Stripping Leaves?

ha ha many of you do have "know-nothing" friends, lol To each his/her own! but those that keep power-leaves on and tuck em or alter their shadow image; good move!!
The fan leaves do create the growth for the plants sites; not saying the sites couldn't benefit by some lite, as this is what happens when the Earth moves it adjusts the angle of lite evening it out. The lower branches, as asked by Yat Yat, will not benefit, as the further the leaves are from the lite the weaker the lite, remove them (lower branches)and send the energies to your closer bigger sites. Generally three feet away is your max distance indoors. Some of you should do an experiment either strip half a plant or do two side by side comparisions. Your pix will tell all. Peace! Bad...

OK i just saw this link in another thread. It is from OG. http://www.weedbay.net/overgrow-thebook/BloomingRipening/1546.htm Basically it boils down to your style of grow and your plants.

Well thanks to Chubby that post verifyed my theory. LOL I am an ole OG'er anyways. BTW Folks used to swear by "putting a nail through the mainstem a few weeks before finish", totally insane!! Might as well mix in purple Gatorade to change the colours!!

badmf said:

Well thanks to Chubby that post verifyed my theory. LOL I am an ole OG'er anyways. BTW Folks used to swear by "putting a nail through the mainstem a few weeks before finish", totally insane!! Might as well mix in purple Gatorade to change the colours!!

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Show em the difference bro.

im a trimmer of the lower third in first weeks of flower and then again if scrogged in the final week. pic below could do with a trim tops arnt getting any bigger but lower growth needs more light penetration.

sog growing i dont really have the need for any trimming so some grows and strains may need a trim while others more indica will kick up a fuss.

badmf said:

Well thanks to Chubby that post verifyed my theory. LOL I am an ole OG'er anyways. BTW Folks used to swear by "putting a nail through the mainstem a few weeks before finish", totally insane!! Might as well mix in purple Gatorade to change the colours!!

Click to expand...

I totally agree with you with not removing the sun leafs, but in ^this^ case...

I have done that experiment which produced some of the cloudy trics to go amber in day or two + "pumped" new & clear resinglands also, so not so insane if you ask it about me.. Im not tellin it will fuckin explode your resin production, but with most strains I have tryed it, it had worked more than well

Here´s a pic of a "pierced" Jock Horror & Neville´s Haze..

JH





Btw.. this JH plant was also girdled & perforated as you can see from ^the^ pic

NH




Btw.. I wouldnt do it "couple" weeks before, but instead a week before harvest, otherwise you can get the exact opposite reaction, by killing the plant too early with bad luck

But back on those big fan leafs... Understand guys that plant sucks it grow energy from those leafs, so if you go and snap them everytime they shade your precious lower nugs -> you end up with lower yield and thats fo shure!!!

You can always carefully twist them away of the light, but dont cut them, or you still keep doing it, everyone for their own...

@thc43: whats the strain on those photos?

Wow, Great pics ! Cheers to you fellas!

Nice Plants Herbalistic.

Before and after.........
14 days flower..

40 days flower.........

looking nice, I think i will pull up a chair and watch this.

:Bump

This being an old thread, surprised to see anyone else posting. I arrived at this one by way of a link from another one jrosek was givivng up some good info in. jrosek if your still around, hope all is well. The info he provided was invaluable. After reading about his method, I had to try it. His knowledge did more for my yields, and quality than anyone else I ever heard from on these forums...any of them! He is right on about the properly timed removal of fan leaves being a boon to your final yield. I have been doing it for a while now, and have developed a theory as to why it works so well in the "technique" described by jrosek.

The fan leaves are the first to imerge. It makes sense that they are the first to appear so that they can begin to provide leaf surface (hence the large initial leaf size) to generate the fuel needed to grow past the seedling stage, and into a healthy vigorous vegitative plant. As the plant grows taller, auxins in the main growing tip, prevent lower branches from growing. In nature left on its own, as the lower branches begin to grow, the larger fan leaves attached to the main stem begin to die. The plant only needed those fan leaves, until it could create more leaf surface (along the branches) to maintain it's growth rate. So by timeing the removal of the fan leaves, you will maintain the plants rate of growth.

