I'm gonna add my 2c to the conversation about defoliation.
First, defoliation imho shouldn't be looked at like removing all the solar panels. Pot plants are extremely adaptive and will bounce back from a lot more stress than you might think, and, solar panels regrow.
What defoliation in combination with what I consider a tactical pruning does, is it restructures the entire plant to focus only on the regrowth that appears during the stretch phase. With the idea being that most of the stuff you remove during the strip, would have been shaded out anyway by mid flower. Also, crowded plants grow slower and are more susceptible to pests and diseases. By stripping them it gives them plenty of room to grow and keep humidity under control.
My process; First it's important to have the plants trained to deal with the strip well, during Veg I top my plants twice. Once at about a week in veg to promote side branching, and again a week before flip I top each side branch to make each become 2 branches. Then 2 days before flip once all the nodes are regrowing after the last stripping, I prune the plants by removing every single node except the very tip of each branch, and then also remove every single leaf except the ones at the very tip of each branch.
It looks wrong, but if the plants are healthy they will rebound into a much more productive structure than you started with. All new growth is up top in the goldilocks zone, there will be zero larf down below, the plants are pre-lollipopped and every new budsite that grows is kept to flower out.
One caveat, is I would only do this in a fast growing system like hydroponics or even coco. Though I've heard of people doing it in soil too.
It works. It's strategic, and I can assure you is far more benefit than it is harmful to the crop layout
Here is my plants before strip when they are ready to flip. If I flipped these the room would be way overcrowded in a couple weeks and require a lot of pruning, which I try to avoid once in flower.
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After stripping they look like this, and I go to bed wondering if I'm losing my mind, or if I've killed my plants..
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But then a week later they look like this again, and the canopy is far more manageable, and doesn't require any further pruning. I will pull off some more leaves at day 21 in flower, which is next week. But it's pretty clear to me that stripping did more good than harm.
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