I stripped those down, then had to go to California for a week. Came back, and buds literally doubled in size. Didn’t do any defoliation last year, and kinda mad I didn’t, had issues in the swamp leaving them be.
Will be stripping the girls down this year though, as I’ve done most every year, and plants just keep chugging along without issue.
Yes it’s a debate, some swear it “hurts” production, but I haven’t seen it.
Obviously if you take ALL the leaves, you’ll have problems, but I typically defol twice during the run in the swamp.
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Sometimes I defoliate for legitimate reasons and sometimes I do it just because I don’t like the look of the thing.
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For sure… i usually give a good trim down going into flower and one right after stretch and then they’re good to go.
I have done this many times lol
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I’m my opinion anyone who says defol hurts, either hasn’t practiced it , or grows stretchy Satty’s .
I’m my tents , if I did not pull big fans and bud blocking leaf , I’d have an unholy mess.
Read in here that buds not in direct light will do as well as ones that are.
REALLY?
Why are the lower hidden buds always smaller then? Seems strange
Why are the lil buds hidden in my plants always light in color , very small , and produce nothing but throw in bin larf??
Why does every commercial grow defol?
Why are all commercial grows tall Lolly popped plants?
Guess it’s bro science huh ??
From mid veg on through 4 weeks of flower , I shall continue to remove EVERY leaf that blocks light to a bud site . Every single one .
I’ll also remove EVERY SINGLE branch that will not achieve canopy height .
I detest trimming larf and have decided long ago that’s not what I want to trim nor grow .
Y’all keep the Woolley mammoth look if you want to , I’m going to defoliate .
So cool we can all agree on this topic
LMAO
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I do this too for the same reason.
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My hands are getting old and starting to hurt. Trimming larf and lil bullshit just makes my hands hurt .
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And I’d argue that trimming larf is harder than regular trimming because the stems tend to be floppier and it wiggles around.
Just not worth it from my labour perspective. If you don’t make the cut you go in the hash pile.
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If there’s no chance of it being a 2g dried top, it’s not gonna be sucking nutes to be a .2 popcorn nug
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The only cure lol
To me it’s a canopy management technique but it’s the least desirable one. I don’t necessarily have a problem with defoliating but usually it’s solving an issue that could also be solved with training, mostly LST, which would let you keep the leaves. Maximizing photosynthetic surface area is not the same as maximizing the number of leaves, but if you do a good job of training the plant you can reduce or eliminate the incentive to defoliate.
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Damn I’m so glade I’m retired , I remember wanting to kill not fire all my guys but I smoked a joint and laughed about the stupid lawsuit when I went on my 1 st vacation in years and left my lead man in charge we where painting a build exterior and they sprayed when I told them to roll and well 15 cars got a total make over thank God for insurance
Wow 
I never took a vacation again till I folded the business
Oh yeah I just pulled some leaves off my plants I to am a muther plucker
Paps
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So is this an experiment where we defoliated a member, lol. What a read.
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Lol
Are we that bored
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Yeah but he was in veg so no big deal.
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True enough but sometimes weird things happen and have to be dealt with. I once did some serious LST and the lowest nodes became these tall wispy branches that were totally out of place. Weird, but chop chop.
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As most who know me I defoliate
I live by the rule if it blocks light or air it’s got to go
With Octopots in a tent iv had over 70 % rh ( oh that’s without a storm season add the storms which kicks the rh up a bit more)
I know @Jetdro you can relate brother !
I’ve increased air flow , added bigger exhaust fans and larger intake fans
I would find leaves wet at times and pm and bud rot.
So I defoliate and then had to switched to mainline style to eliminate even more vegetation
To reduce this effect
Tent grows are like growing in a plastic bag
Have you ever seen that type of rh I think not
I recently went mostly tentless but the space is small and I grow a bit too many plants ( it a problem I think we all have )
But UB why can’t we all just agree on one thing we’re all hear to produce good bud
And the environment is everything so we need to each maintain our own environment as need fit for the conditions at hand to support our grow
Let’s all be kind to each other we are an incredible community and your insults are not needed
And to throw in your political opinions just don’t cut it here , that was only meant to fuel the fire plus this is an international sight who don’t care !
I mean no disrespect to you knowledge about growing and in no way look to prolong the argumentative tone of this thread
So let’s just play nicely now
I’m no kid and have near 20 years growing this plant
Under my belt
And where I’m from this attitude is not acceptable!
I’ve left RIU on my own once I realized what I was dealing with . And to be kicked out of such a low level under rated forum
I would even want to talk about that
Paps
If this is troubling the mods I do apologize to the community for continuing this
Nuff said
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Leaves to plants are like hairs to us; the plant will always grow more than it needs.
I did my first schwazzing and to be honest, probably will never do it again, but it went well:
Then about 8 days later:
For the most part though, I just do periodic select defoliation, usually a couple times a week, whether it’s one leaf or a couple dozen.
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Not that strange in fact for this specific point, it’s mostly hormonal and linked with the vegetative stage. The “transitive node” being most of the time around the 5th. Off course when you FIM early, train early, SOG … it deport/push this space.
I will not talk about auxins and all, i don’t want to be bashed by the pack because too demonstrative ^^
In the pics of progression i’ve posted here it’s pretty much obvious.
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