A tribute to Uncle Ben and the Almighty Leaf

Situation420 said:

Exactly sir. There are so many people out there giving defoliation a bad name because they don't understand that is s selective removal that has to do with a lot more than just photosynthesis.

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There isn't really a clear technique to give a bad name too..
As the argument gets deeper, the technique gets more vague.

I would like to see a clear method. I would try it out. Shit, I'll try anything on one plant.

You should give your own technique a proper name... post a tek/thread.
Call it "Situational Leaf Slaughtering"... yeah?

Darth Budder said:

Ben correct me if I am wrong, but don't you also prune out the lower growth to promote top production?

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No, I'm a Ah Natruel kinda guy.

edyah said:

UB has helped me on my first grow....

I used his soil mix, the spin out on the pots and topped for 4 main colas on 13 plants.....yeilded over 3lbs first grow. he has helped me grow

edit: all 13 plants vegged 4 wks from seed too

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In what thread could I find his soil mix?

Foothills said:

.View attachment 2788709 Another Tribute To Uncle Ben !! It was his advice that helped get me started. Glad the thread came back !

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Holy crap. I wonder how many watts you'd need to pull that off indoors.....

420circuit said:

Seems simple enough to remove the leaves that the plant doesn't need by trimming those that are yellowing. Unless you can do something to stop the yellowing and extend the ability of the leaf to do its job in support of the plant. The bickering sure gets old.

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Yea the bickering gets old but the debating never will. It also is not about removing yellowing leaves either. Even though a plants leaf is yellow, and the chlorophyll is receding, there are still a number of other pigments that help fuel the photosynthetic reaction.

Ever notice how the leaves recede as you go towards the top of the plant into smaller more compact leaves? As the plant matures, during flowering there is a point that vertical growth is slowed tremendously and the leaves dont grow outward as much. It is right before this time that defoliation is key. If you time it right, your plant will replace the correctly removed leaves with smaller more compact, stoutier leaves that do not take up the same surface area but produce the same amount of energy required for the plants. Removing the leaves at the right time creates nodes on the plant that are more compact as well creating more dense buds. That is the trick hope all you guys are happy, experiment with it and I guarantee you will like the results. Just don't remove them all like a dumbass

EDIT: In that pic i posted, inside those buds are about 8-12 super compact nodes that grew close together and produced the leaves necessary for flower production. Eventually, the buds swelled up covering those leaves but they were there long enough to do there job. The lower fan leaves are older and were left there to support new growth after the defoliation process. Otherwise, the plants growth would have been severely stunted

Foothills said:

.View attachment 2788709 Another Tribute To Uncle Ben !! It was his advice that helped get me started. Glad the thread came back !

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Thanks!

That is a VERY well grown plant and would mimic my credo - you've got nice dark green leaves, super full canopy, no lower leaf loss and the yield is gonna be incredible. Curious as to what soils, plant foods and other drills you've been giving it.

Well done!

UB

Dboi87 said:

In what thread could I find his soil mix?

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I use alot of brown sphagnum peat moss, a large bag of Schultz potting mix, and a bag of cheap potting soil (screened to get rid of the chunky stuff) to make up enough for 30 to 40 gallons of a final mix, which I mix on a cement floor using a shovel and store in large garbage cans. To this base which provides humates, an acidic hit, trace elements, etc. and a little silt to tighten up the mix and retain moisture, I add:

6 or so cups blood meal, 3 or so cups bonemeal, 4 cups dolomite lime, 1 large bag each of vermiculite and perlite (available at Casa dePOT) and alfalfa meal which contains a hormone called triacontanol (purported to increase vegetable production up to 60%). I buy alfalfa feed pellets from a farm and ranch supply store, put about 4 cups of the pellets in a bucket with a gallon of water and give it a good squirt of Ivory dish soap to cut the surface tension, let it stand for 30 minutes, and then dump the slurry into the mix on the floor. I sometimes add composted horse manure, maybe about 3 or 4 gallons of it. The final, slightly moist soil mix is turned well with a shovel and stored for a couple of weeks in garbage cans to "mellow".

I buy coarse vermiculite in large bags from a lumber yard. They look like 50 gal. bags, like 4' tall...... probably about 3 c.f.

Dboi87 said:

Holy crap. I wonder how many watts you'd need to pull that off indoors.....

