To defoliate or not to defoliate.

Every healthy green leaf you remove will reduce your plants capacity to produce energy, which then reduces growth potential. I am anti defoliation and recommend that only yellow leaves are removed. Or to put it another way - maximum amount of healthy green leaves = maximum energy produced = maximum growth. "Potential Bud sites" need the big leaves to make the energy they need to grow. The big older leaves also act as storage sites for vital growth elements such as sugars, carbs, amino acids etc that your plant will draw upon during flowering, as it is far more efficient to "recycle" these vital growth elements than it is to make them from new during the high energy requiring activity that flowering is. This is why the older leaves go yellow during flowering on otherwise well fed and healthy plants. So, not only does defoliation reduce the amount of energy your plant can produce and slowing growth as a result, it also robs the plant of the cleverly "stashed" reserves of vital growth elements she has in the older leaves for use during flowering. Besides, light we humans can not see, is capable of penetrating upper leaves to strike the lower leaves and stimulate photosynthesis. In 35+ years of growing this magnificent plant, I am yet to see a plant that gets rid of its healthy green leaves during flowering and for no benefit. Hope this helps,........ Organoman. P.S. - next time you post pictures, please take them in normal light, it makes responding to questions so much easier. Cheers!