to prune or not to prune!?!

Hello, I'm two weeks into flower on my first grow ever. I'm using a stinkbud jr.system with a newbie attempt at scrog. Everything is growing great and obvious flowers are popping up everywhere. The question I have is if there is a bunch of the bigger "fan" leaves in the canopy that I feel are shading the lower buds, should I pinch them off to get more light deeper into the canopy or are they crutial to the plant getting the light it needs to form the buds. How about during grow also, same question. BTW im using a sealed 1000w HPS and the light is about 2' above my 40"x40" canopy. Thanks for any help or suggestions!

dont cut living leaves period

^^^^^excatly

just what the above poster stated...dont cut. think of the large leaves as solar pannels collecting energy for your plants

nickfury510 said:

just what the above poster stated...dont cut. think of the large leaves as solar pannels collecting energy for your plants

Click to expand...

Wow, I have had so many people tell me that they're shading the lower portions and to cut them. Thank you all for the info, I will cut no more!!

Good for you, you just took a step towards being a grower instead of a noob

I've always thought shaping the canopy was useful, but only if veg was overgrown and congestion and constriction from heavy training (I LST vigorously) becomes a real problem. Otherwise, there is absolutely no need to mess with healthy girls, especially if they're showing you their pretty parts.

Wow....100% right answers, of course by the time I post this someone will say to cut all the fan leaves off.LOL.
What I can't figure out is why so many people think that taking off a great big fan leaf to get light to a tiny bud is beneficial. Think about the difference in surface area for absorbing light.

because it shades visible light. plants use a lot more light than what is visible to us. the leaves actually only shade about 10% of the light that's actually there. so when you cut leaves your only letting less than 10% of the available light to the lower leaves considering intensity degrades the farther away from the light source you get. how much of a reduction in the plants ability to produce what it needs are you making when you cut off that leaf though? I bet its more than you gain with the less than 10% increase in light to the lower leaves.

only real reason to trim is to improve airflow on densely vegetated plants but more often its best to just let nature take care of things. it will drop the leaves if they are not needed.

are u growing more than one plant? if so, make an experiment, cut some of the leaves on one and on the other plant leave as is.

geffcardo said:

are u growing more than one plant? if so, make an experiment, cut some of the leaves on one and on the other plant leave as is.

Click to expand...

Yeah, as a matter of fact, i run 6 plants all together and on my first batch I was pruning/topping 1 of them a lot during growth so the others could catch up. That particular plant is enormous right now. It did seem to stunt it a couple of days but then the big leaves were back and looking better than ever.

Thank all of you for the great input and I have made up my mind to leave em alone. I love the input and people telling WHY...not just an answer to my question!!! Its a great community out there!!!