Ppm,s after heavy defol

KDawg said:

I'm assuming you did not remove the "most productive" leaves - e.g., those that were most exposed to light such as the top leaves. And, by removing some of the "not as productive" leaves, you could be exposing some of the remaining leaves to more light than they were otherwise getting.

That is, even though you may have removed 33% of the leaves, the net effect on its growth should not be -33%. Theoretically, if you did it right (read: got lucky), you could even see an increase in growth.

But, by removing 33% of the leaf mass, you did remove ~33% of the stored mobile nutrients that the plant had available to deal with any underfeeding.

As a result, I would think you'd be more susceptible to deficiencies than to toxicities after defoliating, so I'd keep the feed the same as before.

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Let me run this by you…

He's decreasing the amount of "food" because he's cut off the leaves. Nutes are not food; best analog is that they're vitamins and minerals. Light is the essential ingredient that allows plants to create "food" (glucose). Nutrients support plants structure and metabolic processes.

As you've pointed out, by cutting off leaves the plants ability to photosynthesize may be changed. In turn, the need for chemicals absorbed via the root zone (AKA "nutes") would tend to change in response to the plants ability to photosynthesize.

In the case of hacking off ⅓ of the foliage, unless you've been able to motivate the remaining foliage to work extra hard (a situation I find unlikely), I'd guess that photosynthesis, respiration, and nutrient uptake would decrease immediately post-foliation. When the miracle of cutting off leaves to results in more leaves being grown kicks in, I would suspect that photosynthesis, respiration, and nute uptake would increase because the mass of foliage, closely linked to the rate of photosynthesis, has increased.

We know that increased nute uptake tends to increase pH so that leads to the question for folks who defoliate - does pH tend to increase or decrease after defoliation? If pH does not rise in a manner similar to its rise before defoliation took place, that could be an indicator that defoliation causes a net loss of plant growth.

Dunno. Just food for thought.

Sheriffatman said:

Was just thinking about last night, if you remove half your plant, surely it doesn’t need as much food???

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Plants are not goldfish, they don't keep eating food till they die. Plants are more like a macbook air, whether you use the 45W charger or the 85W charger doesn't matter it will only draw the current it requires. Similarly it stands to reason that plants will draw what they need. The only important thing I have found is to keep the ppm under 1500 and try to keep an approximate NPK balance appropriate to the current state.

Mañ'O'Green said:

I don't defoliate.

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You have my commiserations.