I still remove older shabby leaves to keep it all tidy. Your primary target should be fan leaves the large, broad leaves growing throughout the plant. The lower leaves for sure wont be as efficient as the top. Begin with the bottom fifth of the plant, removing only 20% of foliage at a time. Fan leaves are like your plants solar panels. The sugar produced by the leaves gets sent to the buds, young leaves, and side shoots. Removing excess fan leaves and creating airflow to the central, denser areas of your canopy is essential in maximizing yields.. The idea is to ensure that the canopy receives a uniform distribution of light. I'm thinking that if I trim them now my buds will get bigger. Although you should remove dying leaves, you must leave large and healthy fan leaves alone. You should be working in stages, allowing 10-20 days between sessions for your plants to recover. i don't know why people are so hell-bent on not removing any leafs. This defoliation will decrease the chances of mold and help release energy to be put into the colas. By far, one of the most overlooked practices in maintaining a pest and mildew free environment for your cannabis plants is the manual removal of fan leaves.. Old School. Removing fan leaves stimulates new growth from the nodes. Like Dequilo, I shape plants in veg. 2. Balancing your temperature and humidity is a good start, but its not enough to produce the end results Page 2 of 3 < Prev 1 2 3 Next > Rumpleforeskin Legal Medical Grower. Fan leaves are the energy centers of the plant, working to absorb sunlight and convert the stored energy into sugar for use by other parts of the plant. If you remove too many leaves, you are damaging the plant in two ways. As in veg, you should still be removing any leaves that are laying on top of each other, and focus on removing those lower leaves (only bigger fan leaves) on the plant if possible. Make the cuts as clean and as close to the stem as possible, and at a 45-degree angle. Avoid removing the uppermost leaves. The leaves produce plant sugars for energy to fuel growth so leaving as many as possible is the best way to go. Side by Side Grow Experiments forum at International Cannagraphic Magazine. While defoliating in veg is a great way to boost your plants growth, doing it during flowering is a way to maintain bud quality. it's a plant, and people sometimes act like this weed we grow is so finicky that removing a few over sized fans will hinder the plant and ruin your yield. Start by removing the largest fan leaves, and do not remove too many at once. It also allows light to reach more of the plant. More nodes = more buds. Removing all of the yellow leaves on your plants won't resolve their issues. Fan leaves can sometimes grow to be more like monstrous gorilla hand-sized leaves that shade valuable light from the other parts of the plant. Also, its not necessary to only remove fan leaves that are located at the lower nodes. They constrict airflow and create an unnecessary nitrogen load on the plant. Removing a healthy fan leaf is a big waste of time..they are rapided replaced, unless you are in the last 2 or 3 weeks of flowering. Plants need and use the fan leaves the entire grow. And this is where defoliation gets controversial. Pruning the larger branches and leaves promotes instant airflow by creating space.
Removing fan leaves is typically an indoor technique meant to encourage lower growth that typically would receive little to no direct light. Removing leaves that are not already dying is actually defoliation, and that can cause harm to the plant if not done correctly. I lolipop during veg to get the plant how I want it. Don,t cut them off the plant knows best that,s why it put them there, the big fan leaves are the plants main solar panels which help feed and cool the whole of the plant. Defoliation is a term that refers to removing fan leaves. No need to waste energy growing stuff I don't want. Heres what to look for when planning to remove fan leaves during veg: Leaves at the bottom of the plant that receives little light can be pruned. Prune away large leaves that are overshadowing bud sites, as well as dead or dying fan leaves.Pruning every day can forsake your plants to a perpetual state of shock that may impede growth rather than encourage it. ive been tucking the big fan leaves out the way but they just spring back into place after a while like "the fuck you doing", ill just wait and start tying the branches down once they start to stretch then start removing at 3rd 4th week of 12/12 Log in to Reply The yellowing in the fan leaves at late harvest is the plants metabolism at work. During flowering should I remove large fan leaves to allow more sunlight to the interior colas? It's a sign that your plant is experiencing difficulty, so cultivators must address the underlying issues. Also any leaves blocking bud sites should be tucked, trimmed or removed. Defoliation I remove all mature fan leaves from my veg room. Also removing them for airflow to reduce mold and mildew issues are crucial. I have seen numerous people weigh in on the subject of trimming and removing sun or fan leaves to increase flower production. Once in flower, the only leaves removed are those that block buds. When to Defoliate Defoliating essentially causes the plant to grow more slowly overall, but more evenly as well. Defoliation is used to manage plants and expose flowers to more light. If you wait too long to defoliate, you could be doing