COorganics - No-Till Organic - 2nd No Till Run - Indoors - GSC Forum Cut

[Tomster420]

Hey guys and gals following along here, what's your take on defoliating to increase yield. I usually do take some leaves and also train my plants.

This one (GPK) had not a single leaf taken ever from her. (And has not had any training)

Light barely passes at all through those thick leaves.
But she is producing nice sized buds already at the dawn of day 33.

Curious to what others think.

From what i can see she could use a minor defol, those 3 or 4 fan leaves up top can go. Its all up to you though. As others have said you can do it veg or flower. Minor or major defoliation for me is about letting the light get to bud sites that wouldn't get light or that are shaded by these fan leaves. I'm trying a constant defol on our GPK, read it on someones thread that they had defoliated all throughout the veg and flower periods. Our GPK seems to responding well to the LST and major/minor defols, in conclusion to my ramblings here is what i can suggest....
Start off by taking the biggest of fan leaves off the are covering the most area, let her recover. Then what you do is after her recovery go back and see if the leaves that were left have grown and find any that are covering bud sites, snip them. You can see on my journal the way we have gradually gone from a initial major defol to now much more minor, in flower but hey if you don't try it how will you know it doesn't/does work? All very exciting to see the difference in our GPK's with different methods used

 

[ClosedCircuit]

I think a bottom defol is never a bad idea. Its not necessary, but you can pretty much tell which leaves will begin the necrify/are pretty much useless at the bottom of the plant. If they are a deep shade of green and of decent size keep them. If they look limp, scrawny, and off colored id say shave them.

 

[bobrown14]

Here's a little science on the subject.

Thanks CO for the link - my hunch has been confirmed. I've actually tried different pot sizes this grow with same genetics. Larger 10gal pots gave me MUCH larger plants but the flowering took about 5-7 days longer to see budletts - on the 5 gal containers the stretch was more pronounced and I had to water every day. I've got one more 7 gal container and one more plant to transplant. Even tho they are in flower and transplanting "usually" is a no go, I transplanted the one girl that was showing signs of root bound (and was) and sure enough she seemed to bush out pretty much over night and now after a few days she's larger than her sister that is left in the 5gal pot. I'll stop and the garden shop and get a 10gal pot - and try and get a shorter one. Those big containers need more head room. which I'm limited with on the 3rd floor.

Summarize - 5gal container minimum for no-till organic
7-10gal good, larger are better.

So yeah CO thanks for helping me out again! You rock.

Cheers

 

[bobrown14]

criteria can be simple, leaves that are in the way. and only a small percentage of the total amount of leaves on the plant. im evolving in my thinking everyday, so ask me again in a month. ha haa.
.

I don't generally defoil at all with one exception - all the small lower leaves and I cut those lower popcorn buds and use them for clones. I read somewhere the lower to the ground you cut for clones the better since they have more rooting hormones (for lack of the correct term) in the stems of the lower branches. So I take those little popcorns use em for clones and trim those little leaves there at the soil - they will eventually yellow and fall off in short order so I help them along and use them for top dress.

I'm with you on the large buds and big plants. I very rarely top or de-foil, for big leaves on top of buds I just tuck those leaves in under the buds. They get used to the new position over night and adjust. Those leaves I feel are there for good reason, think solar pannels. Late in flower when the plant is finishing I feel they use up the stored nutrients/energy in those large leaves and I think that's why the ladies stop drinking water late in flower they are using up the stored reserves. Think about it, natural way for a plant to keep and store energy in case of drought or other issues with environment. Also all during flower they are soaking up the light energy, a larger leaf can intake and store more energy. Plus that, those big ass buds look GREAT with some big fan leaves sticking out the sides!!

I dont feel de-foil helps with yields unless you are training them LST style and the like. If you are going to train then yes by all means de-foil to get the ladies to do what you want ... 2 different ways to grow, which one is better/higher yields?? I'd say there's arguments for both ways. Me, I prefer less work for me, specially this time of year when we need to attend to our outdoor gardens.

