Defoliation Experiment - Side by Side Sister Clones

stickybuds*

Active Member
I am a perpetual soil grower with a veg and flower room, never buy clones as I buy a pack of seeds, take clones and keep the best phoneo/strain
just before flowering the plant I take cutting and keep the cutting/plants small till it time to flower again

keep plant count down, small plants in flower but they yield loads :)

if your growing in soil with less than a mouth veg, you must be flowering a lot of plants, where do the clones come from ?
mother plant, all the time, money and space, is going to be a lot more than I use in veg room
 

joe macclennan

Well-Known Member

  • You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to joe macclennan again.
  • You're crazy




LOL I know I know :)
I am a perpetual soil grower with a veg and flower room, never buy clones as I buy a pack of seeds, take clones and keep the best phoneo/strain
just before flowering the plant I take cutting and keep the cutting/plants small till it time to flower again

keep plant count down, small plants in flower but they yield loads :)

if your growing in soil with less than a mouth veg, you must be flowering a lot of plants, where do the clones come from ?
mother plant, all the time, money and space, is going to be a lot more than I use in veg room
hey man! if you are happy. I am happy. that's all that matters really.

but as far as mothers go...Yeh, you need a mother which would require less than two hundred watts of light for a small grow...if that. and that's not even that wasteful as you can still flower her too after a few months of heavy cloning. and she'll end up looking similar to your bonzai plants too. so it's a win win

you are reinventing the wheel here.

growing is not hard. Growing well takes some practice.

You can make it as complicated as you like. some of us like to keep it simple.
 

neo12345

Well-Known Member
Chuck, Joe and Racer,

do any of you have any piece of evidence showing that defoliation slows growth in any way, and that a plant will not grow at the same rate if it has been defoliated? You all seem so sure this is the case, so can I please see some evidence?

I'm not asking you to do 100 experiments over the course of months, just find me some proof of it somewhere on the internet, it shouldn't be hard should it?

22 feb (1).jpg 26 feb.jpg

Like I said, that's just 4 days growth. Then 2 days after that it was so bushy I defoliated again!! Defoliating a plant seems to give the plant a Turbo boost, if you compare it to an untouched plant you will see that in just 7 days the plant will return to a comparable size.

Give it another 7 days of growing side by side and you will see that the defoliated plant has overtaken the untouched plant in terms of height and leaf mass.

So please show me anything that shows it slows down plant growth and increases veg time?
 

neo12345

Well-Known Member
or just do some reading around here neo...you are right. it's not hard to find.

I mean...seriously. Why is harvesting in half the time a bad thing again?????
Then it shouldn't be very difficult for you to find some evidence that it doesn't work and slows down veg time should it?

I can find plenty of defolihaters like yourself who claim that it doesn't work, but I can't seem to find any actual evidence to back it up?

So please provide us with some factual based evidence of your claims, as this is supposed to be an evidence based thread where a discussion is held regarding the evidence produced.

Suggesting that defoliation doubles the harvest time is just sensationalist rubbish, you could claim that defoliation is causing global warming as there are less leaves to take in co2???

If you veg for 4 weeks and flower for 9 say that's 13 weeks, and you're claiming that if you defoliate the plants then it takes 26 weeks to harvest your crop? All I am asking you and the others is to prove it, and that shouldn't be difficult given the vastness of the internet?
 

profterpen

New Member
Let's vote.

Light: Level Canopy or Level Bottoms?

Voting starts now and closes on midnight March 28th. That will give everyone time vote and give the clones time to root.

Cast your vote and tell us why.
 

lilroach

Well-Known Member
I have been a proponent of leaving the leaves on the plant for some time now, but am very interested in this comparison as it may put this entire debate to rest. So far it seems like it's being done fairly and by someone that knows the "correct" way of defoliating.

It would be nice that those voicing in on this would be civil and spare us the seemingly required name-calling and bashing those that do not share their views on defoliating....it will make for a more interesting read. If you want to bash someone for growing differently than you, there's 1,000's of threads on here to do that....please just spare us having to read it on this one. The guy is truly trying to do a good experiment here.
 

Observe & Report

Well-Known Member
Better than nothing, but one experimental plant and one control doesn't yield much power and the experiment would have to be repeated many times to get anything out of it. To get better data, a start would be to make enough cuts to fill your entire room, then randomly assign them to either defo or control. To control for lighting and other environmental variables, randomly rearranging the plants each light cycle would help with that. You would also have give the plants each a measured dose of water / nutes to control for those variables as well.

Science is hard and generally unrewarding which is why only very dedicated people enter the field and stay there with low pay and low perqs.
 

Bugeye

Well-Known Member
Let's vote.

Light: Level Canopy or Level Bottoms?

Voting starts now and closes on midnight March 28th. That will give everyone time vote and give the clones time to root.

Cast your vote and tell us why.
You have to keep the canopy level for it to be a fair test. Defoliating will release the same hormone response in the plant as pinching off so if you grow one as a tree it is not a fair control. The only comparison I am interested in is a pinched off and LST'd plant to a defoliatied plant. Grams per kwh and thc content (or smoke reports) to judge.

Wish I could join the test but my plant counts are limited and my grow plan is in place for this season. If I have a bust germinating maybe I will reconsider and do some cloning to fill empty slots. Thanks to all who do participate as this will be far more educational than the typical defoliation thread.
 

Nitegazer

Well-Known Member
Let's vote.

Light: Level Canopy or Level Bottoms?

Voting starts now and closes on midnight March 28th. That will give everyone time vote and give the clones time to root.

Cast your vote and tell us why.
I vote for level canopy. If I were defoliating my plants I would keep the lght as close to the tops as I would on a grow were I not defoliating. In fact, one of the reasons I would defoliate would be to allow me to bring the light lower. Raising the defoliated plants up doesn't give them an unfair advantage, it is just part of the technique.
 

^su

Active Member
Level bottoms, if defoliation truly doesn't slow down growth there is no need to vote right? If they were outside would you try and bring the sun closer? Let the tests roll with just the defoliation taking place.
 

Bugeye

Well-Known Member
Level bottoms, if defoliation truly doesn't slow down growth there is no need to vote right? If they were outside would you try and bring the sun closer? Let the tests roll with just the defoliation taking place.
If they were outside there would be no difference in light intensity between top of plant and bottom. A fair test will have the same light intensity at the top of the plant where the buds grow biggest.
 

profterpen

New Member
Level bottoms, if defoliation truly doesn't slow down growth there is no need to vote right? If they were outside would you try and bring the sun closer? Let the tests roll with just the defoliation taking place.
I agree with you, all valid points. What's everyone else think? We have about two weeks to have all variables set.
 
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