Defoliation during flowering for greater yields!

Thank you AK GreenLover I'm already seeing some very good response check these photos I marked 3 sites & followed with pictures
this is two of those sites the 1st picture is 7 days after defoliation and the second picture within the picture is at 11 days.
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The only thing I would recommend is that you tie the taller main stems down at a slight angle to your light. You don't have to tie them all the way down just give the branch a slight angle. It will stop the top leaves you can't reap from shading all your lower baby sugar leaves. This will help them develop much quicker and is the main intention behind culling the fan leaves. Other than that you're going to have a huge sugar leaf explosion!
 
I strip in Veg and then again in flower at end of stretch. Excellent way to increase potent trimmings for concentrate. The results seem to be in par with adding side lighting. This can be an effective pest control method as well. Getting that old scarred up growth off and allow fresh lungs to take in the air while removing any eggs,


Excellent write up Sk!
 
Het there Max.

Great thread. I'm a first time grower and I have ben reading up on defoilation.

I'm planning to do some defoilation on this bad boy
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In two days it's a week in to flower. (Only two days in to flower on the pic)

I was just wondering how much of the leaf material I should remove?

Bagmand out\\
 
Bagmand said:
Het there Max.

Great thread. I'm a first time grower and I have ben reading up on defoilation.

I'm planning to do some defoilation on this bad boy

In two days it's a week in to flower. (Only two days in to flower on the pic)

I was just wondering how much of the leaf material I should remove?

Bagmand out\\
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Enough to clear it so lighting can go through the middle and if you lollipop you can do everything 8-12 inches from the top of the soil. The point is to let air flow and to let the plant give to the areas that will bud nicely and not just popcorn kernels.
 
You shouldnt defoliate when running High Brix
no . you need all the leaves to hold your organic mix. BUT hydro.thats a different matter.i know exactly what strength of nutes are going in.so i dont need loads of foliage to store nutes. leaves are for photosynthesis and thats all.ie.energy. but when you got a shit load of leaves under your canopy. that are not getting any light,there doing nothing.except storing food witch you dont need in hydro.as you are in full control on how much nutes your plants are getting.

been there got the t shirt.thats all i can say.
my knowledge is not from books and web sites but by doing, and doing for 20+years.YOU will never see stress on my plants .only fat buds. and to me thats what its all about. getting the most herb from a small space in the quickest time. when i see some one grow fatter and health-er buds than me i such a space with 3 bottles of nutes. ill change the way i grow. the proof's in the pudding as they say.happydays
 
BlazinThat said:
Enough to clear it so lighting can go through the middle and if you lollipop you can do everything 8-12 inches from the top of the soil. The point is to let air flow and to let the plant give to the areas that will bud nicely and not just popcorn kernels.
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Yea, it's pretty crowded right now. I'll try and clear it out when it hits one week of flower. Thanks for the tip :)
 
Bagmand said:
Yea, it's pretty crowded right now. I'll try and clear it out when it hits one week of flower. Thanks for the tip :)
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Sure is but looking good. Stick to this though: The timing was also tested:

At day 22 of flower a MILD defoliation happens to remove some of the fans, and ONLY the ones shading bud sites so as to give those parts of the plant more light. Also, if "Tucking" the leaf is an option, so that it no longer shades the bud site, do that instead if it will stay tucked, otherwise, removal...

At day 45-49 of Flower a more heavy defoliation happens. This is mostly all of the upper fan leaves toward the top of the plant are removed. (top 85% of plant) Only those at or near the bottom of the plant are to be left alone. This spurs a secondary surge in regrowth and it happens IN THE BUDS this time and if fan regrowth happened last time (there is a slim chance that it did) the fans are not regrown the second time and all that growth happens in the buds themselves leading to heavier bud production due to shading fans being removed and the plant's response of the same removal/attack response.

I've had this saved in my notes for awhile, it's from Jandre2k
 
Thx for the awesome discussion/demo, it's opened my mind. De-fol seems to make sense from a strictly biological standpoint. In Nature, bushy plants, both annual and perennial, have long co-existed with browsing animals. Both have adapted to this co-existence. The plants produce some surplus, outer leaves to feed the browsers (often goats or their kin) who wander around accumulating nutrients and occasionally depositing them near the root system in the form of manure.
It maxe sense that we'd see the best results when we mimic these natural conditions in a controlled way.
 