more harm than good. Defoliating during this stage will help you reduce larf (low-hanging fluffy buds that arent viable) and improve yields. Pruning has been used for thousands of years on many agricultural crops to increase yields and reduce the amount of smaller, unusable fruits. It slows the growth of the central cola and the side branches shoot up. Once mine get into aggressive veg growth I remove about 1/2 the fan leaves, leaving some for photosynthesis. There is one exception to the three-leaf-per-stem rule though. In the mind of the cultivator, several reasons exist for removing leaves. When youre completing your late-flower (week seven) defoliation, you can go ahead and get rid of every fan leaf. 2. Removing the Tip Except, in this case, the upper leaves will benefit from the missing lower leaves. Removing big branches and leaves. I try to grow mult cola. The large fan leaves photosynthesize the energy needed for good buds, and even as the plant matures and the leaves turn yellow, it is better to let these gradually reabsorb the energy rather than shock the marijuana plant by pruning them. though, this isn't black and white of course, it's not always leave every single leaf on the plant or remove an excessive/every fan leaf. No leaves are allowed more than about two weeks existence. I have many flowering buds that are 6 or 7 inches long with lots of fan leaves. Consider removing the very large fan leaves to provide better light penetration overall. Pruning is any form of removing plant material to have a plant grow a certain way. Even if the fan leaves are yellowing in late bloom I do not remove them until they are almost ready to fall off. In the past I thought the same but found the plants with the fan leafs cut off yielded less. Personal experience from first grow: Removing fan leaves will slow stem growth, and overall growth of the plant, but it will cause more tops to grow up from lower branchs, the branches will grow bushier, and all the stems will have shorter internodes. For the least amount of risk, stick to the leaves that are already dying. After treating your plants, you should tweak a few environmental factors to After a number of tries changing everything, from lighting, nutes, bucket design, the biggest and most noticeable change was to really shape the plant in veg by removing the lower leaves and in week 5 of flowering start removing any fan leaves that block the light from the flower leaves. Removing fan leaves. Should I trim the fan leaves while the buds are still growing or wait till harvest? Any suggestions? These sections might fully develop normally but have otherwise been shaded by these huge fan leaves. When I do this I only take the fan leaves off when I'm taking a node off at that leaf. I clip these. The fan leaves are where the photosynthesis takes place. Defoliating is a form of pruning that literally means removing fan leaves from a plant. Removing infected fan leaves will help to prevent the spread, but finishing the treatment with a dose of neem oil foliar spray will help to take out any non-visible traces of the pathogen. If you chop the fan leaf from a bud site, in my experience it will be a much fluffier bud. This technique is not new (in farming its been used in potatoes, tomatoes and cotton growth; and is also common in gardening, specially in the art of bonsai. My plant is about 18 inches high and has all sorts of new shoots that come out just under the fan leaves, however the fan leaves seem to be blocking the light for these new shoots and the stem from the shoot to the main plant are getting very long to get to the light. The vegetative phase is the best time to practice some defoliation. If the leaf is getting full exposure to light, let it stay. Removing fan leaves in Veg increase Yield? Overlapping leaves and leaves that are hidden or shadowed should go first. Trimming is not natural, can be used to improve the shape and vigor of a plant, but if someone is overly aggressive in removing leaves, it can cripple if not kill the plant. Discussion in 'Growing Marijuana Indoors' started by KalL, May 21, 2012. The rest if they're really shading lower growth you can Therefore, you want to leave a few to help promote plant growth. I am not sure where you heard/read that after a while the plant does not use the fan leaves, but that is simply not true. You can remove fan leaves during flowering in much the same way you do during veg. Keep the plants in check. When I top a plant on veg, even FIM it still has a strong central cola with leaves blocking the side branches. The plant doesnt feel the need to hold on to old leaves, and youre just helping it by removing fan leaves. Remove Fan Leaves veg (side-by-side request!) If removing fan leaves increased your yield, you must have been doing something wrong before that affected yield. 4. Removing lower leaf contributes nothing to the strategy of exposing usually shaded out mid and lower growth to premium light. I start at the top in order to remove the shading. Even after your plant enters the flower cycle, removing leaves can be beneficial. This looks like my best year growing. Joined: Jul 9, 2006 Messages: 5,895 Likes Received: 4,932 #21 Rumpleforeskin, Jul 25, 2016. of course you can. I've read strong opinions both ways so as a first time outside grower, I'm a little confused. Cannabis defoliation is a growth technique base, as its name tells, in removing leaves from the plant, varying its vegetative process.