Trimming Fan Leaves a Consensus Part 1

It's interesting that everyone has an opinion, but no hard data of yields in various experiments with controls and variables to back up anything that is being said. Without data this is all just rhetoric unfortunately.

So here's Wat I think... My 1st grow( on my 3rd now) I hits little scissor happy and ended cuttin all the fan leaves off. My plant seemed unfazed all the bud sights were getting alot more light (cfls if your wondering) new froth started forming every where 1 week later I had a bush. t he grow im on now the fans kept yellowing so I said hell with and got scissor happy again lol chopped em All off.and im glad I did..... In my opinion I say chop em or leave them either one works

So here's Wat I think... My 1st grow( on my 3rd now) I hits little scissor happy and ended cuttin all the fan leaves off. My plant seemed unfazed all the bud sights were getting alot more light (cfls if your wondering) new froth started forming every where 1 week later I had a bush. t he grow im on now the fans kept yellowing so I said hell with and got scissor happy again lol chopped em All off.and im glad I did..... In my opinion I say chop em or leave them either one works

Well all!! Photosenthis happens no matter what, as long as sufficient light requirement are met. But, hacking the feeder leaves is wrong! Take our human skin...it needs sunlight in order to produce VIT D and plants are the same. Without these sugar producing "fan leaves" You are essentially praying that those little girls will make it through.

ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding

I know this thread is really old, but maybe i could still get some feedback. I have been trimming some fan leaves in order to increase light penetration. Im wandering if i have gone too far with it. what do you guys think?

Fucken old but you almost went to far IMO. I don't cut after 2 weeks of flower. You did leave some on so not that bad. Did stress them out os next day watch for droopy leaves and about 4 days no growth.

Yeah I don't think people truly get it.... trimming off the biggest leaves ( your biggest energy producers ) in order to "help light penetration" does alot more harm then good.

Each leave is a factory for photosynth. Your belief in trimming dictates that by shutting down or removing factorys you get better and more energy. :-/

Think of your leaves as solar panels that produce the energy your plant runs on. Pretty much what they are.

I.D.K. just seems a bit counter-intuitive to me.

for sure, I will be using this grow as a learning experience. If anyone's actually interested to see the results off of a grow where leaves were trimmed, come check out my thread. they are 23 days in flower now. i post new pics every few days. thanks everyone for the info on this thread, there is a lot of good stuff on here (besides all the hostility).
peace

I believe that trimming the fan leaves helps the buds on the plant develop. My boyfriend and I recently bought 2 clones which weren't in that great of shape and after they grew taller we started trimming the leaves and instantly we saw improvement in the growth and condition of the buds. His mother grew marijuana for years and she suggested to us about trimming our plants; so like I said, we did, and saw a huge improvement. Our plants right now are extremely hairy, the nuggs are getting dense and full of crystals.

Man its a trade off. Light penetration for extra energy. Plant has more than enough leaves but indoors never enough light. You mean to tell me that some bushy strains such as skunkberry which currently growing are hurting themselves more than helping? I have to disagree, they had lots of side branching that until I cut fans off looked pale and weak. Not now though. It's a trade off but indoors trim for yield. Unless you just love.trimming lots of buds instead of giant coals.

Man its a trade off. Light penetration for extra energy. Plant has more than enough leaves but indoors never enough light. You mean to tell me that some bushy strains such as skunkberry which currently growing are hurting themselves more than helping? I have to disagree, they had lots of side branching that until I cut fans off looked pale and weak. Not now though. It's a trade off but indoors trim for yield. Unless you just love.trimming lots of buds instead of giant coals.

Ive experimented with this. There are several reasons to do this. The most important thing to understand is that by doing it in veg you are creating a much bushier and stout structure which may be good for this. Ive done this throughout flowering as well to expose lower growth and it does work. Like the post above, you do give up potential energy especially if growing outdoors. However, i have lower growth developing that never would have without adding side lighting. There are still plenty of leaves that stem from the buds that for the most part should be left alone. The plant uses these leaves to powerphotosynthesis.

I'm incredibly new to this.

I'm going to say that first, but I also want to add that I think about nearly everything that I do, and that I am a fairly logical person.

