Do these Purple Punch autos need trimming?

[Jso123]

Day 55 and all seem happy and healthy. Easiest grow yet.
Should I snip some of the lower pop corn buds? Or fan leaves?
Thanks

 

[2budz]

Take what I say with a grain of salt;
They look good. If they were my plants I’d cut all of the big fan leaves off.

 

[Hashsloth]

One on the left doesn't look like it needs much or any taken off and the right one looks like it could use some defoliating. I would just pluck any fan leaves that are in the way of good bud sites

 

[Bob's Auto's]

I'd go for @Hashsloth approach. Them fan leaves are your solar panels. Only remove them when they block a bud site. Try to keep as many fan leaves as you can as when the plant goes into flower it uses the sugars stored in the leaves. The more sugars available the more energy the plant can utilize in making buds.

 

[2budz]

I'd go for @Hashsloth approach. Them fan leaves are your solar panels. Only remove them when they block a bud site. Try to keep as many fan leaves as you can as when the plant goes into flower it uses the sugars stored in the leaves. The more sugars available the more energy the plant can utilize in making buds.

Next round I’ll take this approach and compare it with my current grow. I’m not experienced enough to say what works best, that’s why I prefaced what I said with “take what I say with a grain of salt”. From my little experience though, my plants grow the most after a good defol. We will see

 

[Bob's Auto's]

Next round I’ll take this approach and compare it with my current grow. I’m not experienced enough to say what works best, that’s why I prefaced what I said with “take what I say with a grain of salt”. From my little experience though, my plants grow the most after a good defol. We will see

Sorry buddy, didn't want to offend you. ♥
Just wanted to give my advice and this leaned on more to that which @Hashsloth had said.

 

[2budz]

Sorry buddy, didn't want to offend you. ♥
Just wanted to give my advice and this leaned on more to that which @Hashsloth had said.

I’m not offended. I just want to learn just like everyone else. If leaving the leaves on will result in better production I’m all for it. Just hasn’t been my experience.

 

[MIAutomatic]

For me defoliation is usually a question of when and how much, as I think some amount is almost always beneficial, and I evaluated each plant individually. The advice from Hashsloth is right on point. By late flowering my plants usually have few to no fan leaves, only the ones blocking no bud sites usually on the perimeter of the plant remain.

I don’t remove them in one or two passes, but a few at a time starting at around the end of week 4. I do lots of leaf tucking as well but will remove a leaf when it can no longer be easily tucked or is casting shade on developing bud sites. It’s true that fan leaves do store sugar and nutrients but in a highly controlled indoor growing environment, I am just not sure that matters very much. My plants are on hydroponic life support via coco coir and always have a fresh supply of nutrients and sugars in their nutrient solution.

This wades into the territory of observational bro-science, but I believe the fan leaves are absolutely essential from sprout most of the way through the stretch. By mid flowering the buds are usually growing so large that keeping any number of the fan leaves on the plants simply becomes impractical if you want to get the best light penetration to bud sites. By this stage the remaining fan leaves seem to behave more like silos than solar panels, but since my plants always have a fresh supply of nutrients in the medium, they don’t need the fan leaves doing the same job. At this point the buds also have plenty of their own leaves that power continued bud development.

Keeping N levels in check is another way to manage leaf development during veg, and of course some strains just leaf out more than others.

You can find infinite opinions on defoliation, this is just my approach.

 

[2budz]

For me defoliation is usually a question of when and how much, as I think some amount is almost always beneficial, and I evaluated each plant individually. The advice from Hashsloth is right on point. By late flowering my plants usually have few to no fan leaves, only the ones blocking no bud sites usually on the perimeter of the plant remain.

I don’t remove them in one or two passes, but a few at a time starting at around the end of week 4. I do lots of leaf tucking as well but will remove a leaf when it can no longer be easily tucked or is casting shade on developing bud sites. It’s true that fan leaves do store sugar and nutrients but in a highly controlled indoor growing environment, I am just not sure that matters very much. My plants are on hydroponic life support via coco coir and always have a fresh supply of nutrients and sugars in their nutrient solution.

This wades into the territory of observational bro-science, but I believe the fan leaves are absolutely essential from sprout most of the way through the stretch. By mid flowering the buds are usually growing so large that keeping any number of the fan leaves on the plants simply becomes impractical if you want to get the best light penetration to bud sites. By this stage the remaining fan leaves seem to behave more like silos than solar panels, but since my plants always have a fresh supply of nutrients in the medium, they don’t need the fan leaves doing the same job. At this point the buds also have plenty of their own leaves that power continued bud development.

Keeping N levels in check is another way to manage leaf development during veg, and of course some strains just leaf out more than others.

You can find infinite opinions on defoliation, this is just my approach.

Same approach. Light defol beginning of flower. Take more as they progress. By the end my plants are still covered in leaves, just none you can get to the stem to remove.

 

[Hashsloth]

I think the amount you need to defoliate depends on strain too. I've had plants that I had to pull lots of leaves off and they just kept growing back even thicker. Had to do 3 or 4 big pluckings and they still had lots of leaves left at harvest......some plants though can barely handle any defoliation.