I do try to defoliate as little as possible though. There’s multiple schools of thought and I don’t want to change your mind or anything… but I subscribe to the notion that the plant knows what it’s doing and to mess as little as possible.
A leaf takes energy from the plant to grow, after a certain amount of days it no longer takes energy and only provides energy. So to remove it for anything but a specific reason, like its covering a bud site (arguments here too) or touching the tent, is actually wasting energy.
Now on the covering a bud site, a leaf also doesn’t take 100% of the light energy that reaches it, a portion of it passes through to the leafs and stuff below. I’ve also seen people do bud tests and lower bud typically tests higher for THC, which kinda makes a sense since they are semi protected from light degradation by canopy coverage.
I could spend more time and get a better quality product by being more selective. Like think of how beautiful and dense the bud would be if I put all this energy into a few colas instead of this forest. I’m trying to find a good balance of quality and quantity until I have some buffer and focus more on quality.
Provided life lets me have the time with the ladies of course too.
I basically only removed what was under the trellis or what wasn’t reaching the top at all.
I removed 2 compost bags of stuff….
I do try to defoliate as little as possible though. There’s multiple schools of thought and I don’t want to change your mind or anything… but I subscribe to the notion that the plant knows what it’s doing and to mess as little as possible.
A leaf takes energy from the plant to grow, after a certain amount of days it no longer takes energy and only provides energy. So to remove it for anything but a specific reason, like its covering a bud site (arguments here too) or touching the tent, is actually wasting energy.
Now on the covering a bud site, a leaf also doesn’t take 100% of the light energy that reaches it, a portion of it passes through to the leafs and stuff below. I’ve also seen people do bud tests and lower bud typically tests higher for THC, which kinda makes a sense since they are semi protected from light degradation by canopy coverage.
The way you say it makes it seem obvious lol I only defoliate because that’s how I was taught, I’m just gonna let it ride next time
Do a side by side and check for yourself.
I could spend more time and get a better quality product by being more selective. Like think of how beautiful and dense the bud would be if I put all this energy into a few colas instead of this forest. I’m trying to find a good balance of quality and quantity until I have some buffer and focus more on quality.
Provided life lets me have the time with the ladies of course too.
I basically only removed what was under the trellis or what wasn’t reaching the top at all.