Just how important are fan leaves during flowering?

How important are fan leaves during flower? I know some who take em all off mostly and then some who leave them all on the very top. What do you guys do?

I just finished defoliating my plants in flowering. I take off any leaves that are shading buds, but I try not to take off too many. If that makes any sense.

I take off enough leaves to expose more buds to light.

Defoliating can help allot. I take maybe 40% off.. I never take them all.

Fan leaf are "solar panels" for the lack of a better word. Basically you can remove all fans that are growing towards the interior and those that overshadow bud sites. That being said... although the solar panels convert energy into chlorophyll, those "panels" will also require energy to keep 'em in good steed for the lack of a better word. That "required" energy is not making it to the bud sites (or not as much).

I've been experimenting with "manifolds" The whole idea behind this growing technique... (think of it as a 3/4" pipe (main water line) with 1/2" take offs, water pressure remains constant, throughout the entire 1/2" system). I grow 8 tops and they all receive the same amount of water/nutrition.

Because it takes me 8 weeks in veg (to create the manifold) I leave them on during veg as you denude the branches of all leaves that are below the topping point. Sometimes, not always, back budding occurs on a previously denuded branch, i simply scrape them off. That is why it is also called mainlining. No take offs from the roots to the tops. Once I have flipped, then I only trim interference leaves.

Your canopy is a reflection of what is beneath the soil. Defoliation results in the roots being at "extra" capacity. That extra capacity/energy needs to go somewhere.

ETA: Although some have tried, it is not recommended to exceed 8 tops indoors. 16 and 32, outdoors only.

I've been experimenting with gradually removing most of the fan leaves by the time I harvest. I leave almost all of the leaves through veg. Once the plants are established in flower I begin by defoliating the center of the plant and anything that's shading a bud site. I constantly pick leaves throughout flower. In the later part of flush I pull the remaining fans off so there's less to trim.

I get nasty with stripping... leaves that is... ( Calm down HammerHead lol) I start day 7 of flower and completely strip the lower 1/3 Including all bud sights
Day 14 I take the second third up the stem leaving all bud sights
Day 21 I start thinning the upper third removing about half the leaf mass
Every week following I take anything that May be shading a bud sight Normally a two gallon bucket a week remember you have to keep up as the secondary leaf sets emerge.. my last 3 light 8.5 pound harvest and my trim table didn’t see a single fan leaf if that tells you anything..
Take it slow and don’t take too much leaf mass at once Flowers need good light but I would say I take 80 to 85 percent before week 5 of flower.. my goal personally is to grow great buds not great looking plants.... I have noticed no slow down in growth have healthy plants and huge harvest.... good luck

I'm brutal when I strip my plants, going down to just the growing tips at least twice in veg and day 10-14 in flower. Once I'm past day 21, I pick and choose which leaves to remove until a couple days before harvest, where I remove all the fan leaves.

After a week, you can't even tell I've stripped them other than they look really, really happy.

Switcher56 said:

Fan leaf are "solar panels" for the lack of a better word. Basically you can remove all fans that are growing towards the interior and those that overshadow bud sites. That being said... although the solar panels convert energy into chlorophyll, those "panels" will also require energy to keep 'em in good steed for the lack of a better word. That "required" energy is not making it to the bud sites (or not as much).

.......

Click to expand...

If a leaf requires more energy to 'keep it in good stead' than it produces, how would any plant even survive ? The plant can ONLY make energy from light.
Even if some of the energy that the leaf produces gets used by the leaf... the rest is surplus for growing buds or other vital plant processes. If you remove that leaf then it will make Zero energy.


personally i remove the odd leaf if it is in the way, or congested with other leaves/branches, or as it gets old and fades, but retain all the healthy ones.... if you have any light passing through the leaves and hitting the floor of your grow, that is wasted light and wasted energy that the plant could have produced from it. That light would have been better hitting a leaf !



VG

taking the fan leaves is a little like cutting all the fat off your body - and filtering your blood to remove the glycogen - which your cells need for energy.

The leaves are one of the main ways the plant stores energy - to make buds.

When you're growing outdoors, removing fan leaves is fairly nuts.

Indoors, I understand, you only have so many bud sites, and if a leaf is blocking it ...

If any are curious just do a side by side. Prune up 1 and leave the other intact and see which does better. Its easy to do.

