Any advice on weather or not to take off those big...

Removing healthy green leaves will decrease your plants capacity to produce energy, thereby slowing growth and potentially leading to smaller growth too. 6-8 weeks is pretty standard veg time, much less and you will get much less! Wait until there are branches long enough to train and your yield will go up tremendously. Flowering too soon and all you will get is a few small colas that won't be worth all the trouble you have gone to to grow this/these plants. May as well wait a bit longer and really reap the rewards. The "potential future bud sites" whatever they are, lets just call them branches, that is after all what they actually are, are relying on those big fan leaves to make the energy they need to grow. Removing the fan leaves will mean very little energy will be available for those "future bud sites"/branches to grow! The small new leaves associated with them, can in no way produce as much energy as even one fan leaf, so removing the fan leaf will retard growth and vigour. Besides, in 2-5 days time, the branch will have grown out from underneath the fan leaf anyhow, making the removal of the fan leaf pointless. Cannabis has evolved to grow her biggest and best. Getting rid of perfectly healthy green leaves for no reason or benefit, is not part of this process. In over 35 years of cannabis cultivation, I have never seen a plant that gets rid of its perfectly healthy and energy producing green leaves, ever. Just remember - maximum amount of healthy green leaves = maximum energy production = maximum growth and maximum health. Hope this helps,........... Organoman.

If they're blocking future bud sites I would go ahead and defoliate.

hey there Threep , I wouldnt touch those leafs, you can count the leafs of this plant on two hands so it's really not a great idea to remove any. the main idea of veg is to make a bush that makes a plant. Logically, more veg, more bush , more plant. More plant more yield. Most homegrowers do too short a veg, so it's their loss. An average length veg is 6-8 weeks. Do it long like this and you'll have a right sized plant. I'm seeing these as a bit too small to send to flowering. it will work but trying to save a couple weeks could half your yield or worse ! Keep it veging a couple weeks, thank me at harvest ;-) Hope this helps ! 🚀