In indoor grows, defoliation works. Period. If it didn’t, all the professional big money grows wouldn’t do it. Though interesting, no amount of “studies” will convince me otherwise.
Once I began aggressively defoliating my 2 x 4 grow space, my yields doubled. Whenever I hear anyone talking of the “danger” of defoliation, it just pisses me off, as they don’t know what they’re talking about. The “3 lbs a light” guy, Jonathon Haupt used to do that, he coined the term for extreme defoliation as “Schwazzing” , “it’s only for experts” buy my book for $500 bucks, etc. Horseshit. Anyone can do it and do it well, it’s a weed, you can’t kill it. I take every large leaf one week before flower, and 3 weeks after 12/12. It’s always fun to see them explode after defoliating. They want to live!
Light=better and bigger buds. That’s not debatable. Defoliating exposes bud sites to more light, virtually eliminating popcorn buds. Thousands of examples on grow sites of canopies of nothing but large buds. Coupled with low or high stress techniques, a 30% increase is a conservative estimate on increased yields, in my experience.
Of course, that’s only indoors. Interesting thread, thanks for sharing.
Just using these as examples of structure, ignore the strains.
When you trim a plant you can clearly see the part of the bud that was up against the stem is never as caked in trichomes as the outer part of the bud that was exposed to light and airflow, same for bud that is growing up against other bud. The bigger the bud and the tighter it stacks the smaller the ratio of exposed surface area you end up with.
When you increase the number of colas in an area (and defoliate them out of necessity ), you end up with more but smaller buds.
For strains that grow with the structure of the tunabreath example I think no matter what you do, you’re always going to get nice individual nugs even with fewer tops. For strains that stack up tight and produce monster colas I think increasing the top count and forcing the plant to produce smaller more spaced out buds over a larger area of stems can push things in a desirable direction.
They are completely linked, that’s the core of my point, defol a loose plant with few colas and you will probably reduce yields.
Defoliation is what allows you to get away with a very high number of tops.
Talking about defoliation vs not in isolation is what causes so much confusion, because it will always depend, it will sometimes be a terrible idea and sometimes be necessary to avoid disaster.
These ones i didnt defoliate at all and the buds got so huge the fell on top of eachother got 5 lbs dried and had so much i was sick of smoking it reason why i put out at least 3 differ plants i have to switch up or i go nuts unless its frankie i could smoke her every day.Copas Turkish Twist.Some genetics are more forgiving that others with leaf to bud ratio its a crapshoot sometimes .This was a hash plant so even the trim was covered in tricomes.You fould roll joints out of it and still get blasted.
No facts here only statements. I first want to say that I agree with everyone. The people that say that it does and that it don’t. I agree with it being different for each plant some favor it and some don’t. If our beloved plant have taught us anything to me its been that it’s so many variables. Everything depends. I do know that at the moment we don’t have the funding or resources allocated to cannabis like other crops from big ag. So until something is repeatable over and over it isn’t accepted as scientific fact. For example a cigarette grown and smoked in California will be the same in Florida even if the tobacco is grown in different places. The grow the harvest the cure the process is all standard. It’s been studied researched and repeated until they literally got it down to a science pun intended. Now for my few inputs first to get the most possible yield not increase yield we defoliate to get more budsites in the light when grown indoors. Because the light indoors on plant is flat and not like the sun you have to do certain methods to get more sites under the light and sometimes removing leaves achieves this. In my opinion tucking didn’t work so I removed them. So one can say it increased yield I say it gave me the best possible outcome due to the variables I had to work with. My other input is in nature there are so many things that like to eat our plant that it has evolved to produce more resin, trichnomes, and terpenes. So once again we can’t say until we can through science say what does and doesn’t increase yield. For example some say synthetic nutes are the best way and some say organic. Some say sterile environment is best some say microbes give the best genetic expression. Also we don’t fully know how many micro nutrients our plant actually need and love. They are constantly changing which ones are essential or beneficial. So Once again with more science and research we can dial it in to everyone being able to see full yield amount repeatability, terpene profile and genetic expression. Rant over but I hope I helped a little
Seasoned indoor growers will attest to the fact that they have grown cultivars with fluffy tops closest to the light and cultivars with rock-hard buds at the bottom of the plants farthest from the light. It’s cultivar dependent. Plants mature from the top down in most cases. Larf with some cultivars is just genetics. If you’re that concerned about yield, harvest in two or three stages lowering the light as you do so. It’s not worth the extra effort to me, but to each their own.
As for “Professional” nurseries, they have to defoliate because they cram so many plants into a small space they risk mold with poor air flow. Their selections are performed and decided upon way before they start production, in most cases.
New growers shouldn’t be concerned with yield, they should be concerned with healthy plants. The rest comes with experience.
I can’t believe this thread keeps sucking me back in.
