Its strain dependant. The 3 pound a light guy recommends something he calls schwazzing, which essentially is removing every single fan leaf the day you switch it to flower. You should also look through MiamiMango’s feed on Instagram. He does fan removal I want to say day ~20 something and 40 something after the switch.
I had always been skeptical of these techniques but at least MiamiMango seems to have proven me wrong. He is growing in rockwool, drain to waste, with a shit ton of light and environmental controls. I’m still skeptical it would be that beneficial for organic growers or people who don’t have everything dialed in like he does.
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I’ll check him out! I’m a little sceptical myself when it comes to removing fan leaves. It makes sense to me that they could provide some energy and sustenance for the buds… what do I know tho, practically nothing 
so I’ll check him out! Thanks!
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It doesn’t make much theoretical sense to me either. I used to push back against recommendations of it very hard. I don’t anymore. My thinking went, fan leaves should be optimized for photosynthesis; then the sugar is translocated wherever the plant needs it. But things are always more complicated than you would think. The stems and flowers of Cannabis also clearly have chlorophyll.
Perhaps in a cultivated state, under some circumstances, it’s more efficient to have a flower-only canopy with deeper light penetration than to use the leaves. Leaves are fast and easy to grow compared to flower and stem. In the wild a plant needs to compete for light to survive, which means quickly claiming light resources before it is crowded out. If competition is removed, maybe it is more productive for a farmer to eliminate leaves and force production of (the still photosynthetic) flowers. Perhaps also, direct light induces phenotypic changes in plant morphology, such as increased density and resin production, so you get more dense, quality buds and less larph.
Those are just hypotheses, but I am otherwise at a loss to explain the clearly effective procedure. You need to have canopy management on point though. If you have a single cola in a room and take the leaves off, it’s not going to help. You need your canopy packed front to back, top to bottom with bud sites.
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I have a lot more to learn. I read a lot and push myself to learn as much as I can about cannabis but so far it’s mostly been about growing it and not the biology and science behind it. Im basically just growing four plants, topping them once or twice, removed the bottom growth a week before switching to bloom and that’s it. Not using scrog method or anything like that. So I guess since I’m taking a more natural approach in the way I’m letting the plants grow it seems to make sense to me to let the fan leaves just do what they do. I do squeeze and bend them down periodically to allow more light to reach the tops and other bud sites. Can I ask, assuming you’ve tried more growing methods than I have, what method so far has brought u the best buds with good yield? Do u usually just let your plants do whatever or are u using high stress training methods?
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