At What Time During Flowering Should You Remove The Lower Branches And Fan Leaves?

[juggernaut]

I've been chopping the lower branches by day 8 flower and I remove all the large fan leaves at day12 and all the rest of the leaves that don't have any resin between day 21 to day 25.
Is that ok or should I change something up?

 

[gravekat303]

This is how I do I really think it's strain dependit I like to give em a trim before flower then at 2 weeks then I normally leave em alone except my heavy indicas like bubba gets fans plucked almost the whole way in flower or yield is off I also like to take a lot from my ogs till like 3rd week

 

[Seamaiden]

I've been chopping the lower branches by day 8 flower and I remove all the large fan leaves at day12 and all the rest of the leaves that don't have any resin between day 21 to day 25.
Is that ok or should I change something up?

I shave their legs at flip, and over the following 2-3 weeks I remove the poor bud sites as well as those tiny new leaves they like to pop back up after their shaving.

 

[Bannacis]

As Seamaiden does, Except I do the lolly popin about 10 days before flipping and trimin the first 3 weeks of flower.
But definitely shaving all the new growth that pops up.

 

[MushinNoShin]

I use to take the fans off, for some reason got lazy and stopped. I think it was because I was growing brittle-stemmed OG's that had branches that would snap-off easily.

I recently took-up (in the past year or so) taking the lower branches and budsites off and have been very happy with the results.

I think I'll experiment with stripping fans off again, soon.

If I can tell the branches are going to contribute to larf, I try to take them as early in veg as possible.

 

[MushinNoShin]

I'm doing some side-by-side tests of stripping vs. just taking the lowers off a bit (which I usually do) and stripping the leaves is definitely losing so far (for me, anyways). On the True OG aka Kobe OG, the buds are smaller when stripped, internodes are a bit shorter it seems, but the overall yield looks like it will be considerably less. I do not like the bud structure on the stripped plants.

Still have more tests/comparisons to do until I reach a conclusion.

 

[SwizzleStix]

Lolli right before 12/12 then hitem day 21 with a defoiliation.

 

[Nog]

I think it's better to pull the fan leaves off later in flower, as I think they need energy to grow buds, and the fan leaves convert the light to energy.

I tend to pull the odd few leaves off as I go along, if they are shading a bud, but I don't really do much defoliation till the later stages of flowering, like the last two weeks.
Even then I don't pull all the fan leaves off.

 

[SwizzleStix]

I supplement with molasses it will lack an energy source about a teaspoon per gallon with every water or feeding. That way they don't have to work as hard to produce sugar. Unsulfered

 

[Bigjim1981]

I lollipop the plants in veg and thin out fan leaves top the plants and trim as needed through flowering

 

[Nog]

This is my first grow tying down the plants.

I used to just top once and flower, and the yield was better than not topping at all, but still lots of empty spaces in the canopy.

This time I topped once, and when the top two nodes of branches, that is 4 separate branches, grew about a foot tall or a bit longer, I tied them down with string so they were horizontal.
I drilled holes around the rim of the pot so I had somewhere to tie them to.

Then the lower branches grew up to their height, and if any grew higher then I would supercrop them, that is bend them horizontally.
So lot's more colas', and I'm avoiding the issue of harvesting the top 1/3 of the plant and having to throw the bottom 2/3 away as it was just popcorn .

But now I'm thinking instead of topping the plants, and then tying down the top branches horizontal when they grow big enough, it might be better to supercrop the main stem over, and this will have the same result of stimulating the lower branches to grow into main colas, and I also have the main stem as a cola as well, but it will be the same height as the lower branches.

Here's a pic of some Mr Nice Black Widow which had the main stem supercropped over three days ago.
It is supercropped over to the left in the photo.
You can see how the next branches down have now undergone a growth spurt because of it and are now becoming main stems.

It think this would be better than topping to increase growth of lower branches and reduce height of plants.

I wont tie down the branches on these ones as they are for clones, but if I was going to flowr them I would, to get a flat canopy.