Like he said at the beginning of this post he went overboard with the lollipopping and defoliation. If you are going to defoliate then you don't really need to lollipop them. The point of the defoliation is to let light into the lower bud sites so that they fill out. if you prune out all of those lower bud sites then there is no need to defoliate. Luckily he is growing Blue Dream which is the easiest strain in the world to grow. He might actually end up with some decent nugs but he is not going to have a bigger yield than he would have had if he had just lollipopped and not defoliated. Whenever I defoliate a crop it always makes the plants take at least a week longer to finish so he might have just delayed his harvest by a week or so.
You are right about the leaves being storage. The cheap-ass in me always thinks about all the nutrients that I am just throwing in the trash when I am stripping leaves off a plant. I have been experimenting with defoliation techniques for a couple of years now and it is always variable and tricky to do. A couple of days one way or the other can make a big difference. I once defoliated half a table of plants and then ran out of time and didn't get to the other half until two days later and the first half of the plants yielded twice as much as the second half. When doing serious defoliation the rule of thumb seems to be to strip all the leaves once right when you put them into flower and then do it again about 2 1/2 to 3 weeks later.
I have done the way pertty much like the way how you grow bro, only the 2nd defoliation earlier than yours about 2-3days after flowering ( normally ).
But last time i have been super busy so I had the 2nd defoliation much later when it turned week 2-3 . Surprisingly i found that might be the time i should do that . All the buds are growing much better than before .
As I am new been growing for about 2yrs only , before I was doing perrty much like what other people told me . But most of them were the one i expected , i started growing with my own way mix other online infos about a year ago . I'm so glad that you shared the information I need .
Now I can be surly to defoliation .
Have you ever heard another defoliation technique at around week 4-6 ? I have been heard lots grower done that to increase yield and decrease the chance of bud rot .