Deppends on now defenition, you can remove all leaves one week or 2 days before harvest and the trimming is much easier but pre harvest defoliation isn’t a true defoliation because the plant is ready and in a few days won’t be much change, just the trics getting mature.
The question is if by 2nd week flowering a defoliation have better or worst effect on yelds.
Now yeld is one thing, big buds is another, and you can have few big colas and many popcorn buds or several smaller colas and sligtly bigger popcorn buds or even no popcorn buds if you cut them out, all 3 with same yeld, same grams after dry.
The value of a big or small bud is personal, I like both because smaller buds dry faster and can be consumed earlier, easier to transport, while big buds are big buds and have the inverse settings mentioned for popcorns.
Another pertinent thing is I assume defoliation on photos because we can stress them and delay flowering, on autos I just lst and that’s it, let them grow.
But I will try to abandon defoliation on photos as well because of what I have been observing.
Identical genetics will not grow the same in California vs Florida. Environment, soil, latitude, etc… it all affects how the plant expresses its genetics.
I think science is actually with you this time because having their leaves removed is just like having them eaten. Some plants will have the genetics or epigenetics to respond with a rush of new growth if they have the resources.
One piece of the picture I don’t think has been mentioned yet is that bud and trichome growth is about resource allocation. I think of plants as balancing their use of resources to optimize reproductive chance. We’ve bred away from that as much as we can toward making more thc and terpenes, but since that’s mostly on the flower, the plant is still doing its best to be a seed factory.
What signals tell a particular set of cannabis genetics to make the biggest buds with the most THC, vs investing more in roots and leaves and holding back energy reserves to complete seed development?
I think of a plant growing in perfect conditions as feeling relaxed. Its fat and happy and if we’re maximizing growth it has large energy reserves ready to cope with any disasters and will develop nicely and hold those reserves to the very end of seed maturity just in case.
We want those resources used. I read that there’s some evidence mild intermittent water stress and pest damage can improve crop yield and THC. I’ll bet it’s all running on the same cue cards. “Life has gotten dangerous, put the reserve energy into use and make your flowers sooner, protect them with more trichomes, and make those seeds!” Then of course we don’t allow pollination, stress them lightly again, and they double down on the drive to reproduction and throw everything into that.
It’s true as someone mentioned that if you remove leaves and they have to regrow, that’s useing energy. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean its taking energy away from bud & trichome growth. If a plant has stored energy reserves and extra nutrients saved up for emergencies, it can use those to regrow leaves. The stress might also kick it into high gear, so some of those activated reserves also get thrown into flower development.
This is all just my brain trying to think things through with logic and a systems perspective based on the data I’ve managed to assimilate.
@navy66 thank you for starting an interesting discussion thread and keeping it enjoyable with positivity and openness
I defoliate and prune, sometimes pretty hard. Lots of plants in a small tent and it just makes sense for me.
I grow in rockwool and use the Growlink system with probes. I can continuously measure and track water uptake down to the 10 second interval.
When I prune/defoilate, my plants basically shut down all nutrient uptake for about 48 hours. The vast majority of water leaving my block is due to evaporation. After about 48 hours, they kick back in gear again and start drinking.
It certainly seems this would slow down maturation of the plant. But I still do it, because it’s a mess if I don’t.
I’ve worked on the very similar topic in the past months at the research facility
So far, all I can say is…
Your defoliation strategy should be directly related to light interception in cannabis cultivation.
So biomass partitioning didn’t get affected by vegetative/generative strength.
I didn’t measure the root so careful to mention about root
But visual grading wise, root doesn’t get affected by defoliation yet overall plants growth can be limited when root growth isn’t enough from the beginning
i defoliated most matured leaves, once on cultivar A and twice on cultivar B.
How much defoliated? Defoliation decision was made based on light extinction but approximately saying removed bottom 1/3 of the leaves every defoliation.
Exactly what im going to do this year i let these guys get to around 6 foot then i pulled them sideways over the grow plot over the logs at least 3 feet out 3 plants total and all the tops flipped up and out making a ton of medium size Tops that are quickly turning into large sites over the whole board.Wait till you guys see me strip the living shit out of these ladies and post it right here so we can see what happens I got em all jacked up on Mountain Dew and Dr earth Dosed with ECW and malted barley with a touch of floralisious this year With Basalt.The Kat West aint gonna have shit on this Strip show.Gonna be bare at least halfway down and all larf sites promptly removed leaving all the main tops to go skyward.Just got a loving Spray of Elemental sulpher and the smell just cranked up to 10.I can smell these Frankies and Frankie Crosses i did 50meters away from my truck coming home from work😎
), you end up with more but smaller buds.
I think science is actually with you this time 
because having their leaves removed is just like having them eaten. Some plants will have the genetics or epigenetics to respond with a rush of new growth if they have the resources.
, I think you made a good resume of this question … 
