do you trim your fan leaves??

[tokinafaty420]

Ah I gotcha, yes I agree with you on that too, just the surface area alone of the fan leaves makes them invaluable to plant health, but as someone posted earlier, maybe tucking fans underneath buds will help increase THC production if not actual bud weight/size. Then again, I think there's a reason the tops are always the fattest buds, so they must be making use of the light in some fashion. I wonder how this could be tested or confirmed?

Its not necessarily that the main buds are getting more light that is making them get bigger. The main bud surrounds the largest and most used water/nutrient delivery pipe in the plant. It naturally will get more water and more usable nutrition from the plant. If you want larger buds on your plants you need to be paying more attention to what is below the surface as opposed to what is above it. Roots = buds. Now don't take me the wrong way. The light hitting the bud itself is a very important part. It tells the plant which way to grow and how fast. So side shoots being blocked by larger fan leaves may not be signaled by the plant itself to stretch. Branch doesnt stretch, therefore the stem feeding the branched doesn't get wider and results in less water and nutrition reaching the flower.

 

[GeorgeSmiley]

Ah I gotcha, yes I agree with you on that too, just the surface area alone of the fan leaves makes them invaluable to plant health, but as someone posted earlier, maybe tucking fans underneath buds will help increase THC production if not actual bud weight/size. Then again, I think there's a reason the tops are always the fattest buds, so they must be making use of the light in some fashion. I wonder how this could be tested or confirmed?

So the data would tell someone if they want more chrystally, potent bud then trim the hell out of the fan leaves? If we take it all the way to one extreme (leaving all leaves and never cutting a branch) all the way to stripping the plant of all fan leaves in flower possibly. I think testing those 2 plants would be seriously interesting.

There is also the reverse of this, called pistilwhipping. Where you clip off the lower BUD sites but you leave the fan leaves.

If experience tells us anything, whatever we think the best way is.... theres a guy hauling 3# per light doing the exact opposite. We can find yield #'s from growers with each method.


I know some of this testing has been done on other species of plants, not so much on ganja. I know it's just a matter of a year to be honest. Everyone's talking about the businesses that will make a fortune when herb is legal but it's the scientists that are going to really take us to the next level with their experience in methodology. That have a lot of reference material to go through here at ICMAG

Smiley


Another thing to consider is that someone has done all of this, knows the answer, and we suck at search

 

[B. Friendly]

thinkin maybe style of growing makes a difference.
Now that i have stadiums, trimming fan leaves makes no sense at all. Even the little pop corns are getting some light.
But when i had floor growing going on, around the 5th week of flower i would pull some fan leaves off not many, just so light got into my buds. This did increase yield, but I think dew to the fan leaves being old ie I mostly picked off dying fan leaves, then half dead fans, so i think the newer growth was able to use light more efficiently than the old dying fan leaves.

In cucumber production only so many leaves are left on the plant, and it's an exact science, as old leaves become less effective they are pulled off to keep the ratio of desired leaves as healthy as possible.

 

[Wasabi420]

this is an interesting debate...i think I will try a side by side with one side all fan leaves removed and the other just leave them alone. Ill have pictures up in a couple of months....

 

[blazesck]

On the subject of removing leaves covering up bud sites, I'd say only remove it if your plant wants it to be removed. Along with the leaves that simply aren't getting any light, they seem to be the ones the plants like to suck the nutrients out of first. If the plant deems a fan leaf is more important than the bud site it's covering, it probably has a reason.

 

[FRIENDinDEED]

damn that! trim the shit outta them!! reason being is that once you trim the fan leaves from the main trunk of the plant then the other parts of the plant pick up the slack ESPECIALLY where the budsites are!! ive seen it with my own eyes in my grows so far

the same argument can be made for fim'ng/bending/twisting,training. just because you cause a small amount of damage doesnt mean that the plant cant/wont heal itself, which we all know it does. thats all ive seen this plant do, if one thing gets screwed up at one point on the plant, the rest of it picks up the slack

when i trim my fan leaves i always take off the main fan leaves from the main stem and leave about 3-4 fan leaves at the top of the plant. and i always do it the second i start to see those hairs and trichomes starting to form and grow in abundance and also when i see the lower leaves starting to die off. if you look carefully at your lower fan leaves by holding up to your light, even the ones that look seemingly healthy, theres a yellowish tinge to them. i would say i notice this about 3-4 weeks into flower. it also gives those lower bud sites a chance to catch some of the light they would have missed out on originally. the lower stems are always taken for clones, so im not talking about those i mean the lower branches that are left after you take your cuts

but as i tell anyone dont take my word for it, we all as growers have more than one plant, so do your own side by side comparison and see for yourself!!!im due for some more pics of my cab, i have a hydro grower friend who did the same thing and he noticed the results as well.

the taking of fan leaves off at a certain time and bending/training are my newest tools for my grows, works every time as far as i can see

been really busy but im gonna update my diary (\/ \/ \/ \/) and you'll see what im talking about

 

[wdcf]

Trim

 

[tube dude]

The reason the top of the plant is always the fatest bud is because of the auxins in the plant, which settle to the lower portions of the plant. That is why it is so important to keep a level canopy when training. It isn't because of the light, it is because the auxins slow the growth to the lower parts of the plant.

