How would you prune or defoliate this outdoor plant Week 2/3 of flower or should I not?

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SchwiftyGrower

SchwiftyGrower

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Yeah I only take off degrading or damaged leaves usually, I get a little more intense once airflow becomes an issue and fall sets it... but mine have so many leaves. There's definitely stress whenever you remove anything, and it's using resources to close the area. Also, anything you leave behind has the possibility to invite mold to grow, and any wound is an opening for pathogens. It's a delicate balance, easy to over do it once you're on a roll... but yeah the fans in that pic all look nice and healthy, I don't usually remove them until they start to degrade and be less efficient or get chewed on by grasshopper or something. Anything damaged is taking resources to repair and is not functioning as it should to aid photosynthesis, so those are the ones I take off. Just my 2 cents, everyone does shit different. Mine also get a dose of food directly after a defol sesh to help them repair.
Thanks for your information TSD! This was my first and last time outdoors lmao! My main reason for removing the fan leaves was for air flow. Most of the leaves were touching bud sites during high humidity nights and no matter how much tucking I did they always popped back to the buds. I was so damn paranoid about bud rot on my one and only plant, that I did more stress and damage than I did good on her. Live and learn lol šŸ˜†
 
SchwiftyGrower

SchwiftyGrower

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Thanks growers! Beyond my own ā€œstill learningā€ phase I made the mistake of thinking the Coast of Maine soil I used had enough nutes to last the season so I would only need to do light top dressing. COM soil I got from two different shops was inconsistent IMO. So this one had a N deficiency by flowering. I addressed by top dressing and water soluable N and micronutes too. The leaves greened up a bit and sheā€™s about 40+ days into flowering and looking solid. Greasy and trichomes everywhere. Oh yeah, I also used Tribus and Rootwise to help cycle the nutes.
Nice man hope you can see the fruits of your labor :) hope to see a pic or two Iā€™m intrigued
 
J.dub

J.dub

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Thanks for your information TSD! This was my first and last time outdoors lmao! My main reason for removing the fan leaves was for air flow. Most of the leaves were touching bud sites during high humidity nights and no matter how much tucking I did they always popped back to the buds. I was so damn paranoid about bud rot on my one and only plant, that I did more stress and damage than I did good on her. Live and learn lol šŸ˜†
This is what everyone that's opposed to defol outdoors is missing, in my opinion -- the humidity and transpiration aspect of it. It's like your canopy is a "plastic bag" of growth; fan leaves and buds that all are transpiring, exchanging CO2 and O2 at whatever rate photosynthesis is allowing, but are stifled and choked off when it's leaf-over bud-over leaf crowded, and the micro-climates that form are high-humidity, low-light. . . the perfect environments for mold and mildew. Not what you want outdoors when it's October, and it's damp and cool and less sunny, and there's big wet leaves everywhere and too late to do much about it. Older, bigger leaves are also not doing much, and are more of a drain than source. The majority of commercial growers defoliate heavily, and they wouldn't do it if it affected yield or potency. It's likely so they can jam as many plants together as possible with as few issues as possible. Doing it all at once and the timing of it are key, but the plants won't skip a beat, and the buds STACK. After halfway into flower, it's best to just let them be -- what's done is done at this point, and continuously picking lots of leaves off throughout flower is continuous stress, not the same as schwazzing, and not going to give you the same results. Obviously, every plant and situation is different, and leaves that are clearly a problem should be removed at any stage, but I think we all catch my drift. Not saying everyone should do it, but I do believe that most grows will benefit from it, in yield, quality, and lack of troubles.
I hope your smoke turns out really well, though -- even a perfect grow can tumble and end in bad results during the post-harvest process!
 
SchwiftyGrower

SchwiftyGrower

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This is what everyone that's opposed to defol outdoors is missing, in my opinion -- the humidity and transpiration aspect of it. It's like your canopy is a "plastic bag" of growth; fan leaves and buds that all are transpiring, exchanging CO2 and O2 at whatever rate photosynthesis is allowing, but are stifled and choked off when it's leaf-over bud-over leaf crowded, and the micro-climates that form are high-humidity, low-light. . . the perfect environments for mold and mildew. Not what you want outdoors when it's October, and it's damp and cool and less sunny, and there's big wet leaves everywhere and too late to do much about it. Older, bigger leaves are also not doing much, and are more of a drain than source. The majority of commercial growers defoliate heavily, and they wouldn't do it if it affected yield or potency. It's likely so they can jam as many plants together as possible with as few issues as possible. Doing it all at once and the timing of it are key, but the plants won't skip a beat, and the buds STACK. After halfway into flower, it's best to just let them be -- what's done is done at this point, and continuously picking lots of leaves off throughout flower is continuous stress, not the same as schwazzing, and not going to give you the same results. Obviously, every plant and situation is different, and leaves that are clearly a problem should be removed at any stage, but I think we all catch my drift. Not saying everyone should do it, but I do believe that most grows will benefit from it, in yield, quality, and lack of troubles.
I hope your smoke turns out really well, though -- even a perfect grow can tumble and end in bad results during the post-harvest process!
Thanks for the information and kind words! Thankfully the smoke turned out pretty good and Iā€™ll take what I can get :) the next indoor grow with better genetics will hopefully get better results and I will take all of yā€™allā€™s information into the next grow!
 
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