Post your (heavily) defoliated ladies?

Potsquatch · Feb 20, 2022

Curious how much other folks defoliate their plants. Feel like I always had a thick canopy choking out lower bud sites in the past, trying out schwazzing this round and so far the process feels pretty good. Enough to feel like I've converted from a "plants need every solar panel and nutrient store they can get!" mindset to a heavy defol true believer.

Note: these are Sweet Island sativas from seed in organic soil.

Schwazzing calls for a heavy defol on day 1 and day 20 of bloom. Here's day 1, after a timid attempt (could have trimmed off way more in hindsight; no "before" shots, sorry):

2 days later (bloom day 3)...

...and a week after that (bloom day 10):

Lush as ever! Been clipping plenty of individual leaves the whole time too. Took (admittedly not that heavy of a) defoliation like a champ. Just did the day 20 strip down, went a little deeper this time, basically cut any leaf I could get the clippers around and cleared out the base, leaving a few harmless bigger leaves on the edges:

I have a good feeling about how those lower bud sites will perk up, now that they have some real light and airflow hitting them. Will keep this updated to share progress.

Would love to see how others do heavy defols to help calibrate. Something tells me I'm still on the timid side (maybe too many small branches?), but so far it's definitely better than the previous full canopy method.

Potsquatch · Mar 5, 2022

Update: one week later (bloom day 27)

And two weeks later (bloom day 34)

Happy as green clams. Lower bud sites are coming in thicker compared to last couple grows.

Xhale · Mar 5, 2022

fantastic! I had similar results over the years growing outdoors in pots. but I always question and doubt defoliation techniques with outdoor grows. @Potsquatch please take a look at my unanswered question and let me know your thoughts. The 2 plants in question are about 10days and 17days into proper flowering, the preflowers showed up many weeks ago.

Xhale said:
I need your advice about trimming the fan leaves around the heads. There are 2 videos showing how I pruned 2of my plants. I planted them on 1 September (our spring day) and started the Lollipop in late December then got aggressive towards the end of Jan until mid February.
The current challenge:
I know that indoor growers cut out the high fan leaves because they block the weak light and prevent airflow. I am outdoors with the great African sun. Should I cut the top fan leaves now? How much should I trim?

Potsquatch · Mar 5, 2022

No experience growing outdoors, but from what I've read defoliation is far less important because the light is just as strong as the top of the plant as at the bottom. Anything more would be complete speculation, sorry!

E9noxis · Mar 5, 2022

Do you prune before or after feeding? I'm always concerned the energy just goes into lsd production and not into the plant. Like, trim first and it makes more, or trim after and you cut off all the stored water.

If doing a heavy defoliation, how do you go about it? How late into flower do you feel comfortable with? These are the thoughts I struggle with while considering stripping her down

Xhale · Mar 5, 2022

E9noxis said:
If doing a heavy defoliation, how do you go about it? How late into flower do you feel comfortable with? These are the thoughts I struggle with while considering stripping her down

mine is outdoor (both in the ground and in pots so that I can move them into a light/dark area at night according to my needs), but the questions are still valid. I decimate in both definitions of the term:
a) I leave 10% of the leaves on. Just like @Potsquatch, I do it a few times during veg, with the latest being sometime after preflower, just before proper flowering. Many times in the pots when I need to give additional light at night, and at least once on every plant in my farm. I definitely do not touch the biggest leaves, and those that I think will develop well and unobtrusively. At the end of the mission, my plant typically looks bottom heavy with spikes of branches pointing to the sky. I also top-off branches when needed and pull out most of the 'branches on branches'.

b) I cut 10% of the leaves off. This is my goto method. I choose the leaves that are blocking light to the area of interest (e.g. a developing branch site that I want to grow taller, or a good bud site). I also cut leaves for airflow where the growth looks dense. I stop this shortly after full flowering kicks in. then I get confused and watch and wait and pull a leaf here or there when I'm paranoid. I've entered the paranoid phase this week, hence my own questions on the same topic.

Other than that, I defoliate and cut all side branches according to the Lollipop approach. This prevents mud collection on the lower buds.

Potsquatch · Mar 5, 2022

E9noxis said:
I'm always concerned the energy just goes into lsd production and not into the plant.

