Plucking fan leaves off two weeks beofre harvests

fatganjagrower · Nov 10, 2011

hey guys, just wondering if there were any benefits to plucking fan leaves off of the plant two weeks before harvesting for more direct light exposure. to this day i have left it alone but wondering if i can see any difference. thanks!

paulycali · Nov 10, 2011

NO benefit at all! A benefit LOL! You would most likely recieve a smaller havest if you did that. I dont reccomend plucking leaves off 2 weeks prior to harvest. Very stressful on the plants Thats a big no no :(

freegrow · Nov 10, 2011

yeah anything after 5 weeks is counter productive IMO

Surfr · Nov 10, 2011

There is a comparison I once read where the guy heavily defoliated plants at day 40 and left the same number of plants alone. His results were quite the difference in yield. The defoliated plants yielded much more than the others. There were photos to go along eight the comparison and you could clearly see the difference.

Now I have never done this but I sure am tempted to. One thing I do do, is chop the top halves of the plants when ready and leave the bottom halves to mature more. I leave them for another week. In that weeks time they def do gain some density/girth and maturation.

So if buds can still add girth after the plant has been chopped in half, what makes that worse than defoliating??

GhostFace · Nov 11, 2011

i yeild more when i pluck fan leaves..more light gets to more parts of the plant/nugs. i pluck leaves all threw veg and all threw flowering..i cut the ones that block other parts of the plant or nugs..my plants do just fine although some plants do indeed get stunted or slow down a bit.

sebastien420 · Nov 11, 2011

just try it out on a half next time and your gonna soon find out what your plant will like. remember all plants react differently to training. plz post pic if u do a comparison for all of us to see what the dif is..thx

Pockets · Nov 11, 2011

if you gonna do it id say wait until the shoot that the leaf your cutting is supporting is independent and has enough leave to support itself.

one theory ia that she thinks shes gonna die so she gets herself more wet n sticky to catch more pollen
or
she will say fuck it and pull the dildo out on your ass and make herself some babies before she dies. lol.

GanjaGardener · Nov 11, 2011

The plant needs to get it's nutrition from somewhere during the final 2 weeks. I prefer that it feeds from it's own stored supply of nutes rather than heavy P and K feeding down the stretch. I wait until the leaf is approx. 90% necrotic before plucking for health issues, (ie mostly dead, weakened leaves can promote botrytis.) The lower the nute and chlorophyll content (by association), the sweeter the bud. Taste trumps a potential 5% increase in bulk in my set of priorities.

bloads · Nov 11, 2011

What i've been doing lately is around 50 days I'll pluck the larger leaves that are closer to the center of the plant. These leaves are usually blocking a bunch of little nugs that haven't gotten much light yet, so they're small, light-colored, fluffy, and immature. Giving them extra light I believe helps them produce larger, darker colored, denser, more mature buds than if I would have left them in the dark until harvesting.

I've noticed that my main cola buds seem to reach their peak size before the smaller ones do as well. I think by the time I remove my larger interior fan leaves, the majority of the growth cycle is done for the majority of the quality parts of the plant, while the parts that were in the shade could still use more growth (and will be allowed to grow because of the light they're now receiving).

I haven't been growing for long, but I've got a system setup where I'm harvesting every 2 weeks, and I'm using 6-8 strains, so I think that's helping (forcing me to) me learn a lot faster than if I were just growing 1 strain without a perpetual setup.

Not the best example, but you can see how I've removed leaves from the yellow picture (~50 days) compared to the normal colored picture (~58 days). I'm trying to get light to hit the buds that were previously shaded. I notice that everything that was previously in the light is now purple, while everything else that was previously shaded is still green.

If I weren't so lazy, I would have removed all of the interior/lower green right after stretch, but I was lazy, so now I'm removing fan leaves @ 50 days instead.

fatganjagrower · Nov 12, 2011

excellent advice thanks bloads. this is why i asked about this subject because it totally makes sense to provide buds with more light.

GanjaGardener · Nov 13, 2011

More light to the bud site, including the surrounding leaves/foliage, will no doubt produce a bud that is more mature than a bud that is in an area shaded by fan leaves. My goal is to shape the plant during veg and/or by the first 2-3 weeks in flower to avoid the dilemma of having to choose between yanking leaves that the plant is using for multiple functions and getting light to a bud complex that is growing in a shaded area.

Depending upon plant morphology, "shaping" could mean LSTing during veg to open up more bud sites by "bending" the meristem and main lateral branches to push more bud sites to the apex position and to the light; lollipopping to "force" growth to the plant canopy; cleaning out spindly interior leaves and small, underdeveloped branches/bud sites; predetermining which branches/bud sites are keepers and which ones will end up growing in the shade.

I have some D-13 (G-13X Chemdog D) phenos w/ an x-mas tree morphology @ 3 weeks flwr. A week ago I scraped off a small handful of underdeveloped leaves, popcorn buds and spindly branches from the interior, the bud sites are all exposed to light, (top and side spill), and there will be no more plucking for the duration.

The point is, there's more than one way to get effective light to a plant's bud sites. Envisioning a plant's growth habit and making appropriate adjustments during veg or by the first 2-3wks in flower will decrease the number of bud sites, promote larger colas/buds and alleviate the problems inherent to fan leaf removal during mid-late flwr.

my 2c

JACKMAYOFFER · Nov 13, 2011

fatganjagrower said:
hey guys, just wondering if there were any benefits to plucking fan leaves off of the plant two weeks before harvesting for more direct light exposure. to this day i have left it alone but wondering if i can see any difference. thanks!

