I'm an old-school grower that has just gotten back into it... I thought it was common knowledge that you trim "water leaves"... not too much... be sensible with it... but that was a long time ago, and reading these kinds of threads I'm not too sure anymore. We had mostly learned from Ed R.'s book and word of mouth. We did out-door grows back then... and I'd always used it indoor too. (nothing major, just for fun and to have weed for the summer when we were kids)
Anyway my logic at the time was that more smaller leaves have more surface area to collect light... and we thought that these just sucked up water... the plants we grew at that time seemed to stretch out much more than some of the strains today, so maybe less is needed for some of these really well bred strains. Unless you did toppings and leaf trimming you wouldn't get as good of a "bush out".
Another interesting thing I just learned from watching "What Plants Talk About" (http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70279447 ) is that "trichomes" (we just called them crystals) are a defense mechanism against predators. The plants they studied in this nova doc produced them to lure and poison certain bugs. I hadn't seen that mentioned so I thought I'd throw that into the pot.
Anyway my logic at the time was that more smaller leaves have more surface area to collect light... and we thought that these just sucked up water... the plants we grew at that time seemed to stretch out much more than some of the strains today, so maybe less is needed for some of these really well bred strains. Unless you did toppings and leaf trimming you wouldn't get as good of a "bush out".
Another interesting thing I just learned from watching "What Plants Talk About" (http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70279447 ) is that "trichomes" (we just called them crystals) are a defense mechanism against predators. The plants they studied in this nova doc produced them to lure and poison certain bugs. I hadn't seen that mentioned so I thought I'd throw that into the pot.