Fan Leaves During Flowering

I've been looking at a lot of grows and noticed that people trim their fan leaves during the end of flowering, correct? Once all the inner branches are big enough to support themselves I'm assuming. I was wondering if I could trim the fan leaves, lets say all of them from the 3rd or 4th highest node on down. Would this promote those inner branches to grow faster and reach the the light quicker? Or are those fan leaves necessary. The reason being is I want those inner branches to get some more lighting, and as of now they seem kind of restricted by those large fan leaves. I'm in the 6th week of flowering now on a sativa that takes 14 weeks (ouch). Still no signs of budding, but they are stretching nicely and have alrdy doubled in height. I'm expecting they'll get to over triple in size and start budding in the next 2 weeks or so. Any input on this? This is my first grow and I've been told sativas take longer to start budding, but I'm getting kind of worried. They are flowering and stretching, but no signs of budding. One of my plants showed pistils, but they never grew and it didn't develop any more after that. I'll post some pics of how they look in a few.

You are on the right track, more side lighting will pay off in the end, but DO NOT cut all your fan leaves.

The fan leaves are the plant's solar panels that suck in all the light and feed the plant. Trimming a large, obtrusive fan leaf here and there won't kill your grow, but don't cut them all.

Cut the ones that are really in the way, and try to tie/tuck the other ones.

Ok, so it wouldnt damage the plant as much if i just tucked a fan leaf away and made less lighting available to it? And thanks for the reassurance, I guess I'm just getting anxious to see some buds

I understand man, I have felt the same way. But yeah, just tuck some of the big ones, it is a pain in the ass. If there is a big one that is really blocking a bud, tie it back.

Also, this wasn't a huge problem for me because I LSTed my plants. Please look around and read about this, it is a very easy way to increase yield, and something you can really play with.

Ya i was planning on doing this, seems pretty simple and effective, I was just worried of doing some real damage to them. Are you supposed to bring um down slowly day by day or can I just tie them down and let them settle? I'm also worried about how long the plant would be in shock from it and if it's still safe to do during flowering.

I cut of all of my fan leaves on two of my plants, and left one in tact during flowering just to test this "theory" of it slowing down or stunting the growth. I found that it does slow the growth and it is best to leave as many on there as you can.

Im sure you know that during flowering the plant sucks the N from the fan leaves causing them to yellow, well when the plant doesnt have any fan leaves to suck from it sucks the N from the lower buds, and from the leaves that are on the buds, causeing some buds to completely turn yellow and die.

During flowering you should just give the yellow fan leaves a gentle pull, and if they come off then the plant isnt using them anymore, if it stays on then the plant is still using it.

Also its ok to remove big leaves that are blocking multiple budsites or blocking other fan leaves on other buds. I had a couple leaves that were about the size of my hand that were blocking 10-15 other fan leaves and these were just too big to tuck, so I snipped them, and the plant still continued to flower properly.

I also had a multitude of fan leaves that were burnt by either the lights or by the nutes back in veg still on the plant during flowering. I snipped those away first and found that the plant didnt miss them that much.

My conclusion was that it is ok to remove the bad looking leaves, the ones that are just "SUPER LARGE" for no reason that prevent light from penetrating the canopy, the ones that cant be tucked and the yellow ones that the plant arent using anymore, and just leave the rest of them in tact. Keep in mind that this should be done 10-20 days before you harvest your plants and at this time you should stop feeding nutes and start flushing.

if you dont start to see buds in the next couple of weeks check for light leaks

FirstTimeGrow said:

I understand man, I have felt the same way. But yeah, just tuck some of the big ones, it is a pain in the ass. If there is a big one that is really blocking a bud, tie it back.

Also, this wasn't a huge problem for me because I LSTed my plants. Please look around and read about this, it is a very easy way to increase yield, and something you can really play with.

Click to expand...

What is LST? I searched for it and no queries were returned.

Thanks dreamer. Its pretty damn dark in my grow room so I don't think any light is fucking with them. I do see a couple small light leaks but the room is completely dark and it is impossible to see anything when the lights are off.

info on LST is in the grow faq this guy did a nice job...
https://www.rollitup.org/view.php?pg=faq&cmd=article&id=484

I had 3 females so I decided to experiment and ONLY ON ONE plant, I clipped off the bottom 4 limbs that were yellowy and weak and frail, no light was hitting them, and the bottom HALF of the plant's fan or shade leaves, the real big ones. Stunted her bigtime and threw her in shock for over a week, almost two weeks, then she STRETCHED like crazy. AND although the lights could penetrate deeper, the little popcorn flowers stayed little any way.
I won't trim the large fan leaves off again.
On the other two plants I tucked them under, that worked much better.

dreamer said:

if you dont start to see buds in the next couple of weeks check for light leaks

Click to expand...

i tad bit of light wont halt the flowering. like the moon light.

And for me i dont move any leaves, when they are dead they go! when i flower the lack of nitro, yellows and thins the plant automaticly for me i just let her go