I've had a real issue with defoliation. Not r...

Hey @MRTHC, I have been struggling with the same thing with my current grow. My girls have been super bushy from the get go. At first my research pointed me towards defoliation. Clearing out the excessive fan leaves that were covering up bud sites would expose them to light and airflow. Makes sense right? I've ended up doing 2 defoliations for my first grow so far (check out my diary). I did the 1st round around week 5 of Veg and the 2nd round at the end of the 1st week of flower. Each time was super stressful as a first time grower. Mainly because I had no idea how much to remove, where to remove it from or even how the plants would respond. Fortunately, both times my plants recovered. All that being said, I likely won't be incorporating defoliation as a technique in my future grows. After the last round I didn't see the positive changes I expected so I decided to do some more research into the science behind it. Turns out that there really hasn't been many (if any) clear cut studies of people testing it against a control to see it's impact on yields. Long story short, there are a few reasons to consider not defoliating. The biggest one for me was understanding the leaves are acting as solar panels collecting energy for the plant. Each leaf collects energy for the plant as a whole, not just the bud site the leaf is connected to. That along with the fact that the actual buds don't collect light like the leaves. Those two things alone disproved my original logic behind defoliation which was exposing those buds so they could get more light and removing extra leaves to free up the energy wasted on growing them. Sorry for the super long response but wanted to give you some insight into my very similar experience. For some more food for thought on the subject check out this article https://www.cocoforcannabis.com/community/photons_corner/to-defoliate-or-not-to-defoliate/. Bottom line, if you do decide to go for it, do it very selectively and over a period of days to minimize plant stress. Anything more than 25% runs the risk of stressing them too much. Hope all of this helps or at the very least gives you a few things to consider on the subject!