Remove leaves for light penitration ?

Hi guys/gals...Do you remove any fan leaves that shade any buds so the light penetrates through the canopy. My babies are really bushy and I'm thinking that some leaves need removing ? I'm talking big healthy fan leaves! Is this correct practice ? Thanks

Yes, please take all of the healthy leaves off of your plants and then turn yourself in for botanirape. Please read any of the hundreds of threads already started on this subject.

You shouldnt really remove fan leaves,it stunts the plants growth in veg and the plant needs them for bud production in flower.There are some exceptions,like if theyre covering a bud site and theres nowhere to tuck tbem,or you may want to slow growth for whatever reason and trimming leaves is a good way to do that.Good luck dude

No-don't remove any leaves, it is the leaves that the light interacts with to create buds. Apart from the little sugar leaves you get sticking out from the side of buds there is no tangible benefits from letting light fall directly onto the buds themselves. Guy above touched on the way to go, tuck the fan leaves under /out of the way of the budding branches then you get the best of both worlds. Exception being any severely yellowed or outright dead leaves on the plants, get them off the plant and in the bin, they are of no use.

Defoliation has been debated several times with no clear conclusions if it's beneficial or not
There are some circumstance when defoliation may help, such as if you are having circulation issues
Dr. Jekyll

Post a pic then we can provide a better assessment
Mr. Hyde

Cheers guys ! I've been reading a load of post's about this and most seem to be against leaf removal unless yellow. I'll try clipping back with paperclips.

lol. there are a lot of articles on this subject. I suggest trying puling leafs on one and not the other see the difference for your self .

been there, as most of you I also read different opinions and was in doubt, normally I hate to cut anything of my plants (also why I often "fail" to lollipop enough, witch I would advice to do)

I had two plants going in a scrog and made a lot of de-leafing on one and nothing on the other, sure I had some more small Bud site`s peaking up with the de-L plant but the main Buds on the one I did`t touch did much better

they need there "solar panels" to collect energy

IMOO you should only remove anything if it really block some serious grow/Bud`s or even better tug/bend them in under as they also have another function beside collecting light, Breathing, if you remove all/most of the leaf`s on a plant if will have a hard time collecting or getting rite of any spare moist or collect Co2

Leaf`s also act as a nutrients "buffer" as the plant store "food" in em for later/flowering or if it get a deficiency of some kind

insted lollipop them lower shoots that you know won't be able to reach any strong light and therefor won't grow in to anything beside some tiny flimsy Buds that is`t worth much other then making oil/hash of or for some early smoke

LST/train them to make em shoot more side shoots up and to get growth that is in the way/block moved a bit and if you want to move a leaf`s that block a lower shoot bend the leaf until it have grown passed it


just my 2€

I have a plant growing just now that had one cola that was away to shoot up in front of the others,I did some light defoliation and thats it,problem solved.Whether that cola produces more or less bud than the others remains to be seen but its better than leaving it to grow and having to raise my light,which would just be stupid for the sake of one top

The only form of defoliation I participate in is with regards to under brush. I use to just let the plant decide what it needs or doesn't and they can die or fall off. Now I do clean out the under brush after trying it side by side on the same clone. Helps with air flow, gets rid of the pointless shoots that never mature, and keeps things tidy. Something to do in the first couple weeks of flower.

I do not remove fan leaves. This is stupid. Bud sites don't needs light, the fan leaves are responsible for carrying out the majority of photosynthesis. This is why buds lower down on the primary branches, which are covered by fan leaves still mature to completion despite receiving less light due to light penetration in addition to the beautiful solar factors obscuring the light.

There is allot of great advice in this thread but ....In all honesty the plants genetics can dictate the outcome, each Geno and Phenotypes can react different and documenting personal controlled experimentation will yield the only true answer.

CaretakerDad said:

Yes, please take all of the healthy leaves off of your plants and then turn yourself in for botanirape. Please read any of the hundreds of threads already started on this subject.

Click to expand...

^Exactly...couldn't have said it better