Defoliation Side By Side - Bushy Plants

[cemchris]

Pics prob help a lot more

This is an East Coast room. 17 plants on a 4 x 8. That is a leafy plant. It's just about done stretching. If I left it as is and didn't remove anything from anywhere the whole bottom half of the plant would be useless for nug and my weight would go down. It's gonna be stripped out selectively over the next day or 2.

That's a Strawberry Deez room. 16 plants on a 4 x8. Unlike the East Coast that is not a leafy plant at all. Prob my fav plant to grow and trim because of that. There wont be much defol on this room. Just some at the top depending on how tall they get. Vs the East Coast that Ill prob pull a trash bag out of the Straw wont even be maybe 1/4 of that. Way different between the 2 strains. I don't go 1 size fits all.

There is a lot of factors that go into it. Knowing the strain and your setup is a big one. Also how deep and how tall you grow them def comes into play. That's the whole statement I was making. It's always different from spot to spot and strain to strain. Saying its one way or the other is wrong on both fronts IMO.

 

[Lord Bonkey]

For sure when I say defol I'm not talking about stripping the plant from top to bottom either. I know eaxactly what you are thinking and have seen it. I'm like @Dirtbag with it. I'm talking about that style vs not removing a single leaf from top to bottom.

XD argueing when we are in 100% agreement

Pics prob help a lot more

This is an East Coast room. 17 plants on a 4 x 8. That is a leafy plant. It's just about done stretching. If I left it as is and didn't remove anything from anywhere the whole bottom half of the plant would be useless for nug and my weight would go down. It's gonna be stripped out selectively over the next day or 2.

View attachment 897000


That's a Strawberry Deez room. 16 plants on a 4 x8. Unlike the East Coast that is not a leafy plant at all. Prob my fav plant to grow and trim because of that. There wont be much defol on this room. Just some at the top depending on how tall they get. Vs the East Coast that Ill prob pull a trash bag out of the Straw wont even be maybe 1/4 of that. Way different between the 2 strains. I don't go 1 size fits all.

View attachment 897001

There is a lot of factors that go into it. Knowing the strain and your setup is a big one. Also how deep and how tall you grow them def comes into play. That's the whole statement I was making. It's always different from spot to spot and strain to strain. Saying its one way or the other is wrong on both fronts IMO.

We are in 100% agreement bro :)
all the stuff under the canopy goes
beauty set up too btw
Ive been wrestling with the idea of a 4x8 but im not sure that would be the best use out of my 5x10 space

 

[Dirtbag]

Best use of a 5x10 would be.. 5x10 lol.

 

[Lord Bonkey]

Best use of a 5x10 would be.. 5x10 lol.

did not know that was a thing lol
Thank you :)

 

[Dirtbag]

did not know that was a thing lol
Thank you :)

I'm a fan of wall to wall grows.

 

[cemchris]

Not me. Those rooms are 7.5 x 12. Ive done the wall to wall thing. I will only do that if table width is under 4 ft. Reaching across a 4ft table to the edge is a PITA. Why I built these with enough room to sit on my ass next to the tables. I've just done it too many times in the past and end up hating it for maintenance and cleanup. Had a 9x6 with a 4x8 with 5 lights (4 - 600's 1 400). Efficiency wise it killed it. Work wise it sucked. Total lazy man comes through in everything lol.

 

[Dirtbag]

Yeah I just move my tables to the side and go down the center for maintenance, gives me a 4' reach on each side.

 

[MIMedGrower]

I just slide my plants out from under the light footprint and move them around and work as needed. Light footprint is only a little more than half the room. Gets a little more cramped when i add a third light in winter.

 

[Brown.Thumb]

Sunlight

 

[MIMedGrower]

Sunlight

So you just move the sun as needed by yourself? And leave the plants where they are?

 

[Brown.Thumb]

^^^ No. I have a small garden area with opaque metal siding. I start my plants high on a table, giving them more hours of direct unshaded sunshine and move larger plants to the ground where they receive more shaded light. I time it to coincide with their transition to flowering stage.

 

[MIMedGrower]

^^^ No. I have a small garden area with opaque metal siding. I start my plants high on a table, giving them more hours of direct unshaded sunshine and move larger plants to the ground where they receive more shaded light. I time it to coincide with their transition to flowering stage.

Clever! :-)

 

[Brown.Thumb]

It might be clever if I wasn't such a goof. Other members constantly make my grows look like sh... not as good as theirs.

 

[MIMedGrower]

It might be clever if I wasn't such a goof. Other members constantly make my grows look like sh... not as good as theirs.

Learning and practice is all we can do. I used the same lights, pots, soil, everything for a few years. Same breeders seeds too mostly before I got the results i can achieve today.

 

[Jimster]

I love @cemchris setup, as it is pretty well thought out and setup for easy work. I'm more of a "move the outdoors to the indoors" school of thought... I just drag the 5 or 6 gallon buckets around the 12 x 8 room, spreading them out os they get larger and making up for any overhead canopy loss by using more side growth. It all works out about the same, with plants reaching 7 ft or more and looking like an overgrown jungle. NOT like the way that a proper setup should be done.
Times and technologies have changed, but I'm still using the same damn magnetic ballasts, overhead lighting reflectors... even the damn buckets are 30+ years old! The only real changes are the Promix mix that I use, and the light bulbs, which I have a zillion (including the same damn 30+ year old original!) I am at one end of the spectrum, using a minimum of equipment and nutrients, while others have fine tuned their systems to get great results... there is NO wrong way. Nobody here grew a massive success for their first grows. It doesn't take long to get the experience if you keep an open mind and look at the big picture and not micro manage every detail. Keep learning and you will keep improving! :)

 