 

[SweetSue]

I think a bottom defol is never a bad idea. Its not necessary, but you can pretty much tell which leaves will begin the necrify/are pretty much useless at the bottom of the plant. If they are a deep shade of green and of decent size keep them. If they look limp, scrawny, and off colored id say shave them.

Sorry CC. This made me smile. Remember my plants? The ones with a total of five, small necrotic leaves at harvest? LOS soil is a game-changer.

 

[SweetSue]

I don't generally defoil at all with one exception - all the small lower leaves and I cut those lower popcorn buds and use them for clones. I read somewhere the lower to the ground you cut for clones the better since they have more rooting hormones (for lack of the correct term) in the stems of the lower branches. So I take those little popcorns use em for clones and trim those little leaves there at the soil - they will eventually yellow and fall off in short order so I help them along and use them for top dress.

I'm with you on the large buds and big plants. I very rarely top or de-foil, for big leaves on top of buds I just tuck those leaves in under the buds. They get used to the new position over night and adjust. Those leaves I feel are there for good reason, think solar pannels. Late in flower when the plant is finishing I feel they use up the stored nutrients/energy in those large leaves and I think that's why the ladies stop drinking water late in flower they are using up the stored reserves. Think about it, natural way for a plant to keep and store energy in case of drought or other issues with environment. Also all during flower they are soaking up the light energy, a larger leaf can intake and store more energy. Plus that, those big ass buds look GREAT with some big fan leaves sticking out the sides!!

I dont feel de-foil helps with yields unless you are training them LST style and the like. If you are going to train then yes by all means de-foil to get the ladies to do what you want ... 2 different ways to grow, which one is better/higher yields?? I'd say there's arguments for both ways. Me, I prefer less work for me, specially this time of year when we need to attend to our outdoor gardens.

Question bobrown: I only have one grow behind me and my plants sit on a SWICK, which makes my water usage different from conventional methods. I noticed the decrease in water consumption right before I harvested, within days actually. How long before harvest do you notice this decrease on your own plants? My thought in asking was that I might have been able to push them a few more days (don't we all second guess after we harvest?).

 

[COorganics]

Holy shit. Check this guys plants out. Do you think they could even do any defoliation on these plants?

Crazy. Another thing on defol, it seems taking leaves makes the plant produce more leaves. I have noticed this for a while, and only recently put it together. I'm lacking all kinds of science, but my thoughts based on what I've observed are:
1) might be better to not defoliate at all, leaves are designed to take in light, the energy still goes to the buds
2) when defoliating, the plant tries to replace the leaves it lost, do you want your plant growing leaves or buds when your flowering it?

Pure speculation really, in my warped hippy dippy brain this makes perfect sense.

 

[CronicHempHog]

yep you are spot on it takes a certain amount of leaves to support the plant
the more leaves you take off the more it wants to replace
because buds do not do photosynthesis the leaves do
so you may end up with more leafy bud
its why i only do selective defoliating and no real heavy defol only on the bottoms for me clear it below so the plant doesn't waste its energy down below

 

[ClosedCircuit]

Sorry CC. This made me smile. Remember my plants? The ones with a total of five, small necrotic leaves at harvest? LOS soil is a game-changer.

Ya that's why I'm saying its not necessary. If the situation calls for it do it, but not every plants requires it. With scrog alot of the leaves below the canopy do not get very much light...some maintain a deep shade of green and some don't look quite right. Granted I didn't have many discolored leaves to remove.

 

[Ranger275]

b.real pointed out something interesting about defol. He says that defol affects not only the size, but the shape of buds also. According to him, defol buds are small and round, whereas non-defol buds are pyramidal. I never defol, but I'm mostly an outdoor guy, so why would I? Gaia handles all that for me.

