GreenThumb J talks about defoliation not being a good idea

Greenthumb J;2346987 said:

I'll come check it out on your journal.

>>> have you considered using this as your RDWC experiment

I have actually, but my RDWC is already built and sized up to sit in a 4x8 space, and have a plant in each 4x4 space on the one side of the tent. now that i'm thinking about it some more, i'm thinking that a 4x8 space might be too small for the size of plants that i'm thinking this system will grow. I'm going to do a test run with it as soon as i can afford a good water chiller, that isn't like $500 or more!

I realize the amount of vertical space i would have if grown in a RDWC rather than a container on top of a reservoir, but when i was finished harvesting my White Widow in a 5gal DWC, i told myself i wouldn't go back to DWC unless it was recirculating. People growing in DWC always freak out about their roots.. The tiniest bit of brown or something that isn't white in the reservoir, they lose their shit. After moving my roots out of the water and into grow cubes, i can see the benefit of white healthy roots that aren't dead or dying in spots because of poor root zone health. I also grew the clones of the DWC plant in a Capn-style top feed and the quality of the bud was exponentially better. Although growing in this manner, i feel that i dont get as fast vegetative growth, which is key to getting big chongers ready for flower!

>>> I have evolved into one that never defoliates unless exigent circumstances warrant that

I feel you brother.. i keep looking at posts and articles about defoliation and why people think its good. Let me explain a few reasons why its just plain silly.

MrRobert and I ( i think it was him lol) were talking about defoliation and nature the other day and it really got me thinking about why defoliation is not a good idea.

In nature, cannabis plants dont do defoliation sessions.. you dont see a cannabis plant growing naturally in the wild one day, then the next day its been stripped of half its leaves, by some magical defoliation fairy. The reason i'm getting that people defoliate is to open up the "lower buds" to the light and grow them bigger. And thats all fine and dandy, but let me tell you why thats a waste of your efforts.

In nature, Male cannabis plants grow tall and lanky very quickly once they mature, because their duty is to spread their pollen and carry on its genetic make up. Now, I'm not saying this is the sole reason, but think about what i just said, and now think about why the top main cola on a female plant is always so big? To catch the pollen! The bigger the bud, the more pollen it can catch, and thus produce more seeds. Now a female cannabis plant seems programmed to grow buds to reproduce. It needs to focus a lot of energy to grow a nice big bud up top to catch as much pollen as it can before the season is over, which means, that its already hardly putting any energy into growing those lower dinky buds.

**Edit** This is where auxin comes into play. Auxin is derived from the Greek word Auxein, which means to grow or to increase, which as i'm sure you know is the hormone in plants that are responsible for vertical growth, and pretty much most processes of structural growth in plants as well as embryo development in seeds. There are hardly any auxins way down on these low branches already, so removing them would force whatever Auxin production that was happening down there to relocate itself to the branches higher up, which will only benefit you from being able to grow monster colas! **

This is where proper defoliation should take place. TheCapn would say "remove anything that you deem wont make it to the screen" meaning the canopy where the majority, if not all of the light absorption will take place.

What he means is branches.. not leaves. take off dinky branches down low, early on, so that when in flower, the plant can focus all its energy on growing those big ass buds we all want. What people mistake this concept for is that those lower branches need light in order to grow properly. And they're right to a degree, but they need to realise that the plant isn't putting its energy into growing popcorn, and you shouldn't be either so they take just the fan leaves off, and stunt the plant while it heals up the wounds where you took leaves from... take that popcorn branch shit off only and focus on growing arm-sized colas!

Plus who wants popcorn buds anyways?

keeping the canopy clean is simple, maintain a good balance of nutrients so you have no lock outs or deficiencies, and if the leaves start to crowd the plant, tuck them away! Defoliating is just plain nuts, and it drives me nuts actually..


My biggest thing i hate the most is when people show a picture of their plant before its defoliated, then they show the after picture right? Then they always show you like the "2 week later" photo with some dumb comment like, " in just 12 days, look at how much they bounced back"

Lets analyze that statement quickly cause i've heard it way too many times..

First, "Bounce Back" whats it bouncing back from? If the leaves were never taken off, it wouldn't have to "bounce back"

Second, "12 days later". What this is really saying and people need to understand this, is it took 12 days to get up to a size that would have only taken 7 days if you left the damn leaves on!

People think that because you defoliated and got a bigger yield, that its because you defoliated. What do we know about defoliation, it slows down growth, stalls it out completely sometimes. What this does is prolong the veg time.. Longer veg time equals (usually) a plant that yields more at harvest.

I've heard that defoliation helps the plant "breathe" but in fact it uses its leaves to "breathe" by intaking cO2 in through the stomata.


If you take off the shitty branches that wont grow good buds, and leave the leaves on, tuck em away if you need to, you will get the best and biggest yields. Look at TheCapn.. He pulled an average of 18zips from his plants in 2014 by not defoliating. Whos pulling in bigger yields than him around here who rapes their plants? no one!

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