New Grower Removal of Fan Leaves?

[growbeast]

This has been a debate since the beginning of man kind. Lol

This is like a religion debate, or how many hours of light is best for autos lol. Or was 9-11 an inside job.
Removing fan leaves will go down in history as one of the unsolved unknowns

But incase my vote is the tie breaker, i think nature knows best and put those leaves there for a reason. With that being said, let's pretend i grow mmj and i was using the scrog method, i would deleaf any thing under the scrog net. Leaves, bud sites, stems,eeverything.

Growing indoors is already began the process of unnatural growing, so sometimes you might have to do other unnatural things to accommodate.

I would try both ways and see what works best for you. Have you tried LST?

 

[Bilbo]

In my environment, with my lights/heat/nutes etc. I've tried partial defoliation, full defoliation, topping, fimming, lst, scrog and the most irritating of all was doing nothing!

I've only grown mostly indica autos and get the best results from keeping a regime going of 40%-60% defoliation. It might sound a lot but I take the lower leaves off to aid airflow round the base, I then take ANY shading leaves off(not that many really) and finally I remove any other leaves that aren't perfect.

This hits the required % for me but ONLY works if I have trained the plants to accept regular leaf loss very early on in veg, I take the first leaves off once the 4th or 5th internode appears around week 2 from seed. Leave it any later than that and the poor things go into shock when I recreate the actions of a hungry goat every 3 or 4 days later on!

This is just my personal preference and it goes against the opinion of a lot of growers especially where autos are concerned so be careful if you are going to try it, here's the guide I used to get started defoliating - http://www.growweedeasy.com/training#defoliation

 

[BassNDrum]

.........but ONLY works if I have trained the plants to accept regular leaf loss very early on in veg, I take the first leaves off once the 4th or 5th internode appears around week 2 from seed. Leave it any later than that and the poor things go into shock when I recreate the actions of a hungry goat every 3 or 4 days later on!........

This is interesting.
I did nothing of the sort early on and i am litterally about a week or two off finishing this one (or the top half at least) so ive gone easy and just took one or two leaves off. i tucked alot of leaves out the way and that has let alot more light down so im happy, and that is alot less stressful so win win.

but for future grows... illbe employing this technique

 

[BassNDrum]

Have you tried LST?

I didnt LST early on, i never expected her to get so big! and its way too late for that now unless you consider tucking leaves a form of LST? then yes. done.

 

[Vas Deferens]

I 'leave' them all on (pun ha ha, boom boom) and let the plant decide when to throw them. They are the little solar panels that power the plants is my philosophy

 

[Bilbo]

This is interesting.
I did nothing of the sort early on and i am litterally about a week or two off finishing this one (or the top half at least) so ive gone easy and just took one or two leaves off. i tucked alot of leaves out the way and that has let alot more light down so im happy, and that is alot less stressful so win win.

but for future grows... illbe employing this technique

I've just put a post up with my current experimental grow, I'm doing all the things I want to try this time so just click my sig below to see a defoliated grow progress over the next few weeks :Cool bud: