Thanks
What I did is pretty much documented in this thread - check it out and feel free to ask if you have questions, I'll do my best to answer them
Yes, I did defoliate - and lots too, to help side branches grow up into an even canopy, before I switched to flower.
It was a good thing in my situation, because the whole grow was influenced by the mistake I made of planting 2 into a pot & the space meant for only one. Also, I had my lights too far down in early veg, so the plants grew very bushily - it was tight! lol
A while into flower, the plants started defoliating themselves - that was an effect of their not having enough space in their roots to maintain all of their leaves.
By the way the leaf drop stopped when I started watering them juust a little every day. My explanation is that because I have a no-till soil and thriving soil food web, the more constant ideal conditions allowed the microorganisms to actively provide nutrients more constantly too. Just as an aside haha
Anyway, I didn't defoliate in flower.
I had lots of budsites actually in the screen that were shaded by the leaves above.
But I didn't want to lose too much of the leaf mass, since the leaves are needed for photosynthesis - which gets the whole nutrient cycle going. No food, no flowers
So I decided to stay on the non-invasive side of things and just let them do their thing.
Was that better than if I had removed them? I don't know, but I'm happy with the results
HTH
