Does bud itself need direct light? Why?

milkyjoe said:

I leave them both...I wish I had so many fan leaves that some got totally blocked...never seen it

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Check my album, all my plants do it. Are you growing stretchy sativas with the light really far away or something? Maybe because this is CFL it's more of an issue?

Just a little update- the more I research (hard to know what is credible when it comes to cannabis) is that bud is a "sink" e.g. absorbs "energy" more than it will ever produce, despite the fact that it has some chlorophyll.

Though I guess it could still make a difference if the bud gets light- how much it brings in "energy"/nutrients from other areas of plant vs. Mitigating that by producing some locally

(Think USA -has huge amounts of oil locally, but you'd never know considering how much is imported - just uses an insane amount)

ChasingGreen said:

Check my album, all my plants do it. Are you growing stretchy sativas with the light really far away or something? Maybe because this is CFL it's more of an issue?

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Ain't no such thing as a stretchy plant if you feed it right. Nodes stretch only because the plant lacks base cations. But you keep right on thinking whatever makes you happy

milkyjoe said:

View attachment 326776

Ain't no such thing as a stretchy plant if you feed it right. Nodes stretch only because the plant lacks base cations. But you keep right on thinking whatever makes you happy

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You're saying that what causes a plant to stretch, is how it's fed? First time hearing this. I've heard all about the different light spectrums, swing in temp between lights on and lights off, etc. Genetics, as in sativas stretch more than indicas, etc. Explain?

Redrum92 said:

Just a little update- the more I research (hard to know what is credible when it comes to cannabis) is that bud is a "sink" e.g. absorbs "energy" more than it will ever produce, despite the fact that it has some chlorophyll.

Though I guess it could still make a difference if the bud gets light- how much it brings in "energy"/nutrients from other areas of plant vs. Mitigating that by producing some locally

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This is where auxin's (the growth-hormones of plants) come in role.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxin

Also it is important to note that auxin is not synthesized locally, it is transported there by heavily regulated transport mechanism.

Auxin has phototropism, this could be a clue.

Auxin vs cytokinin is what I am saying. As a grower who wants quality yield....your job is to maintain slight cytokinin dominance

Edit....hormones work in parts per billion. They have stupid influence. Just a question...how many parts per billion do birth control pills deliver...avg woman?

milkyjoe said:

Yea...I don't wait for actual bud to form. I cut the suckers before flowering...but leave the fan leaf attached to the site. If you wait for bud you have wasted that energy

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Growin only for shake

milkyjoe said:

Auxin vs cytokinin is what I am saying. As a grower who wants quality yield....your job is to maintain slight cytokinin dominance

Edit....hormones work in parts per billion. They have stupid influence. Just a question...how many parts per billion do birth control pills deliver...avg woman?

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Well let's do the math:

An average man (70 kg) has 10.5 L of extracellular fluid and about 3.5 L of blood plasma, this is the volume where the dosage gets. But we need to calculate for women, who should be smaller and with more fat tissue, so less water content. So I will calculate for 9.5+3=12.5 Liters of fluid (I will also calculate for pure water density, in reality that's not true, also only just a little part of the active substance is free= so can act - the majority is bonded by blood albumin and is inactive.

Levonorgestrel 0.15 mg and Ethinylestradiol 0.03 mg tablets

(http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/consumers/cmi/a/Ava30ED.pdf)

If in 12.5 l (12500 g (gram) or 12500000 miligrams (mg) we have 0.15 respectively 0.03 mg of active substance (does not absorbs the whole quantity) then for

Levonorgestrel

0.15..........12500000
X..............,,1000000

X=0.012 parts per million (ppm)
12 parts per billion

and for Ethinylestradiol:

0.03.........12500000
Y...............1000000

Y=0.0024 ppm
2.4 parts per billion

Hope this is the answer you wanted.

Infinitesimal said:

solar panels consume zero of the electrical energy they create

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That's not true at all. All internal components of a solar panel will have resistance. That means that a significant portion of the energy/electricity produced by a solar panel will be lost as heat.

Compared to the leaves of a plant, solar panels are much more inefficient at harvesting light.

My take on the subject:

Fan leaves are designed by nature to be as efficient at collecting light as possible, and at the same time they act as stores of energy (in the form of sugars). Removing them is taking away energy that would otherwise be used to produce more bud/resin, so I'm not sure why anyone would want to do this.

Sure, if you remove a fan leaf that is hiding a bud site from direct light, then the bud itself and the leaves surrounding it will get more light and make that bud bigger, but that is almost certainly at the expense of other buds.

I think the only "advantage" that defoliation might have is to make the plant think it's under attack (which it is effectively!) and cause it to up it's resin production, which is generally accepted to be a form of defense, however I think there would likely be more resin produced overall if the plant was not defoliated.

When those fans start yellowing (eventually becoming completely brown/dry) towards the end of flower, that is the plant taking all the energy from them and re-locating it to the BUDS. Where else would it go? The plant has no need to produce more leaves or roots or stem - it's soon going to be dead, and the only escape from that is to be born again via the buds/seeds that it produces, so all it's energy goes into those in late flower.

I have no doubt that buds (and all other green parts) have stomata. Even the stems of plants have stomata, although they are not at as high a density as the under-sides of leaves. Plants are exquisitely efficient at using every trick in the book to get ahead of their competitors, so every square mm of surface area weather it be stem or leaf or bud is used.

Even shaded greenery will generate some energy, otherwise why would a plant invest energy in greening it up and KEEPING it green? If that was not the case then plants would be green on top of the canopy and devoid of photosynthetic pigments below.

