removing large leaves now or later?

if you want to grow leaves 110001011 then grow leaves we want buds..leaves take energy to grow, trapezium to direct to light source and keep alive for not much of a return when you could use that energy to grow buds with bigger advantages. u might know the sqaure root off ppfd. but when you know you know not told by text book thas well out of date and doesnt know the full science behind anything much. you keep going on what you learn on your first day of college because i have not heard a decent answer from you yet if im honest.. just blaa this n blaa that square root of this and pie divided that.. get a grip were growing weed not teaching numbers... chat shit....

Anything I may say on here typically comes from years of experience, literally growing thousands of plants. If I'm talking theory, I generally preface what I say warning of such. I may not hold a botany degree but I work with several people who do and they're some of the fiercest advocates for defoliation you'll ever meet. If I came into work expounding on the importance of every single leaf I'd be laughed right outta the building. And this is a grow WAAAAAYYYY more dialed in than your average home grower. If every single leaf counted, THIS would be the sorta context it applied to. Cannabis companies literally spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year employing teams of people just to pick leaves, lol. You can find plenty of material out there supporting defoliation and not only in cannabis, cotton is another plant that actually produces better when defoliated. I'd love to see the lab results on buds some of these guys are producing. I'm sure they'd be real surprised at the results when it came to PM and grey and green molds. Even if your buds look pretty, under the microscope you'd be surprised by what you see. I've seen some pretty stellar looking flower fail testing. Some people on here are more worried about feeling important than giving out good advice. Some people on here like to talk over the heads of the novices on here because it makes them feel superior. Some people on here have to make a new account every 6 months to a year because they know more about trolling than growing weed. At least over time they learn a little though and actually throw up a couple token diaries this time so it looks like they might grow a little bit.

There is no leaf to be taken off. Canopy is short, lolipoped well, there wont be any energy producers if leaves would be stripped. I would worry more about NPK ratios, colour dont look healthy ...

The difference between what i said and teh science deniers is you can look the things i said up and verify them with proper source material.. not word of mouth of soem mope on a marijuana message board with a HS education. Not everyone needs to go to college, and most degrees are absolutely useless, but when it comes to physical sciences - biology, chemistry, physics etc - it's actually quite important and allows you to avoid a ton of the absolute bullshit that floats around the marijuana growing community. even when faced with evidence that refutes nonsensical claims, these people double down. They'll change the reasonsing.. "oh, it's not that, it's this other reason i never mentioned before." Bwahahha, that happened with the people that intertwine ego with beliefs. An excellent example is the reaction to the studies showing flushing does nothing to impact th emineral content of flower... really didn't need a study to prove it if you knew just a modicum of polant biology. cell differntiation means various organs and plant material have a specific function. Pretending a sex organ does something useful other than producing flower and seed is rather silly. It has an evolutionary function and it doesn't just decide to work differently because you remove a leaf.

Don't... Defoliation stips the plant of what powers everything. You are reducing CO2 intake and light absorption. These are the 2 most important things you canfocus on -- DLI and CO2. Take t from someone that has an education on these topics and not some HS dropout. leaves do not compete with each other for "sugar," lol. Removing leaves does not 'allow a plant to focus on other things'. This sort of science-sounding stuff is at best untested conjecture of people that don't have foundational knowledge. Sugar produced from photosynthesis is highlymobile and flows around the plant mostly following concentration gradients. Apical dominance determines where it is used the most. these are easily confused cause and effect if you don't know your plant biology. You do have some congestion, but don't sacrifice surface area. i.e. don't create a gap in whic light misses the plant completely, lol.. that would be counterproductive

You're never gonna convince a leaf worshipper that defoliation has benefits. Don't waste your time trying. It's a greatly misunderstood technique, by both people who are for and against it. Personally I think it really has less to do with light than airflow. Cannabis is a wind pollinator, it certainly seems reasonable that flowers that get better airflow would have better chances of catching pollin and get more attention/resources. That holds true even in your top canopy, buds like elbow room. I think it just gets spoken of in terms of light because you can't really visually see airflow. Regardless of the larf bud density debate, it's reasonable just for preventing mold, mildew and budrot. I don't care how cherry you think your environment is, in the middle of a thicket you're gonna have a moist microclimate. You would practically have to strip a healthy plant naked before it reasonably impacted your grow. If you're feeding your plant then stored sugars aren't an issue and several other factors are gonna limit an indoor grow before leaf count ever enters the picture lol. If you're new to trying, start slow. It's easy to come back and remove more leaves tomorrow but you're not gluing any back on. Start from the bottom and work up, targeting large fans. Just removing the fans from the base of branches can make a big difference. Leave the leaves at the top few nodes alone unless it's a real cluster f, those are the leaves doing the heavy lifting since they get the best light.

In cannabis plants, natural sugar production is always happening, where larger amounts of sugar are key to a larger yield. Newer buds are the workhorse leaves, producing the sugars that older leaves store. This sometimes creates a competition for sugar amongst the leaves of the plant. Healthy plants do not need much alteration, but weaker plants sometimes need the extra sugar boost. Many growers use tricks such as defoliation to trim older leaves so the flow of sugar can reach other less mature buds. Others will add extra sugar to the plants to intervene with the natural production and help it along. 

Buds are flowers not fruit. They have there own leaves to produce there own localised energy. Hope this helps.. Peace and love

I would definitely remove them. Yes, you'll always find people here for or against defoliation. Personally, I've had better yields since I started defoliating. The buds get thicker and the plant has better airflow. I've also tried growing the same strains with and without defoliation at the same time, and in the end, the defoliated ones always had more yield and were often healthier. Yes, in nature, plants don't do it, but you want more yield; in nature, the plant just wants to be pollinated, and in the rest of agriculture, plants are also treated like tomatoes, which are also defoliated. Good luck!

No, unless extreme high humidity is impossible to control. Buds do not need direct lighting to grow. More leaves = more energy being made = more (bud) growth.............it is that simple. Less leaves = less energy being made = less (bud) growth............it is that simple.

Remove those and keep the leaves. More leaves, more Bud. Buds don't need light, they use the sugars FROM the leaves to grow...

yea you need more airflow there