One thing to remember is knowing your plants is key some are easy to strip and handle it well some plants don’t... after about 3 harvest of the same strain you’ll know if your working the strip... then you have plants like DeathStar and they are almost impossible to keep stripped plants like that are wild as fuck To flower... All kinds of variables exist between garden conditions and plant health and so fourth making what’s a Seemingly a simple question quiet complex in its answer...

Leaves absorb light, and hence heat! A empty tent is hotter than a full tent for the same environment. So if you remove too many fan leaves, you may have more heat issues. So the key for me is to be reasonable. For indicas indoor, it's good to remove some leaves to get a good air circulation and to expose some lower buds to light. But too many at once is certainly a stress that we should avoid...

I was a skeptic once, now I make my girls naked...people are shocked..if you do it wrong you delay flowering and if you do it in drips and drabs the plant releases stress hormones, if you time it as one hormone cycle stops and another starts, and all else is dialed, light, water,, food, fresh air etc..then the plant does not notice it..People would not believe me, they are shocked when they see my gals post work, but a week later you can hardly notice that they were naked and the light gets everywhere and a month later if I get all else right the buds are MASSIVE..I was once a skeptic haha and used to be selective..years later my best and biggest have been from girls once bare sticks, as far as I am now concerned, the fan leaves are used by dope to grow vegetatively but sugar leaves and small bud leaves used by buds for photosynthesis..I see no difference when stripped right between buds unstripped and ones stripped, same clone, same system, same food for years, except bigger buds and much improved mid buds and more developed colas, on previously stripped buds..I push my plants growth though, most would also be shocked at how fast I drive my gals..My latest grow, the employers were skeptic but let me have the freedom to do my thing and chance to prove myself, and now two weeks from flower, with the same cut they normally run, they are coverts..they things are so fat and dense and big they have never seen bud like that in the flesh, and there is more of it that they have ever seen, and I need to go deleaf again and you'd never believe me if I told you a month ago they were naked sticks..it is jungle in there now!!

maryjaneismyfre said:

I was a skeptic once, now I make my girls naked

Click to expand...

Well, i'm skeptic also. But next grow i strip one just to see. You use cisors? Or the nails?

John LOQUE said:

Well, i'm skeptic also. But next grow i strip one just to see. You use cisors? Or the nails?

Click to expand...

... a scalpel!

I find it weird this was not explored further . Ive found stripping after the flip, say day 7 will limit the stretching at least slow it down . You can use this both ways .
Most of my varieties dont stretch all that much , so i wont touch them until day 21 after vertical growth stops . But if your growing say gmo you could pull leaves as soon as she starts streching.

Im with the shocker folks and lollypop/strip before potting up or 2 weeks before flip and again day 21 . Then all the fans are gradually plucked before harvest

John LOQUE said:

Well, i'm skeptic also. But next grow i strip one just to see. You use cisors? Or the nails?

Click to expand...

Pluck...you don't want to leave tags of leaf stem or the likes behind, they always start a rot..Gently support the stem and pluck so the plant gives you the leaf, dont take it..that way you dont damage the plant most times..

So here's a comment from another uneducated grower...

Good amount of people saying to strip, others saying not to. The argument that the leaves are the solar panels and that without them the plant won't grow or will be stunted. Fair amount of belief that excessive stripping is bad for the plant.

This was the first time I've used LED panels and I grew a few new strains from seed. I had one plant stretch unlike I've ever seen.. grew between the led strips and about 4" above the panel. I have the panels as high up as I can but there is still 6" of space to the top of the tent.

The colas above the panel are completely undeveloped yet there are fan leaves on the same stem just below the panel that are exposed to a massive amount of light. I'm no botanist nor am I looking to start an argument, but I don't see how the argument of leaving most the fans on applies. This error has shown me that stems can have a good amount of "solar panels" on them yet do dick all for a cola thats 3" above them when the cola itself is not exposed to light. I've always only removed fans that blocked sites but now I'm thinking its time to try a little more and see what happens.

ganjalfthegreen said:

So here's a comment from another uneducated grower...

Good amount of people saying to strip, others saying not to. The argument that the leaves are the solar panels and that without them the plant won't grow or will be stunted. Fair amount of belief that excessive stripping is bad for the plant.

This was the first time I've used LED panels and I grew a few new strains from seed. I had one plant stretch unlike I've ever seen.. grew between the led strips and about 4" above the panel. I have the panels as high up as I can but there is still 6" of space to the top of the tent.

