weeks, then i might try some ak after that, but i can tell you for sure that if you are growing master kush and you trim off 1/3 of the fans in a way that would seem to let in more light you WILL get less wieght off that plant. I'm guessing 1/3 less or close to it.the 2 plants i used were off the same mother and looked identical at 3 weeks veg and now they look like 2 different strains.

Loose use of the word "energy". This guy doesn't have a clue what makes a plant tick.

Suckers do exactly as their name suggests, they suck needless energy from the plant which can be put to better use, towards yield.

Please have this botanical moron come here and define the term "sucker" and "energy".

If the "sucker" is a leaf that is capable of producing simple and complex carbos, then it is not a "sucker" and doesn't deprive or take away anything, it contributes. Get off the grandpa gardening shit of the 40's.

Ya, we got lotsa suckers, as in cannabis forum MJ nerds.

UB

Uncle Ben said:

Loose use of the word "energy". This guy doesn't have a clue what makes a plant tick.

UB

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Whenever I hear that word 'energy' in talking about a plant I think WTF. Using the word 'energy' to describe how a plant develops is a cover for not knowing what the plant is really doing. It's a mumbo-jumbo word. You can talk about how chemicals, hormones, and water move around or don't move around, but there is no such thing as 'energy'.

may the force be with u

I dated this girl one time. She had incredible energy when the time was right.

If you cut alot at one time you could stunt your plant

johnnytoobad said:

what happens when u continually cut fan leaves on a plant from seedling? can it still grow? i got 13 im gonna experiment on. cutting them so they look "different". has ne body done this? thank you to all who answer

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hmm.. i only read the last couple pages of this thread but I didn't read the first. I assumed it was another one of those "should I cut my fan leaves off during flowering" threads. But this is a bit different. I'm the guy you're looking for. No need to continue with this experiment.

I've actually done this as a result of missing a FIM (haha, don't ask how). Anyway, the result was that the top continued to grow but the fan leaves had been snipped off before they grew out. I kept repeating this during veg until beginning of flowering and

now I have a plant with no main cola, however the side branches did pack on some weight.

It didn't lose many fan leaves though because I only did this with the main stem. The plants at about 9-10 nodes so it lost 7 nodes worth of fan leaves. The rest on the other branches just fell off due to yellowing.

As for yield I can't say, but the buds are bulking up just as much as my other plants.

Only positive I see is that it decreases the node spacing, however it increases the nodal spacing on the side branches so there ends up being no benefit.

I don't prefer the structure of a plant trained this way so I won't be doing it again.


Here is the plant. Aussie Blues, not a very resinous strain I suppose, but smells heavenly. This one smells like lemon sugar and I have another that smells like cocoa.

(8 weeks I think, about 2 weeks left to go):




and if you notice, the stem got thinner and thinner towards the top as a result of removing fan leaves.

Ugly structure in my opinion, and takes up more space than necessary.

Not to mention no main cola, lol! These buds are pretty fat though, curious how it'll yield compared to my 4 cola plant.

permagrow said:

to sum up this long outstanding debate finally i will release the technical theories that the botonical scientist at nasa know. the large fan leaves at the top that the stem is standing upwards are called fan leaves the ones with the stems going downward are called shade leaves, these large leaves feed the growth of the plant by collecting solar energy. you can pinch the shade leaves out thus promoting inner growth.
as to your question. everytime the leaf reaches full size snip it off . what you will end up with is a plant with 1000 leaves. but your growing for buds. and the leaves will block out all budsites. there is a natural ratio of sun leaves, shade leaves bang leaves and fan leaves vs bud sites. its very complex mathematical system but to break it down further.
sun leaves are at the top of the plant unopened leaves basically immature leaves that in a week will open and be fan leaves. in time fan leaves. 2 nodes down from the sun leaves now. will become shade leaves folding down to catch sideway light . and then eventually losing all their chlorifil and becoming bang leaves. at this time the plant will retract its interests in the leaf and section it off for disposal. all these leaves that fall are then returned to (n) the ground. just my observations of the horticulture

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went back and read this thread for laughs. and wtf is this shit? LOL? bang leaves? we giving plants hair styles now?

johnnytoobad said:

actually it seems as if new growth is coming on faster on the top. GENTLEMAN THERE WILL BE CASUALTIES. ive grown enuff pot normally and femmed and topped and trained but ive never really pushed the limits as all the plants were sewed to harvest. these experiments are expendable like a tampon and i plan on pushing limits for future grows and all around knowledge first hand of what more can i do to the bitches. stunting growth right now is a priority. i want a mature short not spoiled pot plant that looks weired out...could i get a bonzai outta this i wonder

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I found the new growth to grow faster as well, but this is only because the plant has to create new fan leaves for what was lost. If you continue to do this you will have no main cola as I have shown in the pictures of the previous post.

fdd2blk said:

if you chop off your arms, your brain will get bigger.

