Should you cut off fan leaves during flowering

I took some advise and listened to a member on here that said you should keep your leaves as green as you can as long as you can. If your plant gets a slower change over in nutes, you will lose less leaves slower and get better flowering. growth/bloom (nutes) start with 50/50 1-4 weeks. 5-6 weeks 25%/75%. week 7 0%/100%. Then your flush to finish. Never had grows go as well as these have with this practice.

Going into week 5 haven't cut 1 leave off yet. had to trim one or two. (light burn)

gee sub cool say to trim some shit here go look ur self on the tudde
TGA Subcool Seeds Deep Purple is a strain that was created to lock down more of the Urkle dominant traits and bring out more of the musty grape taste that Urk is famous for.
Deep Purple produces a wide range of female plants and not all of them will exhibit colours at all. The ones that do however are highly sought after and several people consider their Purple Grape females among their best Indicas strains. Deep Purple can be cultivated both indoors and outdoors and flowering for cannabis seeds take between 50-60 days. Best way to grow is long veg and remove some shade leaves to allow light under. Not a huge producer or a fast growing plant but it makes up for it in taste and high quality. Deep Purple is calming, relaxing and very fun to smoke.

now im sure if the breeder is telling you esp someone like sub it cant be bad but im sure you all natural hippy fucktards will still disagree.
the sites fucked up or ild link you my grow but im sure you can find it i trim the hell out mine

jjmd said:

.... growth/bloom (nutes) start with 50/50 1-4 weeks. 5-6 weeks 25%/75%. week 7 0%/100%. Then your flush to finish. Never had grows go as well as these have with this practice.

Going into week 5 haven't cut 1 leave off yet. had to trim one or two. (light burn)

Click to expand...

Hell yeah! I'm going to try that, it makes a lot of sense. +rep

I think the best way to think of it is if your solar panels are cut off wheres your electricity going to come from?Better to tuck them or tie them out the way imo,I do cut off yellowed leaves or burnt tip leaves.

jjmd said:

I took some advise and listened to a member on here that said you should keep your leaves as green as you can as long as you can. If your plant gets a slower change over in nutes, you will lose less leaves slower and get better flowering. growth/bloom (nutes) start with 50/50 1-4 weeks. 5-6 weeks 25%/75%. week 7 0%/100%. Then your flush to finish. Never had grows go as well as these have with this practice.

Going into week 5 haven't cut 1 leave off yet. had to trim one or two. (light burn)

Click to expand...

I read another cutting fan leaves off thread and found out some great info,thats where I learned its best to tuck them or tie them.It makes perfect sense cos they bring the energy in to the buds,better to train at the start in veg.I also learned exactly what you said its all about the nute dosage to keep your leaves happy.If you do the research you can keep problems to a minium but you learn from mistakes too.RIU is a great site.

Fellaz. Let me pllllllease end this debate. I have read these posts on all the forums for years looking for the answer when in reality I have done it both ways and have all the answers right in front of me. If you don't have enough light in your setup and you let your plant get too big for the amount of light you will be at a disadvantage right away. Now let's talk about clipping at the 3rd set of leaves for bushiness. If you do this you will definitely have a harder time getting light to the inner, lower sets of branches and leaves, but you will get more tops. No matter what though, if you don't have enough light you will get fan leaves that will warp and twist and canoe yet remain mostly green and slowly die away. On these leaves I have seen the individual blades turn and twist individually to face the light source, but still even when facing they will not get enough light as they are too far away or blocked by other more important upper fan leaves feeding the tops. If this is the case just cut your losses and get rid of them and face the fact you grew too big without enough light, or get yourself some more lights and wires and shit and run em all over. I know this is a lame pain in the ass though. I think the answer is if you go the route of a bushy plant and you are indoors you must begin flowering much earlier on, while the plant is smaller so it won't end up too big later. Plants can easily double in size through the flower period. If you grow one tall non-clipped stalk indoors you will most likely get a better result if you're underlit. You could have one light on top and maybe one on each side of it and be ok. I have done this both ways. One time I was growing a plant indoors and I clipped it once and ended up with 4 main shoots each of which having a top. It started getting too big and bushy for how much light I had. So what I ended up doing was trimming the fan leaves evenly off in a spiral stair case manor. I went to each node clipped one of the two fan leaves off then the next node in circular motion all the way up, but I did NOT do the main tops. When this was done it looked like a spiral staircase of leaves all the way down. Every bud on the side of the node I clipped the leaf off of was definitely smaller than the one on the side that still had the leaf. The tops were still nice and fat though. All in all I think it got me the most out of the plant as I could with the lighting I had. I would definitely say it was obvious that the fan leaves had something to do with yield and productivity. I would also say that it will push your flowering time up a little if you clip. Not too much though. Maybe a week or two. I might want to mention I am the king of low power light growing. I don't like using big ass lighting units because risk of fire, high electric bill and heat regulation concern me. I always used a 70 watt metal hallide above and two of those big 100watt coiled CFL bulbs that each supposedly uses like 40 watts. One on each side. Combined light power usage was something like 150watts. Now with this lighting I don't get huge yields anyways, but I easily get an ounce or two of some sticky shit. And I would always have clones ready to go into the flower cycle right behind the floweing mom. If you time it all right you get a good system for the cost of only 160watts and not too much space either.