Here is where jroseks "technique" makes sense. In an indoor situation where the light intensity is always an issue, and a main reason for poor yields, shorter plants will produce higher quality bud. Less popcorn. Unless you like that sort of thing. I personally think it is more important to maximize the yield per dollar spent. So popcorn is a waste of time and money. By keeping the plants short, close together, and the timely removal of fan leaves, will create a "budsicle". Leaving fan leaves on, reduces the amount of leaf surface available to the plant due to shading. period. It's a very simple idea really. And anyone who doesn't get it...well, give it a shot.

I'm sure that this is not the best "technique" for everyone for a lot of reasons, but stripping leaves does work, and there are benefits to it. Peace!

Much love jrosek, where ever you are.

i tried it his way once with four plants and got four monsters. of i think it was 'white widow'. then i tried and tried and couldn't dupe it again. but i know i forgot something. over the years now, i have given up on it. maybe what i forgot was to use only perlite and vermiculite, or maybe i forgot to trim the fans at 20/40.

in any event i have 8 plants that have been growing and going CRAZY in just p/v with GH nutes. they are all clones of the same indica. they are all the same age and same size in same room.

today i think it's been two or three weeks, and i have cut off every fan leave off of FOUR of the eight. i do NOT have a camera, but i will subscribe to this thread and let you all know how it turns out.

from what i have read, it depends alot on the strain. mine is 100% indica, (shante devi from tiki),as per 'size does matter' thread and jroseks recommendations (he only rec'd that it be indica). i am using 6/9 micro/bloom to 8/16 micro/bloom, GH only. my 1000W HPS is on a track, however, i dont know if that will matter, about ten feet long and it takes a couple minutes to make a trip one way.

i so hope i can dupe my first effort. i spent a LOT of money and time, years, trying to figure out what i did wrong. only to give it the fuck up. i read his posts over and over but still dont know. i did, at that time, use Flora Nova instead of the two of three parts.

also, none of the eight plants has been topped, and they spent about a month in veg, about 16" tall when i put them into bloom, about 24" tall now.

time to settle this. wish i had pics but my camera is dust. peace out

Alot of people including myself grow this way.It is just another way to train your plant.And just like all the different methods of training some people have success where others dont.You have to find the way to grow and train that is right for you.Im speaking about defoilating...It is different from trimming off a couple shade leaves that are blocking the light from the flower.Nothing wrong with doing that eaither.

Good Luck with your grow.Hope your plants gift you a bountiful harvest.

okay, two Q's

first, trimming is "bad" cause it removes the sugars the plant needs for budding". so then what about all these feeds to make up for that like 'sugar daddy' and Sweet???

also, i am about 45 days into bloom with some plants that are not producing big buds just popcorn. i think they got too hot, cause that's what those ones that baked did too.
can i trim all the fans off, every one, and make any colas? i have one i did that too, i will let you know if anything good comes of it.

ps. jrosek used buckets with NO holes in them. i am in a modified hempy bucket

Marquis de Sod said:

okay, two Q's

first, trimming is "bad" cause it removes the sugars the plant needs for budding". so then what about all these feeds to make up for that like 'sugar daddy' and Sweet???

also, i am about 45 days into bloom with some plants that are not producing big buds just popcorn. i think they got too hot, cause that's what those ones that baked did too.
can i trim all the fans off, every one, and make any colas? i have one i did that too, i will let you know if anything good comes of it.

ps. jrosek used buckets with NO holes in them. i am in a modified hempy bucket

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Trimming isnt bad.Anything the plant needs can be put back into it.

To understand the answer to this question at least for the time being a grower is gonna have to grow it out for themselves and see what happens.Books and even the info here will only take you so far.MJ hasnt been studied to death like most other things.So until that happens we will have to figure it out ourselves..."hands on".

A good place to start is the thread here on "defoilating"

Good Luck..

jroseks thread was great.
I'm not doiing a sog but my plants were pushing 42" before going into 12/12, BOG gear and the fan leaves are huge on most of his stuff
they were really blocking light below.
I decided to remove fans from the plants that weren't very bushy.
they looked pitifull afterwords but within a few weeks the nonbranching growth at the nodes blossomed and I think it was the right thing to do

i guess that would be here. https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=174163&highlight=defoliating

over 1300 posts??? i will see you next year....

thats one of the best stickeys in IC mag... if you dont even want to read it there isnt much to say....

The 20/40 imo is a guide, since the girls go into flower bear of leaves it takes about that long for new leaves to be big enough to block again... good rule of thumb is not to remove more then 25-30% of the growth at any one time and you shouldnt hurt them.