Green Knight - Hydro CFL - Auto Bomb - First Grow Journal

[Green Knight]

Day 33 photo update.

Lots of nice healthy roots:

Getting bigger all the time - growing an inch or two a day now:

 

[grogreen]

Looking super healthy man, great fucking job! Loving those nice healthy white roots, way to go you should be a few short weeks away from some tasty smoke

Lol @ hightimes, you realize this is 420magazine.com and your name is hightimes. I got in trouble for posting my nug of the month photo on a high times magazine, my nug was sitting on the magazine, and they took my pictures down, how did you get away with having high times as your screen name?! Too funny

 

[big budda]

Wow Man that thing has just exploded.well done dude.It seems to be doing just great.
Keep it up man.

 

[donpaul.p]

looking good mate, the growth is great,

 

[Green Knight]

Thanks everyone.

Well, I found this journal by Bassman covering defoliation. It's amazing and led me to a few other journals. There's a lot of divided opinion but the photos of the results on these journals speak for themselves and make a lot of sense - after all, the best buds are always the ones that get exposed to the most light, and the buds themselves photosynthesise.

So for my next grow I'm going to throw the lot at it; supercroped defoliated scrog. But in the meantime.... I couldn't resist......

So I took a good number of fan leaves off. But I've not gone too mental and I've left a lot, only removing the ones that were shading bud sites. Even though it's an auto and has been flowering for a couple of weeks now I think that allowing greater light penetration to the bud sites will outweigh any stress in the long run.

And much better light penetration through the plant:

 

[donpaul.p]

its a difficult debate, some take the leaves others dont, i only take leaves that are blocking bud sites or touching other leaves, at the end of the day the leaves are like factories, they take in the light and co2 and this is what makes the plant grow, without the leaves their would be no growth, so its a fine line between the growers that do and the growers that dont, but i pull branches open using pipe cleaners by poking holes around the pot then any branches i pull to the outside of the pot, this lets loads of light in and gives more bud sites and new growth, but if i can tie the branches out the way then i will take a few leaves, its best to take the leaves in one go as it stresses the plant so taking a couple of leaves a day does more harm than taking them all in one go

 

[Green Knight]

I know what you mean dp; the leaves seem such a big part of the plant and it does feel odd removing them. From all the jounals I've read though, the consistent single correlating factor for amazing buds is exposure to light - scrogs, lst, super cropping, defoliation, and the debates over HPS/cfl/led - everything centres on exposing more bud sites to the maximum amount of light possible. The majority of them also involve a degree of stress on the plant. I reckon the trick is to get as much light as you possibly can to the bud sites, in whatever way possible, and not worry too much about stressing the plant, as long as the other variables like nutes and stuff are as they should be

 

[grogreen]

I know what you mean dp; the leaves seem such a big part of the plant and it does feel odd removing them. From all the jounals I've read though, the consistent single correlating factor for amazing buds is exposure to light - scrogs, lst, super cropping, defoliation, and the debates over HPS/cfl/led - everything centres on exposing more bud sites to the maximum amount of light possible. The majority of them also involve a degree of stress on the plant. I reckon the trick is to get as much light as you possibly can to the bud sites, in whatever way possible, and not worry too much about stressing the plant, as long as the other variables like nutes and stuff are as they should be

Hey GK, I agree that a little defoliation goes a long way with these plants, I took off many leaves (nearly all of them except bud leaves) last grow with fantastic results, and when I offer other growers advice to give their girls a haircut some/most think I'm crazy. Chances are these are people who have never tried it, I just did a big defoliation the other day, 2nd day of flower, but last grow I did it one week before harvest and exposing all the buds to the light they grew like weeds in that last week. Everybody is so concerned about stress, I personally think, from my experience, taking off leaves causes minimal stress, fimming, topping and super cropping on the other hand takes a few days to recover. I found there was no recovery period after my defoliation, quite the opposite I had explosive growth, plants looked vibrant and perky. Glad you weren't willing to listen to what everyone else says and go against the grain, expose them buds, and watch them grow. This is your plant, experiment, share your findings, maybe you'll find out something that everyone else was too scared to try cheers, Grogr33n

 

[spring2012]

Green Knight,
I am kinda of late to your party but I am happy I found your grow. DonPaul has been a huge help to me and I see he is here as well. Your setup is very impressive. Very clean, and organized. Your plant is doing great. My four autos are at day 19. I was completely taken aback by the fan leaves being trimmed! I am a newbie at best so I have not attempted this method. Not sure that I will but I am interested to see how it works for your plant. I look forward to watching your grow!