If your growing indoors and lighting is not plentiful just grow a smaller plant. Begin flowering sooner and keep the lights as tight down on it as you can through the whole growth period. Make the light adjustable right off the start so as the plants gets taller you can easily raise the lights with it. Also look into a strain like LowRider. Those little bastages grow quick and short and auto flower while still producing some fat nug. You could probably grow 6 of those 1 to 1.5' tall in one pot and get up to an ounce off each in 6 weeks total with something like a single 150watt metal halide. And yes you can be all technical and switch to a sodium bulb for flower, but I never do and I still get good buds.

If you grow a single stemmed plant you will have much less trouble with lighting. I had a buddy with 6 beauties in a closet and he did not clip them so they were just tall stalks. He used 3' CFLs running vertically up and down between them all and two 4' CFLs running horizontally above the plants that he raised as they got taller. He also had tin foil on the walls of the closet all the way around. He had no symtoms of burning on the leaves as people always say happens with tin foil, but they were also only CFL lights so they are not that intense. When these got done flowering they were about 3 to 3.5' tall looking like a big fat donkey dick bud all the way up. A couple to a few ounces off of each.

One thing I should mention I have noticed over the years is that when I've grown bag seed that is obviously not pre-feminized. I always clipped them to keep them shorter and bushier and had something like 98% success rate with them being females. I believe firmly that shorter bushier plants tend to naturally go female and tall stick plants (not guaranteed feminized of course) tend to go the male route naturally. In theory the males want to be the tall skinny one so when it opens its little nutsacks to spread it's seed, the taller it is the better chance the pollen will get up in the air and spread further and better. The females want to be short and bushy with lots of surface area and seed producing locations to catch all the pollen fall out. This is not a fact, but it is an observation I have made over the years. Only one time I had a short bushy one come close to being a male and it was stress related. It was growing in a basement and it was winter time so the basement was like 55 degrees and lower sometimes in the room it was in. It was already showing female flowers and then it started showing some male balls in there too. It was going hermie on me. I bought a ceramic heat lamp and pointed it at the pot to combat the cold and keep the roots warmer. Keeping the roots and soil warm was key because at least the roots will feed the warm water in the soil up to the plant that is cold because of the air temp. Meanwhile I was plucking the nutsacs off here and there as they would show up. In no time they began to stop showing up. There was a couple left on the plant that I missed before. I plucked them off and I happened to squish them in my fingers and look inside and I swear I saw a female pistil in it. I may have been wrong, but it appeared that way. Either way the point is the one time I had a bushy short plant going hermie on me and I corrected the cold issue it went right back to being 100% female and the male flowers quit showing up. It fully flowered and was good seedless bud. I acted quickly, though, in correcting the problem. This is key

All in all. If your leaves are not drooping and wilting then don't clip them off. Some of them will normally eventually yellow and die during the flower. When they do, pluck em off. This is normal. If your leaves are droopy, curling, still green and you are sure it's not anything other than a lighting issue, meaning you went too big for your light and area, then just clip the messed up leaves and accept the reduced yield and understand the yield is just equivalent to the energy and space you gave it anyways. You will still get some some nug out of the deal. Just make sure to make clean precise clips of the dead or underlit leaves. This way you won't stress the shit out of it or disease it. I usually squirt a bit of fresh tap water on the exposed flesh where it was clipped with the idea the chlorine may help keep the area germ free. Either way I have clipped many many leaves and never ruined the plant. Only affected the yield a little and maybe length of grow time. I have even clipped all the fan leaves off during flowering and only left all bud leaves and small newer fan leaves and the plant still budded out, but definitely with a lesser yield.

