Defoliating Autos in week 7 after stretch

Defoliation of healthy green leaves just reduces your plants capacity to make energy, slowing growth and potentially leading to smaller growth too. Those "bud sites", which are really branches, were relying on the leaves that you removed to make the energy they needed to grow their biggest and fastest. If your plant was a V8 race car at Le Mans, defoliation is like disconnecting 3 or 4 cylinders and then expecting the car to do the same lap times! If your plant did not need those leaves, it would not have grown them in the first place. Personally, I never remove any healthy, green, energy producing leaves, no matter if it it would be an auto or photoperiod plant, only removing the yellow leaves, for by the time they are yellow, they have served their purpose. Just remember, - Maximum amount of healthy green leaves = maximum energy production = maximum growth. It is that simple, and basic plant biology too. As you can tell, I am very anti defoliation, it serves no real purpose other than to slow growth. Removing healthy green leaves and forcing the plant to grow new healthy green leaves seems incredibly inefficient to me, and no doubt, the plant feels the same. Hope this helps, Organoman.