Defoliate? Or leave it?

Bushy = good Defoliation = bad. More leaves = more energy being made = more growth. May be stunted..........I have defoliated 3 times.........I wonder if there is a connection?

"defoliate" - indiscriminately remove a ton of leaves - usually no more than 33%, but still blind removal... to be clear. selectively removing a real problem as opposed to a made up one or ocd-related behaviour is fine. It should be rare. LEaves are your friends. They are extremely important beyond just absorbing light.

No reason to defoliate. And, in general, rarely a good reason to do it. Removing leaves doesn't shift resources or help the plant focus on flower - just the opposite actually. You are remving surface area for co2 absorbption, so it's reducing your limiting factor, that alone is reason to avoid it at all costs. pruning off growth very selectively can have some advantages, but never blindly remove 33% of the leaves. Just throwing out the fertilizer you fed it and was stored. making the plant more susceptible to nute fluctuations etc etc.. it's just a horrible idea in almost every way with absolutely no benefits. Not overcrowding canopy will avoid congestion-related issues. Simple as that.

Have your plants stretched yet? If not, I would leave them be until they stop stretching and see what they look like then. If I defoliate during flower, I do it during week 3 (which is around the time they stop stretching) and don't do anything major after that. Whether they have stretched yet or not you only want to remove leaves if it will be beneficial. The leaves power the plant so if you don't have humidity or airflow issues and there's no leaves blocking promising bud sites then there's no need to remove any leaves. I say to wait to defoliate until after the stretch because they go through tons of vegetative growth so more branches and leaves will develop during this transition period so to limit stress it's best to wait for it to finish stretching.

I would leave the leaves. More leaves means more energy intake to grow bigger buds. I’d only recommend taking off leaves if you were having humidity/air flow issues

No. Just leave them as they are now. 👍

I thinks this looks good. Looks like all bigger Colas will get enough light. Give some weeks of flowering and than you can remove further leaves.