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600W would probably do it if you configured it right - quality reflecting panels, PLUS, you've got to get everything else right which he obviously has. One of my dalat vietnamese got the entire HID once I harvested its sisters. The light is blinding thanks to the panels. This is a view from the top shooting down into the garden. Dog chains hold up the heavy colas which are still bent over.

View attachment 2789686

Uncle Ben said:

Thanks!

That is a VERY well grown plant and would mimic my credo - you've got nice dark green leaves, super full canopy, no lower leaf loss and the yield is gonna be incredible. Curious as to what soils, plant foods and other drills you've been giving it.UB

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Thanks for the comments, UB and much of the credit goes out to you. You have done more to help get new growers started off in the right direction than anyone I know of on here.

I'm basically just a farm boy, loving life out in the country. So as you might guess, the plant did not receive a lot of special treatment.The soil mix was 50% garden soil (fine loam), 25% cheap potting mix and 25% aged horse shit, mixed together well in the container ( 32 gal. ) and left outside for a week or so to get things going in the mix. After the 4 or 5 week old plant is in the container, I top dress with about a 1" layer of aged chicken shit, pulled back from the main stalk a bit. I maintain the top dressing for the plants entire life.

After that I check on the plant almost daily and try to read whats going on with the entire process. I will only water my plants with rain water, as my well water is loaded with calcium and has a ph of around 8.5 .

As for fertilizers, I like Dyna-Grow because it's complete and the nutrient ratios they use when formulating it make good sense to me, I keep a bottle of Foliage, Grow, and Bloom on hand most the time. What formula I use at any particular time is always determined by the plants stage of growth and what my plant is trying to tell me when I go for a visit. I can tell you, and this may surprise some of you, I use more of the Grow formula during bloom than I do even the bloom formula and very rarely do I ever use any of them at full strength.

The 32 gallon container proved to be much to small toward the end and I was watering and feeding way to much. Thats a mistake I will not make again because it's a pain in the ass and it holds the plant back from achieving it's full potential. I'm an outdoor guy and I like those healthy, huge, outdoor plants, growing under the full sun, living out in nature, right where they should be, but of course, I'm one of the fortunate ones that can get away with it because of my location.

As far as balancing the PH out in my nutrient solution when I feed, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I don't like to hit my plants continually with a solution thats way out of range, especially when I know the container is not large enough to begin with.

Thanks again UB, for helping me along many years ago and also for the help you have continued to give many others since that time. You Da Man !!

Uncle Ben said:

600W would probably do it if you configured it right - quality reflecting panels

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Who are you kidding that a plant that size can be grown indoors under a 600 watt light. First off, that is a point light source and the canopy of the plant alone would prevent any light from reaching the lower 3 feet of that plant from direct light or reflected light. Just based on the angles alone anyone can see that is not possible indoors under a single light source.

Thanks Tio!

Foothills said:

Thanks for the comments, UB and much of the credit goes out to you. You have done more to help get new growers started off in the right direction than anyone I know of on here.

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Thanks, I try.

I'm basically just a farm boy, loving life out in the country. So as you might guess, the plant did not receive a lot of special treatment.The soil mix was 50% garden soil (fine loam), 25% cheap potting mix and 25% aged horse shit, mixed together well in the container ( 32 gal. ) and left outside for a week or so to get things going in the mix. After the 4 or 5 week old plant is in the container, I top dress with about a 1" layer of aged chicken shit, pulled back from the main stalk a bit. I maintain the top dressing for the plants entire life.

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32 gal. pot? No wonder you had such a fine looking monster, sheesh! Being lazy, I cheat. I dig a hole about 3" deep, pull out any plugs in the drain holes (usually 6 holes in the commercial black pots), drop the 5 gal. pot in the hole, pack soil around the outside.....done.... and the plant/pot is stable during high winds. Roots will grow out of the drain holes into native soil and "re-purpose" the water/salts that have drained out of your pot. If you want to play games, make your own pots using a roll of RootBuilder. I've got tropicals in RootBuilder pots so big it takes a whole tractor bucket to fill them up. About 16"H X 30" W or so.

I'm surprised you were able to pull it off with garden soil additions. Usually that is too heavy but your success speaks for itself. I too am a user of horse manure. To me it's the best of the manures. Watch your source. If those horse grazing fields have been sprayed with broad leaf herbicides like picloram it will be passed through the horse and toast your faves. If you ever see any stem disfiguration, leaf chlorosis and disfiguration....your manure has broad leaf herbicide residues.