AK GreenLover said:
lendee I promise you will be very surprised by the over all size of all your flowers when finished. Even the ones on the lower branches will be hard nugs not fluff. I did the test similar to yours a few years back and was almost terrified after I had finished the reap after stretch. I was thinking about how naked they were and how much it would slow my growth. However they bounced back very quickly and exploded with growth all focused on the flowers.

Don't forget this is only stage one. Make sure to reap at least one more time when your canopy gets clogged with fan leaves and restricts both light and airflow.

I seriously can't wait to see your end results and how happy you are for trying another path. :bravo:
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Hi all: Well we finished our grow 6 using your method ( AK Greenlover) of defoliation and I got to say that the results are so impressive that I used this method on grow 7 in veg and have just moved it to the bloom tent still vegging for 1 week to 10 days before flip. Although I posted some pictures on this thread all are welcome to see my whole grow 6 video. Remember I didn't start new defoliation until 3-7 day of bloom watch the results. I'll post grow 8 when done it will use this method from veg to bloom. Happy productive growing to all.
 
Yup, also been doing this for 20+ yrs, never really understood the science of it.
A mate I used to grow with taught me about defolling and it just seemed to make sense and work.
I'm more surprised by those who grow indoors with complete control over light, environment and nutes, and don't defol, in the wild, the sun moves, animals eat foliage, they never know when it's gonna rain again ..... etc etc. We have control over all the main variables, what i see in lendee's results, is pretty much what I would've expected to see.
For those that don't do defoliation, they're SHADE LEAVES, why spend so much money on light if you want your girls to grow in the SHADE .....? That's how it was put to me many years ago.
Just a question, nothing hostile intended.
Cheers n Peace
 
Hi AK GreenLover: Finally harvested weigh in was 5 clean oz's over what I usually get which is fantastic taking into account some other problems I had with this grow. Check out the video -
remember I started your type of defoliation on my bloom 3-7 day.
Started grow 7 but I'm not pleased in how I'm structuring my plants, I hope to get better with time, My plants came out of veg too small of a base and I'm altering the defoliation method a little & allowing plants to stretch as much as possible and slowing the defoliation to allow this. I plan a full culling of all dew leaves as soon as I have the stretch that I want any suggestions here?
I want to thank you again for the information you have helped me greatly.
 
The very best time to do your first defoliate is right after stretch. Then at day 42 - 44 one last time. This is good for a 8 - 9 week flowering time strain.

What I like to do is make sure I do my last defoliate one week before flowering starts. Then at the times listed above. Those are my reap times when I take in mass. During veg I usually use the pluck method to keep the node spacing as compact as possible and veg for 6 weeks on average.

During the stretch I love to weave the elongating branches into a net to keep the canopy as even as possible. After stretch I like to to cull any leftover under branching and nodes that didn't make it through the screen yet. Then just let everything grow upwards. If I get any uneven growth I'll usually tie it down to keep it level as that is so very important.

When you do the day 42ish cull you will notice that your entire stems will usually fill in up the entire branch by the time harvest comes along. Especially if you used the pluck method during veg and kept your nods really tight.

I loved the video lendee. My wife and I checked it out and I showed her the spot you started to play with the method. You did pretty good considering you broke your plant and still got a bigger harvest hehehe!! Now that's what I'm totally talking about! I'm really excited to see your grow 7.

*edit*

Ohh I forgot to add that I don't top or pluck for the first 3 weeks of veg usually. What I do is tie them down a lot to keep them level across the top as well as to fan them out so the fan leaves don't block the light. I keep them tied down about 2 inches from the growing medium and let them grow horizontally. This keeps them growing fast while they establish themselves. Then I pluck away. What you end up with at the end of week 6 is a nice platform of evenly spaced upward moving branches. With a bunch of tightly packed internodes. After the stretch when in flower it all spaces out perfectly so your not clogged with branches.

I might actually do a journal and display method in all the steps someday soon.
 
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