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hey FDD, I came across a 2 year old pic/post of where you said you prune the lower 1/3 leaves on all your plants... and saw no difference in yield. You still do this?

blackmetal06 said:

I have a about 15 seedlings that i have been cutting small portions of the fan leafs. but by doing so so early it helps balance the weight of the top leaves and contimue more branch growth as the plant gets bigger. heres some pictures of them...

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lmao! this thread is pretty fuckin hilarious. Sorry I keep posting in here but it's kept me entertained for the last half hour.

YungMoolaBaby said:

That's fine if you think they are under developed. Like I said they are in about their 4th week. A little less than that. I guess we'll see whether or not it pays off eh?

EDIT: So I checked the date of my journal posts about my clones that I am defoliating and I sent them into flower June 7th. So less than a month of flowering still. 24 days of flowering to be exact.

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Your 4 week flowering plants look like my 1 week flowering plants, which I put outside around Sept 5th and they finished stretching within a week. Please tell me that's not a joke?

This morning I woke up and went to my garden and stripped all of the fan leaves off of 5 of my plants. My theory is this, if i can take a cutting and make it a new plant on it's own, then I can most certainly trim all of the leaves and allow the plants to grow at the same rate with no interference. Now I imagine that this will slow the growth down quite a bit but it gives every node region the same opportunity to achieve the same growth rate. Basically my theory is that because my plant has some side branching, removing the leaves will allow the plant to grow evenly thereby giving you a plant that has just as much growth as all the other branches with the exception of the main stem. Basically you are looking at getting 5 mature plants at the same time from one seed rather than taking a cutting and starting from there and I would much rather harvest 5 times more rather than clone and wait. I guess we will have to wait and see. Pics comming soon.

Animily said:

This morning I woke up and went to my garden and stripped all of the fan leaves off of 5 of my plants. My theory is this, if i can take a cutting and make it a new plant on it's own, then I can most certainly trim all of the leaves and allow the plants to grow at the same rate with no interference. Now I imagine that this will slow the growth down quite a bit but it gives every node region the same opportunity to achieve the same growth rate. Basically my theory is that because my plant has some side branching, removing the leaves will allow the plant to grow evenly thereby giving you a plant that has just as much growth as all the other branches with the exception of the main stem. Basically you are looking at getting 5 mature plants at the same time from one seed rather than taking a cutting and starting from there and I would much rather harvest 5 times more rather than clone and wait. I guess we will have to wait and see. Pics comming soon.

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that makes no sense, because a cutting with no leaves probably isn't going to root/survive.

I posted the experiment showing proof that removing fan leaves is a bad idea on page 19.

Hey i appreciate the response and the info. I am a newbie to the whole experience and watching theses babies grow is absolutely beautiful. I just wanted to go ahead and try and figure this out in the beginning so that I had some experience in knowing what not to do. I looked up a few webpages but came up with no result. So I figured that if it had to cost me, I'd rather do it with bag seed rather than the OG seeds. Those are expensive and hard to come by. Anyhow, feel free to send me your recipe for success and I will definitely use. Organic or hydroponic.

Animily said:

Hey i appreciate the response and the info. I am a newbie to the whole experience and watching theses babies grow is absolutely beautiful. I just wanted to go ahead and try and figure this out in the beginning so that I had some experience in knowing what not to do. I looked up a few webpages but came up with no result. So I figured that if it had to cost me, I'd rather do it with bag seed rather than the OG seeds. Those are expensive and hard to come by. Anyhow, feel free to send me your recipe for success and I will definitely use. Organic or hydroponic.

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Huh? I thought you were joking! You need to take a course in Botany 101 and ignore the hype found in cannabis forums.

Bagseed? That seed staring up at you may be the next Haze. Yep, dah hype bug has done bit another one in the ass. The seedbanks and vendors are gonna luv ya!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Haze.

I tend to trim a few fan leaves off about 2 and a half weeks into budding. Nothing wild just a few select ones. I have noticed that the ones I trim seem to yield a little bit more on the lower half nothing to write home about though.

Uncle Ben said:

Huh? I thought you were joking! You need to take a course in Botany 101 and ignore the hype found in cannabis forums.

Bagseed? That seed staring up at you may be the next Haze. Yep, dah hype bug has done bit another one in the ass. The seedbanks and vendors are gonna luv ya!

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Naw I just use the word "bagseed" as a reference because I don't know what that particular plant's strain is called. I plan on continuing to use those seeds that I have but I will have to identify the strain once it buds. However, if anyone has any proven formulas that will maximize yield feel free to send me that info. I read and purchased quite a few books before I decided to grow and I still use them daily in my garden. I'm always open to learning new information especially if can give me outstanding results.

After about 1 week the plants grew vigorously. They actually looked like they doubled.