Yes Pluck away we remove any fan leaf that is blocking bud sites we start plucking the top half of the plant the start of the last 2.5 weeks of flower.You can look up my grows and they will speak for them self...JACK

paulycali said:
NO benefit at all! A benefit LOL! You would most likely recieve a smaller havest if you did that. I dont reccomend plucking leaves off 2.5 TO 3 weeks prior to harvest. Very stressful on the plants Thats a big no no :(

This is completly wrong I have done both and plucking allows sites that are being blocked to recieve light upping the yield with no stress done to the plants...This is bad and wrong advise..JACK

MakinGoo · Nov 13, 2011

I pluck the gaint fan leaves starting the last 3 weeks.. The reason I do this is cuz the buds r so big & all the leaves sweat during lights out & I'm trying 2 keep good ventilation around my big prize buds.. Plus it let's the smaller buds get good light & they grow a tiny bit bigger & it makes it eazier 2 trim when I chop.. By the last 1-2 weeks I have no big fan leaves left juss buds everywhere.. No stress 2 the plants at all

ENugs · Nov 14, 2011

IMO... I think its bad to pluck any leaves. Plucking leaves is like removing piston from the engine of your car. Leaves are what make the plants grow... so why pluck them off??

I did an experiment a while back in a 4x8 tent of Skunk one. I removed a lot of leaves from one half on the tent and left all the leaves on, on the other side of the tent. Both sides of the tent were getting them same exact thing. Same exact bulb, purchased on the same day.. same reflectors... same everything... and the side that I removed the leaves from produced a lot less then the side I left the leaves on. I was pretty surprised by the result. The buds were noticeably bigger then the plucked side.

So IMO.. if your huge fan leaves are in the way, just tuck the leaves to get them out of the way. I tuck leaves all the time that are blocking good sized buds.

shift00420 · Nov 15, 2011

I pluck fan leaves from the top buds at 5 weeks. it provides light to lower parts of the buds. Plus the smaller lower fan leaves get bigger & compensate for the ones that were plucked. I also lollipop my plants & clear any popcorn buds off the plant. I feel it allows the top colas to use all the nutes/energy.
I grow 10 plants like this in my 4x4 room & I feel i do well. I do a continual harvest this way with no stress or lag in growth.

fatganjagrower · Nov 15, 2011

wow, nice plant shift! think next harvest i will try a 50/50 split and check my results. this is such a wishy/washy topic

GanjaGardener · Nov 15, 2011

fatganjagrower said:
this is such a wishy/washy topic

:giggle you can say that again... religion, politics and plucking/tucking are always sure to get a rise. This is a run of Chem 88 (Hawaiian Diesel) from earlier in the year w/ minimal plucking after 3 wks into flwr and about a week away from harvest.

I prefer to leave the leaves down the stretch but it doesn't always work out that way. Last night I did some major plucking and tucking w/ an Urkle Mom that was flipped 4 wks ago. Despite LSTing to stretch out the branches and expose more of the buds towards the bottom of the auxiliary branches, there were just too many leaves and too much shade. I split the difference and scraped out buds and leaves that were small, scraggly, curly, yellow-green, leathery etc. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta even if it doesn't jibe w/ your normal technique. 2 b honest, I don't see this as being a major issue.

moodster · Nov 15, 2011

i might have to try this just started the flush

GrimloxK · Nov 16, 2011

My personal take on this is this:

For my first grow and being a noob I had almost 100% of my fan leaves yellow and I plucked them all off. What this did was open up more light towards the bottom and my buds near the base gained some weight.

So will defoliating all of your fan leaves by harvest kill your crop - NO
will it hurt yields - 50/50...

My personal opinion now is that later on in flowering the plant isn't getting enough Nitrogen hence the fan leaves start yellowing and dying off because the plant is getting it's N from the leaves...which it should because it has been noted that too much N late in flowering...while keeping leaves green will produce a harsh smoke because come harvest time N will still be present in the buds.

I say as the natural progression of the plant goes, when leaves yellow and wilt they should be removed. Selective fan leaf removal can be done...but it should only be done when the leaf is covering a bud top or a good amount of buds...remember the plant will have to recover from the removal of a perfectly fine fan leaf.

Try to keep large fan leaves that aren't in the way on the plant because they have more surface area and can take in the most light.

You have to be smart with what you do to your plant.

Even though my last grow had no fan leaves on by harvest i do think it stopped my buds from fattening up all the way.

sincethe80s · Nov 16, 2011

i HEAVILY plucked off large fan leaves daily for 1 grow all thru flower and they ended up growing seed pods.

i usually pluck all the fat leaves all the way til the last day of 2nd week of flower leave them alone or bend them under the trellis, and i start again the week and a half before chop.

ill try it again on one tray and post the results

Plucking fan leaves off two weeks beofre harvests

Plucking fan leaves off two weeks beofre harvests

fatganjagrower

paulycali

freegrow

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Surfr

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GhostFace

sebastien420

Pockets

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GanjaGardener

bloads

fatganjagrower

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JACKMAYOFFER

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MakinGoo

ENugs

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shift00420

fatganjagrower

GanjaGardener

moodster

GrimloxK

sincethe80s

Plucking fan leaves off two weeks beofre harvests

Plucking fan leaves off two weeks beofre harvests

fatganjagrower

paulycali

freegrow

Premium Member

Surfr

Just cruisin....

GhostFace

sebastien420

Pockets

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GanjaGardener

bloads

fatganjagrower

GanjaGardener

JACKMAYOFFER

Playing with Fire Son...

MakinGoo

ENugs

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shift00420

fatganjagrower

GanjaGardener

moodster

GrimloxK

sincethe80s

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