"Fan leaves"

I'm a newbie, and I've read, and read. I see many references to 'fan leaves' but can't find a definition of which ones are the 'fan leaves'.
Am I correct to assume the fan leaves are the ones mid stalk that seem to grow larger than the upper and lower ones? Or am I mistaken??

on a plant that size, all of the leaves are what are called fan leaves.. once the plant starts to flower, you will get leaves growing in the buds, these are called sugar leaves...

yea .. and may I add .. leave them on !

racerboy71 said:

on a plant that size, all of the leaves are what are called fan leaves.. once the plant starts to flower, you will get leaves growing in the buds, these are called sugar leaves...

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SHITThat explains why my largest plant slowed the growth of the buds when I clipped off a couple of the older real large leaves when they dried up and got covered with rust spots

imchucky666 said:

SHITThat explains why my largest plant slowed the growth of the buds when I clipped off a couple of the older real large leaves when they dried up and got covered with rust spots

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lol, yah, leaves are pretty much the power house of the plant.. they hang out in the sun / light, and convert light energy into food and sugars via photosynthesis.. the bigger the leaves, the more foods and sugars they can make ...

if you concentrate solely on growing leaves and keeping them happy and green throughout the entire growth, the more healthy the plant will be and the better your yields will be...

there is a great thread on here called something like gardening pointers and tweaks by a user named uncle ben on here that has incredible, simple to follow info that will improve your grows if you follow it..
it's a super long thread, but i tend to only read the posts by the op and skip over the rest and i have gotten tons and tons of useful info from it to say the least..

Cool. Thanks!

Rust spots??

imchucky666 said:

SHITThat explains why my largest plant slowed the growth of the buds when I clipped off a couple of the older real large leaves when they dried up and got covered with rust spots

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Don't do that. Really.

Don't cut or trim ANY leaves on a marijuana plant. She will shed them when she no longer needs them. Promise. She can make bud too. At the same time.

Why is it that everyone keeps telling people to leave the leaves alone...I have cut my leaves on my plants on every grow and still get great turn-outs! And all my photos prove that nothing is wrong with taking them off, I do it to let more light into the plant, and it works.

I found and this is simply an opinion, that the fan leaves after flowering starts, serve a lessor purpose. Fan leaves in my opinion are stalk orientated and turn yellow after flowering begins. Whilst, local vedge located near or adjacent to bud's is just for that - buds!!

alley.walker said:

I found and this is simply an opinion, that the fan leaves after flowering starts, serve a lessor purpose. Fan leaves in my opinion are stalk orientated and turn yellow after flowering begins. Whilst, local vedge located near or adjacent to bud's is just for that - buds!!

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wait? are you saying that after flowering begins the fan leaves don't photosynthesize at the same rate as in veg? I don't get it.

alley.walker said:

I found and this is simply an opinion, that the fan leaves after flowering starts, serve a lessor purpose. Fan leaves in my opinion are stalk orientated and turn yellow after flowering begins. Whilst, local vedge located near or adjacent to bud's is just for that - buds!!

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not true at all

a plant needs its fan leaves .. to produce sugars and promote grow .. less leaves .. less activity .. less grow ..

beside that it will use up any food left in them once in flowering ... starting at the bottom going up (unless you keep feeding it Nitrogen .. witch I would strongly advice you not to)

beside that ... it have been proof that the light/kelvin a plant use (mostly blue .. red and yellow) and we cant see ..
do pass through its leaves .. to the lower grow .. plants is´t stupid .. used millions of years to addapt .. so what we see as shadow is the green color ranges we mostly see and plants dont use .. so even if we see and belive the fan leaves make shadow the plants dont see it that way ..

so please Ppl. leave em on .. of course up to you .. but it will do better and yild more in the end then a plant you have rip for half its fan leaves ..

p.s.

if Ppl .tell you they get flimsy and airy buds lower down the plant .. its not Bc. the fan leaves is blocking the light .. its Bc. the lower buds are longer from the light .. pure logic .. keep the plant low bushy and the bud sites even and close to the light ..

if you want to remove anything .. then prune the lower bud sites .. yes you will remove steams the produce buds .. but low down (lower 1/4 grow) they wont produce anything smokerble .. at best some for KIF/oil production .. so by removeing them the plant can use all its energy on the top buds .. them who get strong enough light to acctualy grow good buds .. so you end up with a littel more and better top buds and no pop corn buds ..

