Please take a moment to put a colored wire tie at one of those crossings of the string.
Take another picture of that, in the shot.
Please continue to take pics of that from the same spot till harvest - PLEASE!
No one ever finishes one of these defol threads with their results and the road to them!
You know what your doing grow wise......I want to see your results - PLEASE!
"I" want to see....screw the "haters"......
I have a friend who does the defol thing like you.....he does not have big buds, they're smaller but dense as hell and he does pull an impressive yield increase with it (for plant size)....in weight!
I like your details given and will be looking forward to your posts (if you do it) .....
I'll sub this thread if you do......I gotta see one of these actually finish.....
Thanks farmer
Doc
pretty sure
@RM3 has done side by sides, no?
but that's relying on my THC addled brain's memory..
i never even said that defoliating is never advantageous, you can certainly "tidy up" how your plants look at the end, and sure, maybe it'll be more pleasing to the human eyes that way, but i like larf, i like weight, the larfy stuff is for hash or edibles, rosin, etc. the colas are for smoking
But to think that your buds will be bigger and your plant will yield more weight with less leaves is completely wrong.
period.
like i said, given ample light, defoliation is just slowing your plant down.
Instances where defoliating can be handy would be SOG grows, and such, where you are packing in as many one cola plants as possible and you don't want them to shade each other, but again, given ample light, that's superfluous.
For the record I've done the side-by-side, yrs ago, in my early 20s, and it "fit" the grow room better, sure.
but the yield was totally less, that plant needed less water too, the UN-defoliated plant took up way more water, grew bigger, faster, and yielded better nugs.
THAT was where i made my conclusion.
I'm not speaking out my ass, science, and botany agree, not to mention billions of yrs of evolution, if anything you can rely on mother nature to get it right.