Fan leaves, do I leave?

[Harpua88]

It is one plant and today I removed a huge fan leaf on the top part of the plant because it was laying right on top of about 5 buds and I thought that the buds really needed it to be gone. Now I'm not sure that I did the right thing and the buds have got this far being shaded. I think that I'll just leave it be from here on out and let nature do it's thing.

You get to decide, it's your plants. ;). As long as you keep it minimal and be stingy and have a good reason, you're not going to make problems and have regrets. Maybe you look back in a week and say "eh, maybe I shouldn't have cut that one", but that's about it. And the more time you have, the more veg time there is, the greater the likelihood that new growth will fill in, those branches will develop......

Varieties are of course different, some Indicas don't branch much and things tend to stay tighter along the main stem. They don't tend to make great pruning candidates. Take the fan leaves off and they end they end up looking like one big stem with small leaves all over it. Hybrids that look like this often seem to be males but that's another story........but for most varieties, at first the fan leaves seem more important. They really are the important factories that make for more growth. But a week or two after cutting one, when branches and new growth fills in, the importance of that fan leaf is . More veg time is a friend of pruning.

 

[cabinetmaker74]

Great stuff! Thanks for sharing.