The colas above the panel are completely undeveloped yet there are fan leaves on the same stem just below the panel that are exposed to a massive amount of light. I'm no botanist nor am I looking to start an argument, but I don't see how the argument of leaving most the fans on applies. This error has shown me that stems can have a good amount of "solar panels" on them yet do dick all for a cola thats 3" above them when the cola itself is not exposed to light. I've always only removed fans that blocked sites but now I'm thinking its time to try a little more and see what happens.

Click to expand...

First hand , hands on experience on the job training is the BEST and ONLY wayta know what works on each individual plant/hybrid......that said......I`m a self taught leaf stripper that got talked into it loooooong ago by a self-proclaimed grow guru full of himself , cuz he was hawkin the technique HARD ...... I let him know that he talked me into fuckin up 512 clone only Chem D plants at 4 locations in 8 different fliprooms that I`d already been croppin for 3 yrs , and it stunted em for a SOLID 2 weeks to get back to the original swellage they`d had BEFORE ever fuckin with em , so my point is this Ganjalf.....

I`m not an easily swayed person , and it took awhile to be convinced of his formula of strippin EVERYTHING @ day 21 and again at day 45 cuz his BOG Indica dominant plants looked bomb every run in several rooms , so when it shut my shit down , I scratched my head and my ass till it hit me.......

His plants were finishing @ 7-8 weeks whereas mine took 10 to be all they could be , so my next run I waited till stretch was completely over and THEN I stripped them bitches slowly and kept gradually removing the rest as they popped out till end of cycle and.....

This is strain dependent and the only wayta find out what you been doin to your plants and said it`s working , is to do it my way and see if it increases biomass.....My yields never went up but the end results were more dense and filled in come choptime , and all fans with stems gone , all the sugar leaves and 1-2 leafers jutting out of colas and lateral limbs were more than enough for photosynthesis and bud swellage during the lights out cycle......anyways.....

Stretch is scientifically proven to be 40% of the flower cycle , so next time you wanna strip leaves , try it for instance after 4 weeks on a 10 week cycle and take all off gradually for a few days till they`re gone.....and then get rid of the rest that pop up till end of cycle , and what you`ll find is that your plant will fade easier with all the nutrients stored in fanleaves completely gone , and ....the math applies to earlier finishing plants as well......trimming`s a breeze....Cut my 1 man army tasks by bunches with no excess waste to worry bout when you needta pull a room and replant a room in the same day.....so......

My best advice is to get rid of sucker branches and lollipop if your plants are gonna be bigger than the light will penetrate during veg where you can prune , shape and clean em out before pullin the trigger cuz you`ve still got stretch to go through for final canopy depth.....Once you dial your strains and run em a few times you`ll know EXACTLY how much to take out underneath and see where canopy depth will end up by end of stretch.....aight.....

Wake and bake over.....Hope that helps and there`s many waysta skin a mule as you`ve already seen from the different posts , so bottom line......Gotta do it and see if it works for you and your situation......but...Guaranteed what Verdant Green said about light that gets past the plant is lost forever is spot on.....unless you have reflective material on the floors of all your grow areas like mine were covered in reflectix on all walls floors and ceilings.....then.....light bounces up down and all around with proper diffusion......and thus , no wasted light.....My 2 cents from all those yrs......

Peace.....DHF...... ........

To add my .02 here, I used to do what I called "strategic branch removal" and "strategic leaf removal" after taking clones 2 weeks into flowering. I thought this was one of the best kept secrets of growing at the time. No one ever told me about it, I just figured it out from experimenting. I'd clean up the bottom part of the plants, removing all the small branches, and as they progressed into flowering, I would start aggressively removing leaves. With 800-1300 ppm of co2, 80 degrees in the grow room, the top of the canopy would very quickly block 100% of the light from even getting down into the buds. At first, my idea was to create light tunnels down into the plant, increasing the surface area available to use the light. But as I continued to experiment with it, it seemed like the more leaves I'd remove, the more the plants would redirect growth to the buds. The buds got bigger, denser, stickier, everything I was looking for. The buds also are green and do photosynthesize themselves. I wasn't stripping the plants naked, but I did carry leaves out in 5 gal buckets thoughout the entire flowering time. Especially nearing the end.