 

[grogreen]

Green Knight,
I am kinda of late to your party but I am happy I found your grow. DonPaul has been a huge help to me and I see he is here as well. Your setup is very impressive. Very clean, and organized. Your plant is doing great. My four autos are at day 19. I was completely taken aback by the fan leaves being trimmed! I am a newbie at best so I have not attempted this method. Not sure that I will but I am interested to see how it works for your plant. I look forward to watching your grow!

If you want to know what buds and plants look like after a good lolly pop, and in flower, check out my completed grow journal, I did my plants shortly before harvest and they loved it! More light to the buds = more bud growth, as GK mentioned above, it is said that when your plants are budding, and you defoliate, your buds end up making up for the lack of photosynthesis since your bud is mostly made up of leaves, so it picks up the slack of the missing leaves and your buds swell because it exerts ALL energy to bud growth, rather than leaf development and health, and if ya got no leaves where do you think your nutes go? Right to da budzzz ,don't knock it til you try it...Jarhead recommends trying it and I approve this message.... cheers, Grogr33n

 

[Green Knight]

Green Knight,
I am kinda of late to your party but I am happy I found your grow. DonPaul has been a huge help to me and I see he is here as well. Your setup is very impressive. Very clean, and organized. Your plant is doing great. My four autos are at day 19. I was completely taken aback by the fan leaves being trimmed! I am a newbie at best so I have not attempted this method. Not sure that I will but I am interested to see how it works for your plant. I look forward to watching your grow!

Thanks Spring - it's great to have you along.

Yeah, it's a bit of an experiment!! From what I've been reading and the photos of the results i've seen though I'm pretty confident it will benefit bud development. Admittedly it's not ideal because it's an auto so I need to be a bit restrained, which is why I've left a lot of the fan leaves and just opened the buds up a bit to the light.
My next plant is a photoperiod so I'll start defoliating earlier when it's in veg, and strip it every week or two. I'll also be super cropping the shit out of it. I think we sometimes worry too much about needing to be gentle to these plants; they're very resilient and there are so many other factors in play. We stress them anyway by not allowing them to be pollinated, which is why they do everything they possibly can to grow as many flowers as possible, and put everything they have into trying to reproduce. I think if conditions are otherwise perfect these plants respond to stress like bending and removing leaves by trying even harder to reproduce, and all the energy goes into this area. And in doing any of these stress techniques, as the plant tries even harder to get pollinated and reproduce, you've exposed the parts of the plant that need the most energy to additional light.

 

[donpaul.p]

hi mate, i have been reading about this leaf removal method, now teSmp tried it on his 1st scrog and i tried it on some hempies, now removing some leaves is beneficial but removing loads slows growth and stunts the plant, when we lolly pop we aim for one big bud so we remove any side branches longer than 1.5 inch and this keeps one big bud growing on the stem,

but both me and teSmp removed leaves to get bigger buds, all it did with both out grows was make the bud leaves turn into fan leaves and this gave us more trimming to do, i dont think it made the buds any bigger, i found that pulling branches more open produced the best results as it let more light in, i remove any leaves that are blocking bud sites and blocking any growth at new nodes, but removing to many leaves just forces the plant to make the small leaves bigger and turn them into fan leaves, this is what happened to both me and teSmp, we both pruned to get bigger buds but we did not get bigger buds it just slowed growth by loads and ended up giving us more bud leaves and more trimming to do, its ideal if your making hash but its a pain to trim when them bud leaves start growing,

but their is a debate where people prune and people dont, i cant remember the exact dates but their are 2 times when its best to prune, one is when you flip the lights to 12-12 and the other is around day 40 of flower, but check this, if you prune at these times it can increase bud size but do it to much and it forces the plant to make small leaves into big fan leaves,

also its best to remove all the leaves your taking off in one go as it does stress the plant and slows growth for a couple of days, so if you took a few leaves every day then this would stress the plant more than if you took all the leaves in one go.

