Fan Leaves and Flowering.

I would be asking why you want to remove the leaves? Each healthy green leaf is photosynthesising and making the energy for your plant to grow. Reducing the amount of healthy green leaves reduces your plants capacity in producing energy which in turn reduces your plants ability to grow. "Bud sites" rely on the fan leaves to make the energy that they need to grow their biggest and best flowers. I would recommend to leave all healthy green leaves on your plant and suggest you only remove any yellow leaves. The older fan leaves also act as "storage" sites for vital growth elements such as amino acids, carbs, sugars etc that your plant will draw upon during flowering and this is why fan leaves generally go yellow during the flowering cycle. It is more efficient for the plant to "recycle" the "stored" elements rather than growing flowers and making growth elements from new, at the same time. If there are no fan leaves full of stored vital elements, your plants will have to manufacture these vital elements at the same time it is trying to grow the flowers, meaning there is less energy for flower growth due to having to use extra energy to re-manufacture the carbs, amino acids, sugars etc that the plant has lost due to the leaf removal. Your plant will grow her biggest and best flowers with all leaves left in place to produce maximum energy for maximum growth. This is basic plant biology that the defoliation brigade fail to understand. Removing large amounts of leaves will actually cause a major upset to the plants metabolism, with the plant potentially suffering shock and with a risk of slowing growth for up to 2 weeks while the plant re-grows more leaves to boost her energy production levels back up to the same level as before the leaves were removed, rather than using the that time to grow flowers. Hope this helps,.... Organoman.