 

[bobrown14]

On de-fiol, I'm in the not needed side. However.. the first time I grew it was outdoors in my back yard. Someone threw seeds in my compost. So plant started growing but I needed stealth so I de-foiled her like a punk rocker. I mean NO fan leaves at all. The plant grew 30 colas at least 12 to 18" long buds - plant didn't even look like cannabis, more like a small bush with nothing but forearm sized colas sticking out all around. I dont think I could do that indoors, although I've seen some LST tricks that get that many colas indoors. That's a lot of work. I remember doing all that de-foil, it was like training a Bonsai tree, constant maintenance. So I guess if you're going to train it would benefit but to just willy-nilly de-foil I'm "guessing" no real benefit, and probably nugz are smaller. When you see those really huge colas they all have fan leaves sticking out!! So hey I'm sticking with the fan leaves until science tells me different.

 

[bobrown14]

Question bobrown: I only have one grow behind me and my plants sit on a SWICK, which makes my water usage different from conventional methods. I noticed the decrease in water consumption right before I harvested, within days actually. How long before harvest do you notice this decrease on your own plants? My thought in asking was that I might have been able to push them a few more days (don't we all second guess after we harvest?).

Hey there SS - CO talked me into waiting my last run and it was worth it. I let them go until I started to see the plant stress and even got like 3 seeds on one bud out of 100s!! They really stop drinking..its abrupt and you know when it happens. You dont need to wait too long. I think I waited about 4-5 days after they stopped water uptake and chopped. They were starting to fox-tail as well which is to me is the sign (fox-tails) to chop IMHO.

 

[SweetSue]

Hey there SS - CO talked me into waiting my last run and it was worth it. I let them go until I started to see the plant stress and even got like 3 seeds on one bud out of 100s!! They really stop drinking..its abrupt and you know when it happens. You dont need to wait too long. I think I waited about 4-5 days after they stopped water uptake and chopped. They were starting to fox-tail as well which is to me is the sign (fox-tails) to chop IMHO.

Thanks bobrown. That's good information to know. Thinking back I think that was when I harvested. I had the advantage of having Doc Bud watching over my shoulder and he pretty much let me know when they were ready. They had to talk me down a couple times too. LOL!

I like foxtailing. I find it beautiful and intriguing. Makes me think their wild sides are coming through.

 

[SweetLeef]

I made a small counter top "composter" for food scraps to give to the worms. There is a bunch of white fuzz on the decomposing foods. Is this fuzz alright for the worms or do I need to get more air into the thing. I feel like it's probably ok. It looks a lot like the fuzz that grows on the top of soil sometimes, just more abundant.

Thanks!

 

[newoldguy]

I asked a professional worm farmer about feeding worms stuff that was growing "fur" and she said feed it to them.

 

[COorganics]

Howdy! Getting into getting into the wild season for me. Loving it. Built us a hugelkultur bed in the back yard. For the record, I'm at the very least putting off the indoor hugelkultur MJ idea. I am gonna likely build another outdoors somewhere for my auto freebies as well. I'm going to keep running indoor plants in these 10 gallon no till pots. It's very easy to just continue, and there's certainly a draw to having really old no till pots. Might as well just keep doing what I'm doing.

Anyway, changing journal title, wanted to explain.

 

[COorganics]

Flower room as of a few minutes ago. Will do one under natural light next time I update.

 

[SweetSue]

CO, this is the most impressive soil I have yet to see. They are looking fabulous. I'm looking forward to some real-color photos. Yours always look so healthy. I'm thinking of going with a 20-25 gallon pot, like you originally encouraged me to do. Won't that be fun to watch? You could post pictures of your veggie hugelkultur on my off-topic if you'd like. It would be nice to see them.

 

[Growlow]

I'm also running a no till organic soil garden. Not in the format of hugelkultur but I am excited to say the least to see more ROLS journals on here. Count me in subbed!

 

[COorganics]

Sweet, welcome.
I'm Curious, how long have your no till pots been running? I guess I'll have to go check out your journal.