im not against pruning and im not for pruning, im some where in between, i do prune but not loads, if any leaves are in the way then they go, if a leaf is stopping the light getting to another leaf then the leaf not getting the light goes, but if i can tie the branches and pull the plant open then thats what i do,

 

[spring2012]

Thanks Spring - it's great to have you along.

Yeah, it's a bit of an experiment!! From what I've been reading and the photos of the results i've seen though I'm pretty confident it will benefit bud development. Admittedly it's not ideal because it's an auto so I need to be a bit restrained, which is why I've left a lot of the fan leaves and just opened the buds up a bit to the light.
My next plant is a photoperiod so I'll start defoliating earlier when it's in veg, and strip it every week or two. I'll also be super cropping the shit out of it. I think we sometimes worry too much about needing to be gentle to these plants; they're very resilient and there are so many other factors in play. We stress them anyway by not allowing them to be pollinated, which is why they do everything they possibly can to grow as many flowers as possible, and put everything they have into trying to reproduce. I think if conditions are otherwise perfect these plants respond to stress like bending and removing leaves by trying even harder to reproduce, and all the energy goes into this area. And in doing any of these stress techniques, as the plant tries even harder to get pollinated and reproduce, you've exposed the parts of the plant that need the most energy to additional light.

Interesting points! I am gonna remove a few leaves tomorrow from my Trans Siberian. Its to bushy and taking away from potential bud sites.

 

[spring2012]

hi mate, i have been reading about this leaf removal method, now teSmp tried it on his 1st scrog and i tried it on some hempies, now removing some leaves is beneficial but removing loads slows growth and stunts the plant, when we lolly pop we aim for one big bud so we remove any side branches longer than 1.5 inch and this keeps one big bud growing on the stem,

but both me and teSmp removed leaves to get bigger buds, all it did with both out grows was make the bud leaves turn into fan leaves and this gave us more trimming to do, i dont think it made the buds any bigger, i found that pulling branches more open produced the best results as it let more light in, i remove any leaves that are blocking bud sites and blocking any growth at new nodes, but removing to many leaves just forces the plant to make the small leaves bigger and turn them into fan leaves, this is what happened to both me and teSmp, we both pruned to get bigger buds but we did not get bigger buds it just slowed growth by loads and ended up giving us more bud leaves and more trimming to do, its ideal if your making hash but its a pain to trim when them bud leaves start growing,

but their is a debate where people prune and people dont, i cant remember the exact dates but their are 2 times when its best to prune, one is when you flip the lights to 12-12 and the other is around day 40 of flower, but check this, if you prune at these times it can increase bud size but do it to much and it forces the plant to make small leaves into big fan leaves,

also its best to remove all the leaves your taking off in one go as it does stress the plant and slows growth for a couple of days, so if you took a few leaves every day then this would stress the plant more than if you took all the leaves in one go.

im not against pruning and im not for pruning, im some where in between, i do prune but not loads, if any leaves are in the way then they go, if a leaf is stopping the light getting to another leaf then the leaf not getting the light goes, but if i can tie the branches and pull the plant open then thats what i do,

DP,
Im gonna remove a few tomorrow but stick to the middle of the road. Not to many. I am watching GK's close and see how it works out for him.

 

[Fluffy Haze]

Just wanted to say hi GK and great grow so far!

Spring pointed me in your direction for the foliage debate as I have just asked a question about it on my journal, thank you for raising the debate and the resulting information!