[Lord Bonkey]

I love @cemchris setup, as it is pretty well thought out and setup for easy work. I'm more of a "move the outdoors to the indoors" school of thought... I just drag the 5 or 6 gallon buckets around the 12 x 8 room, spreading them out os they get larger and making up for any overhead canopy loss by using more side growth. It all works out about the same, with plants reaching 7 ft or more and looking like an overgrown jungle. NOT like the way that a proper setup should be done.
Times and technologies have changed, but I'm still using the same damn magnetic ballasts, overhead lighting reflectors... even the damn buckets are 30+ years old! The only real changes are the Promix mix that I use, and the light bulbs, which I have a zillion (including the same damn 30+ year old original!) I am at one end of the spectrum, using a minimum of equipment and nutrients, while others have fine tuned their systems to get great results... there is NO wrong way. Nobody here grew a massive success for their first grows. It doesn't take long to get the experience if you keep an open mind and look at the big picture and not micro manage every detail. Keep learning and you will keep improving! :)

mag ballast > digi ballast

 

[ukfella]

Evolution is a theory in people, it’s not a fact.

A poorly proven theory at that ! Annunaki bought us here. Many "fossils" were manufactured by the archeologists centuries ago and have been proven to have done so to "prove" evolution not religion alone. On the defol thing. Like many here i imagine , i have done them every which way , My own opinion now is that they do NEED the fans attached to the budsites to avoid the sugar leaves wasting energy doing a job they were not designed to do. They can convert but not at anywhere near the rate that a fan leaf does it at. By removing them , the plant then wastes time and energy re-jigging her larder. In my experience , if you strip them right back in veg , the leaves get replaced by identicle ones anyway if still in veg. it does seem pointless with this being the case and time spent increasing her size and potential bud sites is used to put the same leaf sets back on her stems again. I think airflow is paramount among the whole plants structure , particularly as they are wind reliant plant. Direct light on the buds is not the key at all , they have very little ability to convert light there and take their "food " from the stem directly so the tiny sugar leaves are boosters within the bud not the workhorses as fans are. It is also about energy benefits and sinks too and gets very technical at this point and i had to force myself to re read the info a fair bit to conceed that my hopes on defoliation were a little unrealistic. Tucking when needed is a better option if airflow is active. Have a search for "shwazzing" ( i think i spelt it correct) for another mind set on using defol too. very interesting concept but spot the foolish book price it comes from .
They need the fans, i concede to accepting this based on live practice now. The leaf feeding the budsite needs to do just that. To add fuel to the fire , i also know growers who strip back to bare nothing during their defol ans get amazing fat buds too. lol

 

[cemchris]

mag ballast > digi ballast

/thread

I love @cemchris setup, as it is pretty well thought out and setup for easy work. I'm more of a "move the outdoors to the indoors" school of thought... I just drag the 5 or 6 gallon buckets around the 12 x 8 room, spreading them out os they get larger and making up for any overhead canopy loss by using more side growth. It all works out about the same, with plants reaching 7 ft or more and looking like an overgrown jungle. NOT like the way that a proper setup should be done.
Times and technologies have changed, but I'm still using the same damn magnetic ballasts, overhead lighting reflectors... even the damn buckets are 30+ years old! The only real changes are the Promix mix that I use, and the light bulbs, which I have a zillion (including the same damn 30+ year old original!) I am at one end of the spectrum, using a minimum of equipment and nutrients, while others have fine tuned their systems to get great results... there is NO wrong way. Nobody here grew a massive success for their first grows. It doesn't take long to get the experience if you keep an open mind and look at the big picture and not micro manage every detail. Keep learning and you will keep improving! :)

Thx my dude. For sure man. Exactly this. I was always a hydro dude from the start and over they years just kept doing the same thing and my rooms have always been built and run based on that. Never a soil or OD guy and it shows lol. People have so many different approaches and so many different styles it's so hard to say do it x way or do it y way. There is no right or wrong. So well said man.

 

[Medigrow]

I love @cemchris setup, as it is pretty well thought out and setup for easy work. I'm more of a "move the outdoors to the indoors" school of thought... I just drag the 5 or 6 gallon buckets around the 12 x 8 room, spreading them out os they get larger and making up for any overhead canopy loss by using more side growth. It all works out about the same, with plants reaching 7 ft or more and looking like an overgrown jungle. NOT like the way that a proper setup should be done.
Times and technologies have changed, but I'm still using the same damn magnetic ballasts, overhead lighting reflectors... even the damn buckets are 30+ years old! The only real changes are the Promix mix that I use, and the light bulbs, which I have a zillion (including the same damn 30+ year old original!) I am at one end of the spectrum, using a minimum of equipment and nutrients, while others have fine tuned their systems to get great results... there is NO wrong way. Nobody here grew a massive success for their first grows. It doesn't take long to get the experience if you keep an open mind and look at the big picture and not micro manage every detail. Keep learning and you will keep improving! :)

What is a massive success for you?

 

[Bobrown14]

I was thinking you would say something similar. You are not worth arguing with. I guess all commercial horticulture industry people are wrong. They use these techniques to lose money. They put forth resources and labor into these methods to lose in the end. And I grow outdoors too. Comparing indoor and outdoor is ludicrous. And pruning outdoors is essential for optimal growth also. I’m over the argument . I could care less what others do that dont effect me or things I love and care for.

Which horticulture industry uses defoliation to increase yields??

So you dont care so you just come in and drop "you're not worth it" and now you're out. Very adult of you. What are you 15 years old now?

Pruning and defoliation are NOT the same thing. The OP was talking taking ALL the fan leaves off to increase yields. You should actually READ the thread before you drop in and put your foot in your mouth ffs.