If you look at the canopy of trees that makes up a rainforest, something like 95% of the green/foliage is in the top 1/3 of a tree's entire height, and below that dense canopy there's little green because so much light is blocked out by the canopy. It makes sense in this case for the tree not to bother with the low light levels when it can do so much better with having leaves high up where there is still a fair bit of light.

In the case of Cannabis, it only grows a few tens of feet at most (compared to a few hundred for trees in the rainforest), and although it often makes a very dense canopy of leaves, enough light filters down to make those lower leaves valuable enough to the plant to keep them around.

I think Cannabis has evolved to take advantage of growing in the shade (under a tree canopy) so it's leaves are very efficient at gathering light even when the levels are low, but, given the chance it will also fully utilize direct sunlight to make bigger plants with even denser foliage and ultimately more weight in buds.

IMHO, rather than defoliating, a better trick to get more light to lower buds is to encourage the plant to grow horizontally by using techniques such as LST, SCROG, SOG, or even layering (my own preference where possible since as well as increasing the light levels encountered on average by each leaf you are also increasing the size of the root system and therefore the supply of nutes/water leading to explosive growth).

By using these techniques you're limiting the vertical growth, so the lowest leaves in the canopy will be getting more light than the lowest leaves on a similar sized plant that is just allowed to do it's own thing and grow up. You're also spreading the plant out over a much larger area, which is important because any given area will have a finite amount of light hitting it.

So if an upright plant has a footprint of 4 square feet, and light falls on that location at an intensity of 100W per square foot, then the most energy it can possibly collect is 4 x 100 = 400W.

If you then take another (similar sized) plant that has been trained horizontally to cover 8 square feet of area, then the most energy it can possibly gather is 8 x 100 = 800W.

Granted the plant with 800W to play with won't make as effective use of all that light compared to the plant with only 400W since that plant has many layers of leaves that will soak up almost every photon, but with double the amount of photons to begin with, the spread out plant already has a huge advantage. If the 400W plant is 80% efficient at gathering all the available light then it gets 320W, and if the 800W plant is only 60% efficient then it still gets 480W. That's 50% more energy, which translates into significantly bigger plants and buds!

Sorry to go slightly off topic there, but I do think this alternative makes much more sense than starving your plants of energy by defoliating them

Any knowledge and insight is much appreciated. Thanks

The more I read and the more experience I gain it seems that this is somewhat of a myth... More intense lights will yield better yes... But not because of the light hitting the bud. I'm sure this will piss some people off as its considered "common knowledge" but hey... To advance the art right? (Completely willing to admit this isn't a sure thing... Just seems to have much more evidence than the opposing side)

Redrum92 said:

So everywhere it seems to be held as accepted that budsites themselves need light. Everywhere you hear stuff like "it makes for dense nugs" or " remove leaves so bud gets more light" ..it seems to have circumstantial evidence so to speak.

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Uhhh ... well, I think it depends on what a "Happy Plant" looks like.

I go over to my neighbors to look at his 4 Candyland x Apollo, now 5 weeks old. They quite obviously, love the sun.


The trimming of leaves is sort of a separate subject.

I notice that different growers have different methods (obvious I guess).

Generally, I don't observe outdoor growers pulling leaves - there's plenty of sun to go around !

I have done it myself with fan leaves shading internodes, on indoor grows.

However, those leaves contain FOOD. The plant needs the food.

What I try to do sometimes is to just tuck the leave out of the way so that the internode gets the light.


A typical outdoor grow might have 1 million leaves, so, from a time management point of view ...


I do notice interesting things about coffee. I have about 10 trees. They seem to not like direct sun. I moved them onto tables next to windows where they get about 6 hours of sunlight, coming through the double pane glass. They seem much happier that way.



But, this website being dedicated to Cannabis growing, HELL YEAH ! pot likes 70 watts per square foot, AKA direct sunlight.


Actually, I wondered, what would happen if you grew somewhere where the atmosphere doesn't filter out the light ? e.g. international space station.

The atmosphere filters out about 1/2 of the light energy. So - 140 watts per square foot in outer space, with a lot more UV and blue end of the spectrum (smaller wavelength, it gets filtered out).

It would be interesting to see how Cannabis does there.

uthenger said:

Well let's do the math:

An average man (70 kg) has 10.5 L of extracellular fluid and about 3.5 L of blood plasma, this is the volume where the dosage gets. But we need to calculate for women, who should be smaller and with more fat tissue, so less water content. So I will calculate for 9.5+3=12.5 Liters of fluid (I will also calculate for pure water density, in reality that's not true, also only just a little part of the active substance is free= so can act - the majority is bonded by blood albumin and is inactive.

Levonorgestrel 0.15 mg and Ethinylestradiol 0.03 mg tablets

(http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/consumers/cmi/a/Ava30ED.pdf)

If in 12.5 l (12500 g (gram) or 12500000 miligrams (mg) we have 0.15 respectively 0.03 mg of active substance (does not absorbs the whole quantity) then for

Levonorgestrel

0.15..........12500000
X..............,,1000000

X=0.012 parts per million (ppm)
12 parts per billion

and for Ethinylestradiol:

0.03.........12500000
Y...............1000000

Y=0.0024 ppm
2.4 parts per billion

Hope this is the answer you wanted.

Click to expand...

Thanks...that was a bettet answer than I ever expected to see.

My point is if you learn to semi control hormones and cteaye enzymes with nutrition energy transfer becomes much more efficient and collecting as much as possible makes sense

If you don't understand that then go ahead and follow bro advise

There is no one answer to this question. Different strains develop and respond to direct light differently. Some strains will have their shaded flowers develop just fine, with good density and normal coloration. Other strains will have larfy, pale and underdeveloped shaded flowers.

Removal of some of the larger fan leaves in the inner part of the plant can open up a path for more light with the strains that don't develop well.