Good luck with your grow and I look forward to seeing what happens

 

[Green Knight]

Hi fluffy, hope all's good. Thanks for finding my grow and your nice comments.

I'm no expert on defoliation, just experimenting based on some recent reading. We'll see how it goes, and I'll get more of an idea when I do it fully next grow.

Regarding your question in your journal, where the stem of the leaf joins the stem of the plant, there's a bud site - its the point that all the pistils grow from. Getting more light to these areas helps the buds develop, so if you remove some of the leaves that prevent light getting to these areas it should help. But I don't have any results yet and it could be a huge failure! Though my gut feeling, and based on what I've read, I doubt it will do any harm removing some leaves and is more likely to benefit as the buds will get more light. I agree a middle road is probably best first time (which is what I've done) - you can still leave a lot of leaves on e plant and just open up some bud sites.

 

[Green Knight]

Quick update; so it's now a couple of days since I removed a number of the fan leaves and there have been no noticeable negative effects. The plant's still growing strongly and looks healthy. Some of the lower bud sites do seem to be improving but that might just be my imagination, and may have happened anyway without defoliation, but it certainly doesn't seem to have done any harm. I'll keep a close eye on things anyway, but all's looking good so far.

I've tried to get some photos of the same areas of the plant to help comparisons. This was immediately after defoliation:

And today:

Immediately after:

Today:

One noticeable thing that has happened post-defoliation is the bud leaves are starting to frost. This again could be something that was about to happen and would have taken place with or without the defoliation, but two days ago there was no frosting and today most of the buds are beginning to show some trichomes. Not particularly easy to see in the photo though:

A couple with the lights off:

She's already looking more leafy again as she re-adjusts and some of the smaller previously shaded leaves get more light. As these grow and shade out buds again I'll remove them to keep as much light to the buds as possible. I'm going to remain reasonably restrained however and not strip her too drastically, just enough to keep the light on the buds.

Have to say I'm now loving where things are with the hydro set up. It's now incredibly easy and very low maintenance; the pH is consistently holding around 5.8/5.9 and requires no adjustment (I'm only having to do the initial pH down adjustment when I change the nute solution), and the EC's stable (she's on 1.2 and using nutes ever so slightly more than water, about 0.01 a day). She's using about 2l of water a day, so every 2-3 days I'm just topping the res up with some more nute solution. What's nice is I'm able to go away for a few days or a weekend and not worry - things will hold just right until I get back and then all I need to do is top up the res slightly.

Next week it'll be around 3 weeks before she's due to finish (according to the seed company) so she'll get her dose of PK 13/14. So fingers crossed over the course of the next few weeks the buds will really begin to develop and I'll start getting some idea of the yield she's likely to produce.

 

[grogreen]

Looking great GK I definitely notice an improvement after defoliation from the pics. Buds have more hairs and are filling out. Looks like you will have a fantastic yield for being an auto! Like you said, the growth could be something that would have happened regardless, but maybe the hair cut gave your plant a little boost. I gave mine a hair cut too, removed about 30% of the leaves two days ago, and she is looking amazing and bud sites are developing and thriving everywhere. Can't wait to see how this turns out!

 

[grogreen]

check out my journal, i took off A LOT of leaves, with zero signs of stress, there's pics on there, and the big pile of leaves sitting beside the plant is what i took off them

 

[Green Knight]

Cheers mate; yeah I've been studying the photos closely and there definitely appears to be an improvement, which I'm pleased about seeing as it's only been a couple of days. And the changes seem to be in the direction I want (i.e. better buds) so I don't think any stress from the process has had any negative effects.

I saw you'd stripped a load of leaves too when I was catching up on your journal - I really think it's the way forwards. Anything to maximise light is all good!!

I found a nice summary of Keef Treez' article on defoliation (Bassman linked to this guy's thread in another site - it's great reading but is over 200 pages and takes a bit of time getting through it and picking out the gems of information from the general chat). This summary basically takes all of the key points and takes 10 minutes to read rather than 10 days!!

https://www.------------.com/marijuana-defoliation-tutorial