So i have a baby in her 4th week of veg and I decided it was time to trim her for the first time today. Here is my logic:

From what I can tell each pair of fan leaves directly pairs with each pair of nodes. the fan leaf almos't always pops out, and then a node branches out directly above it. Looking at how nodes contain almost 100% of the required anatomy for a plant to continue growing I treat each internodal section of my main stem as a separate organism. The fan leaves acquire sunlight to jump start the photosynthesis process, and the nodes attached will grow without direct sunlight simply because of the production the fan leaves are generating. So i would logically deduce that the purpose of the fan leaves is to jump start the growth process for each node until it is capable of gathering adequate light on its own.

Red light and yellow light are supposedly the producers of stem growth and sexual hormones. Since each nodes production is mostly used for it's own growth, by cutting excess fan leaves paired with ALREADY DEVELOPED nodes (do not cut a fan leaf if the node isn't already flattening out) will reduce the stretch, because it will not provide any stem growth to the main stalk. Making the plant shorter and bushier, and encouraging the nodes to grow outward.

I would never chop excess amounts of leaves because I want a bushy plant with large amounts of surface area. What i would do is check fan leaves that are blocking my other nodes to see if their matching nodes have developed enoguh to produce without the fan leaf.

I had 7 pairs of fan leaves and 5 fully developed pairs of nodes, today i trimmed my lowest 2 pairs of fan leaves and I'm incredibly comfortable with the decision to do so.

Is this thread number 4,057 about this subject?

Ferredoxin said:

Comparing a high density indoor grow to "what nature intended" is a pointless argument. Our controlled indoor environments are nothing like the outdoor setting where MJ evolved, so our practices will not be the same as they are for outdoor plants.

Click to expand...

Exactly.

I am not going to argue either way, but how are people pulling so much weed from a 400 watt bulb set up, defoliating if it is so damaging to the plant?

I think it really depends on your set up and how you want to deal with plants.

I know from personal experience that my yield from 4 plants that did not have any leaves removed was lower than two plants that were scrogged.

What is funny is the assholes that are convinced that their opinion is correct for every set up.

If I had the room, I would grow 5 plants each under a 1000 watt bulb and not touch it.


edit: My plants that had leaves removed took the same time to finish as the untouched plants.

Yeah, arguing that removal of leaves shouldn't be necessary because it isn't natural isn't legitimate. Plants interact with way more animals and environmental stimuli in the wild, quite a few lead to defoliation.

The plant wants to get as much light as it possibly can, and it has genetic coding that tell it how many leaves to grow, how tall to grow based on light and wind conditions. None of those itneractions occur in a synthesized environment.

Chameleons don't need to get sprayed in the wild either, but if you don't spray a captive male they don't shed correctly because of the differences in light and how it affects their skin and it's molting process.

When you domesticate an animal, which is essentially what selective breeding of plant genetics is, you culture it to be grown in a more maintained way.

Where a plant is lit by a consistent path of light with small deviations in seasons you could argue that special care to pruning isn't essential because that is how the foliage might grow in the wild. But in most cases light sources are moved fairly consistently, sometimes it's difficult for a plant to adapt in order to get the light it needs. You either stress the hell out of the plant and risk serious loss or gender reversal, or you make calculated adjustments to the canopy in order to accommodate the changes.

I do think it helps, and it produces the results i want, but it's mostly a preference, you could accomplish the same sort of think with screen training if you wanted to.

I also water twice weekly with a 9% hydrogen peroxide solution in my perilite / soil mix.

Have you noticed that as a plant grows, the lowest leaves become a lighter green? Stupid question.
When a leaf becomes less important to the plant, the plant robs the leaf of nutrients and puts them where the plant gets the best use of them. This becomes more apparent when the plants are not feed properly. Some growers attempt to cause a nitrogen deficiency at the end of the budding phase just before harvest. In that situation you will notice that all the large leaves have turned yellow. These leaves have been robbed and those resources have been redirected into the buds.
The point I am trying to make is that the plant will tell you how important each leaf is by its color. When the plants are being feed adequately, any leaf that begins to show signs of yellowing can be removed without causing any harm.