Chicken chit is great too, but can be hot. I don't see any burn in that plant though. Just frickin' incredible! Am also a farm boy raising all kinds of goodies. Just got through fermenting a wonderful wine from my grapes that should really be "big" for example.

After that I check on the plant almost daily and try to read whats going on with the entire process. I will only water my plants with rain water, as my well water is loaded with calcium and has a ph of around 8.5 .

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"Read" - yep, you are a Master Gardener.

Rainwater is the best no question about it. It contains beneficial microbes, myco fungi and when sourced from a thunderstorm, nitrates. I too collect rainwater off a greenhouse gutter using one of these - http://www.tanksforless.com/Norwesco-Rainwater-Tanks_c75.htm. Installed a cheap transfer pump, the plants love it and so do I thanks to the convenience. My well water is like yours, very hard like 800+ TDS, mainly bicarbs of Ca and Mg. Some sulfates which drops the pH down to 7.0.

As for fertilizers, I like Dyna-Grow because it's complete and the nutrient ratios they use when formulating it make good sense to me, I keep a bottle of Foliage, Grow, and Bloom on hand most the time. What formula I use at any particular time is always determined by the plants stage of growth and what my plant is trying to tell me when I go for a visit. I can tell you, and this may surprise some of you, I use more of the Grow formula during bloom than I do even the bloom formula and very rarely do I ever use any of them at full strength.

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Been preaching its virtues for years. BTW, Homebrewer did a clone test regarding yields and plant health between Grow and FP and the FP slightly eeked out the Grow. He has a very detailed journal at Riddlem3.com, an edited version here. You belong over there.

The 32 gallon container proved to be much to small toward the end and I was watering and feeding way to much. Thats a mistake I will not make again because it's a pain in the ass and it holds the plant back from achieving it's full potential. I'm an outdoor guy and I like those healthy, huge, outdoor plants, growing under the full sun, living out in nature, right where they should be, but of course, I'm one of the fortunate ones that can get away with it because of my location.

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I hear that. I add clay silt to my pots to tighten them up a bit. I can only imagine how much you have to water that monster. It must wick off 2 gallons a day or more.

As far as balancing the PH out in my nutrient solution when I feed, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I don't like to hit my plants continually with a solution thats way out of range, especially when I know the container is not large enough to begin with.

Thanks again UB, for helping me along many years ago and also for the help you have continued to give many others since that time. You Da Man !!

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I don't worry about pH as one of my threads suggests.

Good luck, and keep in touch with photos and such.

Uncle Ben

Situation420 said:

Who are you kidding that a plant that size can be grown indoors under a 600 watt light. First off, that is a point light source and the canopy of the plant alone would prevent any light from reaching the lower 3 feet of that plant from direct light or reflected light. Just based on the angles alone anyone can see that is not possible indoors under a single light source.

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Sit, my patience is wearing real thin with you and I'm about let you go. I'll try to get thru, once more, and then that's it, I'm done. I have shown you plants that were crammed together such that the "point source" did not reach the lower levels that you seem to be so hung up on.

The way I configure my garden is not a "point source". I use highly reflective side panels that are adjustable such that they are always kept close to the foliage, and that may include panels in the corners that reflect light back into the canopy, tilted upwards. I also paint my floor covering white. Red mulches down tomato rows has been field tested to yield 30% or more.

Look.....research the use of reflecting panels which can increase light, what the plant sees, by 30% or more.

And stop parsing my posts. I said, which you parsed - "600W would probably do it if you configured it right - quality reflecting panels, PLUS, you've got to get everything else right which he obviously has."

You're beginning to remind me of "journalist" shitheads like Diane Sawyer or Chris Matthews.

UB

Uncle Ben said:

Look.....research the use of reflecting panels which can increase light, what the plant sees, by 30% or more.

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I've mentioned something similar several times in the hydroponics forum, people looking for 'systems' and gimmicks that are supposedly going to get them over 1gpw and higher, or X pounds in Y weeks while they forget one of the most basics elements of indoor growing: proper reflection (and that includes a quality hood). I have even seen people hanging additional bulbs without hoods on the sides of plants in a corner of a room... or place CFLs close to lower leaves... Enclose it. Use reflective foil or plates* on all walls. Paint the ceiling white at least.

