Is this male? Defoliate ? First time grower

Hard to tell from these pictures. I personally remove any fan leaves that are cover bud sites, and any lower foliage that wont get much light and will just suck up energy.

Removing leaves just reduces your plants capacity to make energy, thereby slowing growth. There is absolutely no need to defoliate cannabis, especially healthy, green, energy producing leaves. Defoliating if ever done, should not be done during or as plants are about to or in the middle of flowering, this is the time when the plant needs maximum energy to grow her biggest and best flowers. Removing leaves at these times means the plant will suffer an energy deficit, resulting in smaller and slower growing flowers. To remove leaves and then have the plant grow twice as many to replace the ones that it has lost, seems like a pretty pointless exercise to me. Besides, if your plant did not need those leaves, it would not have grown them in the first place! Just remember - Maximum amount of healthy green leaves = maximum energy production = maximum growth... (including the flower size!) Your plants will not start flowering until the nights get longer as Fall/Autumn approaches. If you are concerned your plants have too much growth, some light, well considered "lollipopping" can reduce the amount of small irrelevant growths. Otherwise, there is no such thing as too many leaves, your plant is healthy and doing what it is supposed to do. Hope this helps, Organoman.

Hi Bro, no sex signs are visible from the pics. Outdoors in northern emisphere feminized photo dependant plants usually start to show the sex from 15 hours of light (depending on latitude) to go down . After a pre-flowering phase that can lasts from 10 to 40 days plants enter in the real flowering stage. Personally I defolitate plants little by little, depending from variables like sunlight, watering and growing stage. Better to stop or reduce defo in the period from the end of pre-flowering stage to 10 days before harvest. Cheers Bro

It will not flower outdoors if it is a photoperiods till the days are getting shorter. Won't know sex of plant till then as well. If a photo cut away as many as you like. They will comeback twice as many best to defoliate right as flowering is starting