I guess it could depend haha. In the example I posted the plants were very densely planted and given a lot of compost teas and other goodies, so together with fungal mycelium I would guess they would help plants struggling as well through mycelial communication and nutrient exchange.
On the other hand most old school growers I knew that would plant huge monster plants in our area always said never to defoliate unless the plant drops it on its own, otherwise it ends up hurting your final yield and quality. They would then do 2-3 harvests of the huge plants, cutting down colas to the inner larf, which would expose the larf to light and after 2-3 weeks the buds swell and become mature. Rinse and repeat until the plant freezes to death and then you got material for hash too
Right… I don’t have pictures right now but harvested 3 days ago, the plant less toutched achived much better results.
I will try not to mess my plants anymore from now on.
At least I will try.
And despite there isn’t a sure answer, I got mine.
I was gonna post this one or something similar. It seems that defoliation does nothing to improve yields, it just affects overall distribution of flowering. Less airy lowers, more dense tops, the same cannabinoids spread across less volume of buds…
on that note, I’m just gonna say the idea that defoliation increases yield just seems extremely unscientific right out the gate. Less ability to produce its own food means a happier, stronger plant? No way. I can only see this working for indoor growers who can afford creating a delay in veg to get a better yield after flip. Or who need to manage humidity, but that’s another story. Outdoor growers don’t get to arbitrarily decide when to flower, if we lose a week or three from the plant bouncing back from deliberate stress that’s 3 less weeks of veg we just lose, period.
It doesn’t make any sense from a theory standpoint, but neither do a lot of stoner myths, like “hanging a plant upside down so the thc drips from the roots to the buds” A lot of these stories imo came to be from good ol’ “pot monkey see, pot monkey do”
There’s hardcore proponents of both schools, and the ones with the best advice end with something like “at the end of the day, you’ll find out what works for you”
After these last two Harvests im leaning more twords defoliation due to sheer exhaustion during Harvest time and all the trim i have to do.Im the inly Grower in my House and im a one man trim jail army.Takes me at least 5 days running 4 to 5 hour shifts from wet trim to Dry trim and into the jars.This year im going to defoliate a little more and measure the end result not by weight but quality and ease.Im starting to prefer epicurean over quantity i grow more that i can smoke now i know how to get them big.
Not totally relevant to the discussion but something I do is trim off all the fan leaves a day or few before harvest.
It helps trimming. Trimming is really two motions, twisting for fan leaves and haircutting for sugar leaf. Not having to switch between these two motions makes trimming much easier and is easier on the hands and wrists.
Like I said in my previous post, I believe that some genetics respond favorably. Almost like it triggers a vigorous response. Science be damned.
Seeing it with your own eyes in your own garden on the dry weight scale after being coached by a grower who runs massive rooms and showed his techniques, it’s very hard to accept that defoliation , when done properly and at the right times in the life stage has a negative affect. On some strains sure but not all.
I don’t really want to debate this with anyone. There are grows after grows from those who practice defoliation , skirting, lollipopping ect ect. Seeing is believing.
I’d suggest that those who ran these studies, didn’t study the right plants and came to thier conclusions based on a narrow scope.
Hey all: OP here. I love all this stuff to read. Thank you to everybody (I don’t care what you view is, thank you.). I’m not ignoring anyone, just slow and having a moment. Haha. Cheers.
Other people’s experience be damned, I don’t believe them Not trying to argue either but I can only imagine increased vegetative growth would have to come with reduced rootball growth. Maybe if you’re dumping tonnes of ferts into the plants they don’t need the extra root space, but idk.
However, even if defoliation did lead to a heavier weigh at the end of harvest for certain special varieties without an increased fert regimen or increased veg time, reduced roots has got to mean lower ability to produce cannabinoids, aka lower thc% in the final product. Which I’d bet is not a big deal to large scale growers so they just don’t notice - they can lab shop for the numbers they want on the packaging, and they move lbs. What’s the use in spending time and money on quality when quantity is their money maker?
Unless I had a really trusted friend do two groups of plants side by side, I’ll never believe defoliation is helpful. I don’t have someone like that but I do have scientific researchers who have attempted the same thing with (I assume) much stricter controls and much better experiment design than an amateur would likely achieve, and they didn’t get jack doodley out of it. That’s pretty much good enough for me
“The
biosynthesis of secondary metabolites is energy consuming and was
likely to reduce due to defoliation and the loss of photosynthetic leaf
area, but since no increase in inflorescence leaves was seen, nor reduc-
tion in yield (Fig. 5C-D), the energy demand for the biosynthesis of the
cannabinoids was satisfied by the existing inflorescence leaves and the
photosynthetic tissues in the flowers. Alternatively, the required energy
or substrates could have been already stored in the plants’ stems or
flowers as sugars or fatty acids at earlier stages of development, prior to
the defoliation, and this issue and other aspects of sink-source relations in cannabis physiology should be further looked into.”
It looks as though they saw no yield reduction.
To me this study says defoliation helps promote chemical uniformity without loss of yield. I, personally, want my lowers to be similar to my tops if possible.
Note: I’m definitely talking about indoor. So are they in the study I linked. Outdoor is not my wheelhouse and what you do is entirely environment dependent
I might be conflating with another study about plant spacings, which talked about taller plants with fluffier lowers when spaced tightly and bigger buds when spread out, but more or less the same yield both in flower and cannabinoids. My oopsie
It seems to me that defoliation would raise the chance of running out of a nutrient or other. I do most of my growing in living soil and want to avoid amending. That’s why I don’t do it for yield.
I’m just gonna say the idea that defoliation increases yield just seems extremely unscientific right out the gate. Less ability to produce its own food means a happier, stronger plant?
I’ve never been convinced defoliating directly increases yields or makes the plant stronger, though some claim it does both, I think in isolation it’s more likely to do the opposite.
Instead I see defoliating as a necessity to maintain good growing parameters across more of the plant while growing with very high plant density. The yields are coming from the latter, defoliating is just what’s required to facilitate growing in such a way.
If you have 3 colas coming up through one square of your netting, you are not going to be able to just leave that alone. The fan leaves will overlap, lay up against bud, no matter how well you control your environment, how many circulation fans you have, there will be condensation where leaves overlap, there are going to be 100%RH micro climates and almost no light getting to lower bud sites because of the huge blanket of fan leaves high up in the canopy. When growing plants this densely there is no choice on defoliating, it’s that or have countless issues with bud rot and poor bud development on all but the top of your plants.
Using the 3 colas through a square in a net example, I don’t think defoliating will yield as much as a single undefoliated cola using that same space, but they obviously don’t need to. I think this is the real core of the argument, do you think the one cola, with enough space to stretch it’s fan leaves out-performs the 3 that have been stripped? Me personally I don’t think it does.
A lot of these stories imo came to be from good ol’ “pot monkey see, pot monkey do”
