how stressful is defoliation? why should you not d...

Hi! It depends on the overall health and the amount defoliated. If you take few leafs out of healthy plant she wont even notice but if you take lots of them, she will focus energy on growing leafs for a day or two before continuing grow. If the plant is unhelathy the defoliation can be much bigger stress and take lot longer to bounce back. The reason you don't do it all the time is to save time and it is not beneficial to the plant to remove lots of leafs all the time. The leafs are important part of the plant and needs to be removed only if they are really in the way or not getting enough light anymore. Buds don't need light but leafs does