Control Your Cannabis Growth with Defoliation (Removing Leaves) - Advanced Growers Only!
Read full marijuana defoliation tutorial here
WARNING: Only defoliate marijuana plants that are vibrant and healthy. Never defoliate an unhealthy or sickly plant!
It is not a good idea for beginning growers to use defoliation, because it can be difficult for new growers to understand what amount of defoliation is too much.
Only Use Defoliation if You Have at Least One Grow Under Your Belt
Defoliation has two purposes, one for the vegetative stage, and one for the flowering stage.
Vegetative Stage: When you remove leaves from your cannabis plant, you are taking away energy it put into vegetative growth.
This will cause your cannabis to slow down growing, especially if you remove a lot of leaves.
In the vegetative stage it is used to control the growth and structure of your plant. Bascially leaves removed from any "branch" during the vegetative stage causes that branch to grow more slowly.
When combined with other marijuana growth control techniques in the vegetative stage, you can grow plants that don't have the signature 'Christmas Tree' shape that's so annoying to cover properly with indoor grow lights. Instead you get more of a flat "bed" of growth that's evenly covered by your grow lights.
Removing leaves can be a bad thing if you want your plant to be growing upward as fast as possible because it will definitely slow down the growth of the plant for a little while.
However, most small-scale growers would rather have a well-managed short plant than a tall, unruly plant even if it ends up needing a bit of extra time during the vegetative stage to recover from the defoliation.
Pulling leaves also seems to cause the plant to grow much wide and bushy in general.
Flowering Stage: Many growers (myself included) feel that buds seem to grow much fatter if they are directly exposed to light. We believe that defoliation during the flowering stage actually dramatically increases your yield.
For example, if I have a bud that is covered by leaves, it doesn't seem to grow, even if it has leaves that are getting light.
And
marijuana plants aren't the only plants that are affected by the phenomenon of increased yields from defoliation. It's well-document that other plants, including cowpeas, experience significant yield increases when their leaves are defoliated during the flowering stage (up to 50% of the leaves!)... (
source)
Nebula Haze's Theories About Defoliation:
In my mind (totally a guess here that is not based on science) it seems like buds that are covered by leaves would not be able to get pollinated. Cannabis plants are generally pollinated by the wind in the wild. It's possible that some buds are pollinated by bees or other pollinating creatures.
In the wild, buds which are hidden would have almost no chance of being pollinated.
As a marijuana plant (or any kind of plant), it makes sense that all effort would want to be focused on growing buds which can be pollinated, which means focusing on buds exposed to light and air.
By exposing
all the buds to light and air through defoliation, you're signalling that all buds are positioned for possible pollination, so the plant focuses on growing these buds.
I also theorize that in the wild, the cannabis plant is equipped to lose many of its leaves, whether they're eaten by bug or animals or somehow are lost some other way.
<-- End of Nebula's Theories -->
In my experience, when buds from a healthy plants are exposed to direct light and open air, it will start bulking up right away, within just a few days.
This phenomenon seems to partially explain the 'popcorn' buds that tend to pop up at the bottom of the cannabis plantwhere there is no light getting to the buds, even though the leaves around them may be getting plenty of light.
Therefore, during the flowering stage I like to strategically remove leaves that I feel are covering up any buds, or are covering up a lot of other leaves.
I also always use defoliation in either stage when I notice my plant is 'stretching' or growing taller than I'd like, or if a particular "branch" is growing too fast.
Whenever the plant seems to be growing too tall, I will go through and remove several of the fan leaves to both try to get more total light to the bud sites, and to get the plant to stop growing upwards so fast.
Right after changing the lights to 12-12, the cannabis seems to have a stretch period, and defoliating will reduce the height gained.
After a defoliation session, I notice that the cannabis plant will stop any upward growth for several days to even a few weeks, depending on how many leaves I took. Buds continue to fatten at an accelerated rate, even though the plant isn't growing taller.
Defoliated plants are easier to manage, stay healthier (fewer pests and less mold) and the buds keep getting bigger.
There is definitely some controversy about this cannabis control technique.
Some growers do not want to lose a week of growth, or may want to grow tall plants.
However, I strongly recommend experimenting with defoliation yourself to see the results if you are trying to grow short, bushy, controlled cannabis plants.
I recommend starting small on healthy, fast-growing plants, by picking just a few leaves that are covering bud sites, and see what you think!
Read full marijuana defoliation tutorial
here:
http://growweedeasy.com/marijuana-defoliation-tutorial
In my mind (totally a guess here that is not based on science) it seems like buds that are covered by leaves would not be able to get pollinated. Cannabis plants are generally pollinated by the wind in the wild. It's possible that some buds are pollinated by bees or other pollinating creatures.