If you've got your plants producing LSD, I'd say keep whatever you're doing up

E9noxis said:
If doing a heavy defoliation, how do you go about it?

Really just leaning on several rules of thumb I've found and some moderate googling on "schwazzing". I suspect there's way more to it than I've read given the source, but my approach in a nutshell:

1. Have a topping strategy during veg to lock in your main stem architecture. I usually start LST a week before flipping to even out the canopy.

2. Make sure plants are happy and healthy (ph, nutes, light, water, pests). Super important.

3. Bloom day 1, strip off any fan leaves blades can fit around. Remove any branches and bud sites that are less than half the height of the trained plant. Here's another shot of one of those plants after pruning:

(In hindsight, I would have removed a few more fan leaves here). There should be strong light all the way down to the soil. If you want to leave a few fan leaves as a buffer (so the plant can access stored nutes and energy), leave them around the edges or near the bottom where they won't cover bud sites.

4. Feed as would normally. I start phasing in bloom nutes in week 2 and ramp up as fast as the plants allow.

5. Second strip on day 20. Same as above, but I also clip any branches and bud sites that look like they'll just be larfy by the end of it.

6. Ongoing maintenance to remove individual fan leaves that cover bud sites once clippers can reach the leaf stems, remove new bud sites lower down on the branches, remove old bud sites that are looking larfy. I'd keep the larfy sites if I made extracts, but I'm just here for beautiful buds. Try to remove just a bit each day to reduce stress.

That's about it. New leaves look super sugary, so that's great (stress = plant is under attack = produce more trichomes as a defense = more THC later). Planning to flush in week 8. I'll share results once they're in.

E9noxis · Mar 5, 2022

Leaf* not lsd. Ironically I'm growing an lsd strain

PipeCarver · Mar 5, 2022

Potsquatch said:
If you've got your plants producing LSD, I'd say keep whatever you're doing up

Really just leaning on several rules of thumb I've found and some moderate googling on "schwazzing". I suspect there's way more to it than I've read given the source, but my approach in a nutshell:

1. Have a topping strategy during veg to lock in your main stem architecture. I usually start LST a week before flipping to even out the canopy.

2. Make sure plants are happy and healthy (ph, nutes, light, water, pests). Super important.

3. Bloom day 1, strip off any fan leaves blades can fit around. Remove any branches and bud sites that are less than half the height of the trained plant. Here's another shot of one of those plants after pruning:
View attachment 1223076
(In hindsight, I would have removed a few more fan leaves here). There should be strong light all the way down to the soil. If you want to leave a few fan leaves as a buffer (so the plant can access stored nutes and energy), leave them around the edges or near the bottom where they won't cover bud sites.

4. Feed as would normally. I start phasing in bloom nutes in week 2 and ramp up as fast as the plants allow.

5. Second strip on day 20. Same as above, but I also clip any branches and bud sites that look like they'll just be larfy by the end of it.

6. Ongoing maintenance to remove individual fan leaves that cover bud sites once clippers can reach the leaf stems, remove new bud sites lower down on the branches, remove old bud sites that are looking larfy. I'd keep the larfy sites if I made extracts, but I'm just here for beautiful buds. Try to remove just a bit each day to reduce stress.

That's about it. New leaves look super sugary, so that's great (stress = plant is under attack = produce more trichomes as a defense = more THC later). Planning to flush in week 8. I'll share results once they're in.

I like how you describe your process, Thanks for that. I can't see me ever doing it. I like my larf and lower buds I get a lot of nice lower buds, in fact I just bought some lights to help harden the lower buds a bit more.....

I've seen lots of folks on here doing what you do with fantastic results.....I'm not looking for big and beautiful. I want volume and to me its a waste growing an entire plant for months then lobbing off its lower fruit...

I just made a month+ supply of chocolates for my last night with lower buds and crunchies that come off when I'm jarring

SofaKingHigh · Mar 5, 2022

I wouldn’t call this heavily defoliated but it was quite a bit of trimming lol

Potsquatch · Mar 6, 2022

God I wish I had that much space to grow lol

Post your (heavily) defoliated ladies?

Post your (heavily) defoliated ladies?

Potsquatch

Potsquatch

Xhale

Potsquatch

E9noxis

Xhale

Potsquatch

E9noxis

PipeCarver

SofaKingHigh

Potsquatch

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