after topping 6 days ago, and planning on flowerin...

Don't. Each healthy green leaf you remove will reduce your plants capacity to produce energy, therefore, slowing growth. The older leaves, will during flowering, provide your plant with a "ready reserve" of vital growth elements such as carbs, amino acids, sugars etc that the plant will draw upon during flowering. It is far more efficient to "recycle" these vital growth elements from the older leaves, than it is to grow flowers AND make these elements from new during a high energy requiring activity such as flowering. This is also why the older leaves go yellow, or "the fade" as some people call it, during flowering on otherwise healthy and well fed plants. So, removing leaves not only reduces the capacity to produce energy for growth, it also robs the plant of a vital reserve of "stored" elements in the older leaves for use during flowering - the clever plant that cannabis is - and is something not fully understood by defoliation advocates. Do not worry about "shaded potential bud sites", those sites are relying on those big leaves to produce the energy they need to grow. There is no way the small leaves associated with new growth or with the flowers, can produce as much energy as even one big fan leaf. Try only removing yellow leaves, for by the time they are yellow, they have served their purposes. Also, light we humans can not see, will penetrate upper leaves to strike lower leaves and stimulate photosynthesis, therefore providing the plant with energy, not much, but some and a whole lot more than no leaf! Cannabis will grow its fastest and biggest with all of its leaves left in place to produce the energy she needs for growth. I have been growing for 35+ years and am yet to see a cannabis plant that gets rid of her own healthy green leaves for no apparent benefit. Besides, removing a healthy leaf will trigger the plant to grow new healthy green leaves, so why remove a healthy green leaf in the first place? The energy could be better used for growing everywhere, all throughout the plant. Plants can not "channel" energy, the oft repeated mantra of "remove this or that so energy is channelled into bud growth" is simply false. All energy produced is used equally throughout the entire plant, wherever there is growth taking place. To be able to "channel" energy would suggest a plant is able to make a conscious decision about energy distribution, which is completely untrue and suggest that people who believe in "energy channelling" do not understand basic plant biology. (or how plants actually function and grow). Just remember - maximum amount of healthy green leaves = maximum energy production = maximum growth and maximum health. It really is that simple and is basic plant biology 101 too! Hope this helps,....... Organoman. P.S. - Congratulations too, on being todays winner of my rant against defoliation!!