*Google "Torsti´s next round" for example and check the Images results. Those plates are becoming increasingly popular amongst indoor growers in NL because several tests/measurements have shown they are more effective than foil (and way more effective than the white chalk myth). We call those plates Torsti/Torsten plates, after that guy, don't know yet what the official name for it is. It's like a plate with a layer of reflective aluminum. It's well-known here (where indoors is almost mandatory) that low quality reflection can easily cost you 10-20%. Having no reflection at all or even just white walls... If I had the endless energy to open the eyes of other growers like UB has, no/bad reflection would be to me as defoliation is to UB.

Uncle Ben said:

I use alot of brown sphagnum peat moss, a large bag of Schultz potting mix, and a bag of cheap potting soil (screened to get rid of the chunky stuff) to make up enough for 30 to 40 gallons of a final mix, which I mix on a cement floor using a shovel and store in large garbage cans. To this base which provides humates, an acidic hit, trace elements, etc. and a little silt to tighten up the mix and retain moisture, I add:

6 or so cups blood meal, 3 or so cups bonemeal, 4 cups dolomite lime, 1 large bag each of vermiculite and perlite (available at Casa dePOT) and alfalfa meal which contains a hormone called triacontanol (purported to increase vegetable production up to 60%). I buy alfalfa feed pellets from a farm and ranch supply store, put about 4 cups of the pellets in a bucket with a gallon of water and give it a good squirt of Ivory dish soap to cut the surface tension, let it stand for 30 minutes, and then dump the slurry into the mix on the floor. I sometimes add composted horse manure, maybe about 3 or 4 gallons of it. The final, slightly moist soil mix is turned well with a shovel and stored for a couple of weeks in garbage cans to "mellow".

I buy coarse vermiculite in large bags from a lumber yard. They look like 50 gal. bags, like 4' tall...... probably about 3 c.f.

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When using soil like that with the bloodmeal and all I've read that using salts is bad cause it kills the beneficial microbes so using synthetic ferts like dyna gro will defeat the purpose of teas and amendments and all that other stuff. IOW just stick to either soluble nutes or "organics is this true???

Dboi87 said:

When using soil like that with the bloodmeal and all I've read that using salts is bad cause it kills the beneficial microbes so using synthetic ferts like dyna gro will defeat the purpose of teas and amendments and all that other stuff. IOW just stick to either soluble nutes or "organics is this true???

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May I ask were your reading this stuff ?

Sativied said:

.....Those plates are becoming increasingly popular amongst indoor growers in NL because several tests/measurements have shown they are more effective than foil (and way more effective than the white chalk myth). We call those plates Torsti/Torsten plates, after that guy, don't know yet what the official name for it is. It's like a plate with a layer of reflective aluminum. It's well-known here (where indoors is almost mandatory) that low quality reflection can easily cost you 10-20%. Having no reflection at all or even just white walls... If I had the endless energy to open the eyes of other growers like UB has, no/bad reflection would be to me as defoliation is to UB.

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This is what I found. https://www.opengrow.com/topic/41965-torstis-next-round-28-x-s5-onder-540-watt-t5/page__st__20

Looks good.

Dboi87 said:

When using soil like that with the bloodmeal and all I've read that using salts is bad cause it kills the beneficial microbes so using synthetic ferts like dyna gro will defeat the purpose of teas and amendments and all that other stuff. IOW just stick to either soluble nutes or "organics is this true???

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No, it's another myth perpetrated by the organic cultists who don't realize that organics ARE chemicals....or they wouldn't be of any benefit.

Uncle Ben said:

This is what I found. https://www.opengrow.com/topic/41965-torstis-next-round-28-x-s5-onder-540-watt-t5/page__st__20

Looks good.

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Yeah that's the one. Forum owned by same person as the local dutch forum (Sannie) where it has been tested some more by a moderator who build a small test setup to measure different materials (excluding direct light from source to meter). It's not that much better than foil, and obviously costs more than foil, but easy to clean and lasts much longer. And with some proper planning it doesn't need to go from top to bottom.

At NASA:


It sounds better in Dutch because it rhymes: "light is weight". So don't waste any of it.

Darth Budder said:

So as an argument against defoilating, here is a clone of a plant that i defoliiated the shit out of. The original plant at this time in flower was covered in nanners and this clone, this exact plant grown under the exact lights in the exact room, hasnt. Even though i trained the hell out of it. Wonder if not cutting the shit out of it had something to do with that?

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I'm thinking the 100 degree temps had more to do with your herm issues than removing a few leaves.