 

[FRIENDinDEED]

The reason the top of the plant is always the fatest bud is because of the auxins in the plant, which settle to the lower portions of the plant. That is why it is so important to keep a level canopy when training. It isn't because of the light, it is because the auxins slow the growth to the lower parts of the plant.

yeah HIGHTIMES just did an article on that, in one of their recent magazines.

thats why i dont mess with the top of my plant too tuff when training

 

[cork144]

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=100749&highlight=size+matters&page=3

scroll down and youll see a guy who removes all fans at day 20 flower and day 40 somthing,

 

[GeorgeSmiley]

I miss jrosek

 

[TexasToker]

I only take off leaves that the plant drops without any effort. If you have to pull hard or use scissors to get the leaf off it's not ready to come off yet.

I do this as well except the day or 2-4 before harvest. I then pretty much cut all fan leaves off and let it wait for execution...er sacrifice. I usually water cure and have noticed a big difference in flavor doing it this way. Do I know why? Not really...does it work for me? Yep.

 

[Fuzz420]

no, but mine fall off because i usually screw something up

 

[GrnMtnGrwr]

Staring at my cabinet today, thinking...

What has more surface area? One big flat fan leaf at the top, or all of the leaves underneath that at different levels? I clipped a few of the larger fan leaves, and it drastically increased the amount of surface area being hit by light.

I am very interested in jrosek's technique... I've done that with vegging plants and I loved the results...

 

[Greyskull]

heres some pics of how i trim my plants...

sdxsb at 11 days veg

sdxsb at 23 days veg before pruning

sdxsb at 23 days veg after pruning

sdxsb at week 5 day 4

mtf start of second week

bubba kush at 11 days veg

bubba kush at 23 days veg before pruning

bubba kush at 11 days veg after pruning

bubba kush at wk 5 day 4

**** i dont really have any close ups that display much of the fan leaf removal... bummer. maybe these pics dont belong... if the op (or anyone else for that matter!) wants the pics outta here gimme a shout and they'll be cleared if deemed off topic.

the fan leaf removal i do is done AFTER the heavy pruning & flowering has started/showing... very similair to how FRIENDinDEED describes

when i trim my fan leaves i always take off the main fan leaves from the main stem and leave about 3-4 fan leaves at the top of the plant. and i always do it the second i start to see those hairs and trichomes starting to form and grow in abundance and also when i see the lower leaves starting to die off. if you look carefully at your lower fan leaves by holding up to your light, even the ones that look seemingly healthy, theres a yellowish tinge to them. i would say i notice this about 3-4 weeks into flower. it also gives those lower bud sites a chance to catch some of the light they would have missed out on originally.

 

[puff adder]

I am trimming my plants to look just like those in the pics.

I have 9 plants per 1K light at day 17 of flower, and they are severely growing into each other. Normally I leave the big upper fan leaves and lollipop heavily, but this time the plants are extra crowded, so I am going with the (hopefully) lesser of two evils by taking many of the big fan leaves as well.

The choice was, leave them alone and get super ultra crowded with NO light making it past the upper canopy, or possibly suffer some yield by taking the big fans, but allowing the light to penetrate into the canopy a little further. This I hope will give better, more uniform buds throughout, instead of some killer top buds and a bunch of lower larf.
This also made for MUCH better ventilation. With my recent bout with PM, I think it's a much better option to take some of the big fan leaves.

The plants that I have trimmed like this have not skipped a beat, in fact the buds almost seem to be filling out faster.

 

[EatMoGrass]

I miss jrosek

Two pounds per 600hps sounds pretty sick! I'd be geeked to even get one pound per 600. But then again I don't grow for weight, I'm always trying for the most effective organic medicine I can. Yeilds come second.

 

[TexasToker]

After reading some of the threads listed here, I hacked 90% of the fan leaves off of some skunk I have about 3 weeks into flower. We will see.

 

[barth]

Since i have been scrogging i clean the leaves up under the screen. I don't remove them all but removing quite a few makes it easier to manipulate the plant under the screen.

I had a problem with Powdery Mildew last run so i dont want to give it a place to get it growing again.

 

[barth]

Wow greyskull you really do trim your ladies up. They appear to like the abuse too.