Fuzzy Duck
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Mmm
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I defoliate every grow. My space is small and my humidity can run too high if I don't. I've also had minor issues with powdery mildew. I usually clip a week or 10 days prior to flower then around week 3 or 4 of flower. I only take the big fan leaves though so it's not stripping. I've always had good results.
So it's ok to do it after the stretch? Im having a really hard time seeing into the future of my plants lol. what i mean is i really have no clue what to expect from the stretch so i don't want to chop anything before putting into flower.
4 plants. 2 have 8 branches the 2 bottom branches almost as high as the top ones. i can train easy enough with a scrog to be level. one plant is super short but very bushy, but again not sure if she's gonna double in height or not. and then another that's a really nice table top and extremely bushy.
Feeling like it would be much easier to decide what if anything to chop off after the stretch. don't want to shock them just into flowering tho either.
If you use training in veg as in topping, fimming and LST pruning is necessary to stimulate secondary growth. And once you got the structure you want you should try and make it more even and uniform, where pruning helps again. But I'd never defoliate completely, cause it's too much stress for the plant. However if your plant got used to losing few leaves in veg then you can do it in flowering to uncover shaded areas. This is what I consider good practise.
Thanks a lot.Great visual images and good looking plants
Thank you for this thread and all who have contributed to it. Good debate guys & gals. I am still going through my first grow and learning as I go. I had chosen to try defoliation. I did a little during veg here and there just to open up more bud sites but since I started flowering I did it twice. My first major defoliation was on day one of 12/12 flip. This undoubtable opened up many lower buds that otherwise never would have made it up into my scrog and end up being later snipped off. However without previous grow experience I can not tell if it stunted my stretch. I believe it did somewhat stunt my stretch because I didn't get a whole lot of additional height (growing indicas though). The foliage grew back in just a few days and the plants remained healthy. This past Tuesday night my plants were day 27 of flower. I could see many, many nice bud sites shaded under fan leaves (probably 40% of them). I did another defoliation on this day. I did however not go to the extreme I have gone to in the first defoliation. I only removed what was covering buds (still a lot of fan leaves). I left as many fan leaves as I seen not affecting bud sites. Both times that I have defoliated during flower I have done a feeding at the same time to help with recovery. This seems to work and the plants don't show any signs of stress. I can't help but believe that allowing direct light to reach more buds will increase bud production. Perhaps leaving fan leaves on would increase bud production on my main tops but with a scrog my main focus was to produce as even of a canopy as possible.
Here are some photos of before and after defoliating my plants. Time will tell I guess. In the future I will not defoliate prior to stretch because I do believe I have slowed down my stretch but what is more important... stretch or bud site exposure?... A question to be asked for years to come I suppose.
Excellent scrog!