Early flower

Removing healthy green leaves will just deprive your plant of its ability to produce energy, resulting in slower and potentially smaller growth. Those possible "bud sites" are relying on those very same leaves you are contemplating on removing, to produce the energy they need to actually grow. Removing leaves, something I personally detest unless they are yellow, any time near or during flowering, is the absolute worst time to do so. If you want to do anything beneficial, try some well considered "lollipopping" and remove any small and spindly growth near the bottom or inner parts of the plant. This is also best done during early/mid veg as the plant will barely notice it, but if done lightly and not too much is removed, should be ok at this early stage of flowering. If you can try and only remove the smaller leggy branches and leave behind any of the larger healthy green leaves, this will benefit your plant by leaving these "energy factories" in place to do their job of producing the energy your plant needs to grow her biggest and best flowers. The small "bud leaves/sugar leaves" associated with the flowers can in no way make as much energy as just one big healthy green fan leaf. The big leaves also provide your plant with a ready source of "stored" vital growth elements such as carbs, amino acids, sugars, etc that your plant will draw upon during flowering. This is why the older leaves will go yellow during flowering, even though the plant is healthy and otherwise well fed. It is far more efficient for your plant to re-use these "stored" vital growth elements during flowering, than it is to make them from new at the same time as she is trying to grow her biggest and best flowers. So, not only does removing healthy green leaves reduce your plants capacity to produce the energy needed to grow, it also robs her of the vital growth elements she has stored in them for use during flowering. My advice is to leave all healthy green leaves to produce the energy she needs to grow her biggest and best flowers and to also provide the ready source of vital growth elements that she has so cleverly stored in them, for use during flowering as well. Hope this helps,..... Organoman.