Slipon said:

a plant needs its fan leaves .. to produce sugars and promote grow .. less leaves .. less activity .. less grow ..

beside that it will use up any food left in them once in flowering ... starting at the bottom going up (unless you keep feeding it Nitrogen .. witch I would strongly advice you not to)

beside that ... it have been proof that the light/kelvin a plant use (mostly blue .. red and yellow) and we cant see ..
do pass through its leaves .. to the lower grow .. plants is´t stupid .. used millions of years to addapt .. so what we see as shadow is the green color ranges we mostly see and plants dont use .. so even if we see and belive the fan leaves make shadow the plants dont see it that way ..

so please Ppl. leave em on .. of course up to you .. but it will do better and yild more in the end then a plant you have rip for half its fan leaves ..

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i was right with you up to the point of you strongly advising not to use nitrogen in flower.. this is a big reason why lots of peoples plants will go yellow in flower.. people think that the plants should yellow in late flowering, but this is not true at all, and the leaves should still stay a healthy green all throughout flowering..
yes, some older leaves will still yellow and die as a natural part of life, i'm just saying that all or a large % of leaves shouldn't yellow during flower..
and yes, large amounts of nitrogen can slow flowering down, but i find a small amount even during flowering goes a long way to keep a plant healthy and happy...

ManishWayz said:

Why is it that everyone keeps telling people to leave the leaves alone...I have cut my leaves on my plants on every grow and still get great turn-outs! And all my photos prove that nothing is wrong with taking them off, I do it to let more light into the plant, and it works.

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just one question for you.. when you cut off the leaves to get light to the lower section of the plant, where do you hope the light will go?? i mean, do you want more light to your stalks or what?? i'm kind of confused as to why you'd want more light to the bottom of the plant if you're removing leaves is all...

the funny thing about light is that it fades very quickly, check out the inverse law.. this means that the big ass leaves at the top of the plant are doing much more work for the plant then the leaves at the bottom of the plants that are receiving much less intense light due to the inverse law..

racerboy71 said:

i was right with you up to the point of you strongly advising not to use nitrogen in flower.. this is a big reason why lots of peoples plants will go yellow in flower.. people think that the plants should yellow in late flowering, but this is not true at all, and the leaves should still stay a healthy green all throughout flowering..
yes, some older leaves will still yellow and die as a natural part of life, i'm just saying that all or a large % of leaves shouldn't yellow during flower..
and yes, large amounts of nitrogen can slow flowering down, but i find a small amount even during flowering goes a long way to keep a plant healthy and happy...

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Like everything else concerning these plants, ask a thousand people and you'll get a thousand different answers, or opinions. Plants (all of them) have adapted to the planet over millions of years. Along comes man and his impossible desire to fuck with them. They have certain leaves for a purpose. About the ONLY time a plant does NOT need Nitrogen is when taking cuttings to make roots on them. Even the "yellowing" leaves on a cutting serve a purpose and should not be trimmed off. Obviously is mold appears, that's a different story, but IMHO, Nitrogen is necessary in very small amounts, for flowering. The "Fan Leaves" convert sugars into usable food for growth and growth includes bud formation. The plant (as has been written here, over & over & over) will dispose of the leaves it no longer needs. By cutting any leaves fan, sugar or otherwise, the first thing that happens is that the plant has to heal that wound (takes energy diverted from main growth vigor) and will need to form replacements for that which you took away, so it starts a concentrated effort to manufacture more leaves that would have been there in the first place. Again, IMHO, leave the plant alone. Period!

agree .. it will use nitrogen in flowering .. but small ammounts .. if you continue to add .. it will in most cases end up in disaster (foxtaling/hermi and stretch grow and less buds)

but it ofcourse vary a bit .. some use nitrogen up to 12/12 then cut it (guess its mostly Ppl. who have good ammount of nitrogen in ther soil ? like I have with blood/bone meal)

some keep useing it the two fist weeks (the stretch wher it do need a lot of nitrogen) then cut it ..

and then some keep useing it all flowering .. but them Ppl. .. like you .. I talk to .. who do this .. is also experiance growers that know what they do and dont add way to mouch .. they know how mouch the plant needs to just stay green .. by looking at it and know to only add small ammounts late in flowering ..


Ooh yea and here is a scale of light loose at diffrent distance ..

View attachment 2294440

FresnoFarmer said:

Rust spots??

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Yea, this is a pic of how they start, but a few of them, on the really large leaves about midway up the main stalk got bad, and dried up crispy and shriveled like they were sun burned or something.
It started to go away for a while when I started misting them at night just before dark with epsom salt solution, but within the past couple days seems to be reappearing and actually spreading to some of the smaller older leaves (I guess because there are no more big leaves left).
I did that before I had read all the posts suggesting not to trim leaves, and I now realize looking back at the time line, that is when the bud growth slowed down.