Besides rhat what if you like what you have and decide to do more of it? Reveg? How do I do that with no leaves? Leave are your options to do more with the plant.

I cut most of the fan leaves off in flowering stage and the bottom buds end up the same size as the upper ones.

maybe you guys should take a look at this.

guy claims 4-8gram increase per plant after trimming the fans, pretty extreme.. check him if u got time, hes legit.. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=165741

knallmeannn said:

Pruning and completely eleviating fan leaves is 2 different things. Cutting off and pruning leaves that are next to dead is fine, but why would you cut off leaves that obviously grow for a reason?! I'm sure the Cannabis plant wouldn't grow those if they weren't needed. Simple fact, as someone stated before, let nature run it's course.

Click to expand...

Well now i cba reading further in this thread as the general concensus seems to be not to cut at all..
This is not my experience at all..
I did this very experiment this grow because I had great results pruning leaves that were "untuckable" to allow more light into the plant..
The one i never cut a leaf from had significantly lower yield than the pruned sister..
Have a look at Arjan & Co. and tell me they only remove dying leaves
Obviously removing all fanleaves or just too many is a bad thing, but only slightly worse than not tending to the lightneeds of lower flowers at all..

I think it is a judgement call, but rather leave it on than cut it off if in doubt..

Philo2 said:

I've taken off nearly all the fan leaves during flowering with no ill effects. During flowering I refer to them as shade leaves.

Most of the recent studies I have read state that the fan leaves provide no energy to the buds during flowering. All of that energy is absorbed through the leaves on the buds themselves. Thus the fan leaves do nothing for the buds and only absorb nutrients that could be going to the buds.

Click to expand...

i have found that shade leafs take the most abuse first, being a newb, i'll take any help i can get. I only remove if they pull off easy. i had problems switching from MG to organic ferts and plenty of fan leaves saved my harvest.

Most folks here are talking about light. In a cabinet grow, air circulation is also key. Plants are packed in the cab more than they would be in nature, so I trim enough of the fan leaves to let the air move.

In terms of the amount of harm it causes to prune, I would imagine it has a lot to do with the variety. Some strains like to be trained, others don't; some like high nutes, some don't. I figure pruning is much the same. I would only go by what someone's experience with YOUR strain is-- or try it a little at a time.

Hell, isn't this all about getting into a close relationship with the plant?

Cut it off to make light for the little bud.I do it all the time and it works great.These plants are tougher than you may think.

as long as u got enough strong veg going, start
pinching those lower fans to promote branching,
3-4 weeks, just do a node every few days,
a good strong plant will bush like crazy,
ie 8 week widow, and some fans, cut near the top
note how the bottom filled in

Philo2 said:

I've taken off nearly all the fan leaves during flowering with no ill effects. During flowering I refer to them as shade leaves.

Most of the recent studies I have read state that the fan leaves provide no energy to the buds during flowering. All of that energy is absorbed through the leaves on the buds themselves. Thus the fan leaves do nothing for the buds and only absorb nutrients that could be going to the buds.

Click to expand...

yep i totaly agree with you there mate,after a week of flowering i trim 75% if not all fan leafs so my light hits every bud site on the plant,,your plant looks twice as small after you takin the fan leafs but trimin the fan leafs from shading the bud sites could get you up to a 20% beter yeild ,,,,its my first time growing so im just learning from a friend whos grown for about 20years now and he always takes away his fan leafs and never gets less than 4oz a plant,,fair enough the plant may go in to shock after triming for a week but after that sit back an watch them buds faten up haha,,,,,ill put a pic up of before and after triming,,i felt gutted after triming but i no it should help my yeild in the end,,,the guy who asked the question mite also se these pics,,,just agreeing with ya on this one

I just recently pruned nearly all fan leaves except for the ones growing from the bud. I've read many different opinions and decided there is only one way to find out for sure is to experiment. i had a plant before that i pruned nearly all the fan leaves because they were dying (due to my lack of knowledge of growing). The buds ended up growing very large so I'm gonna see how a plant with healthy leaves being cut affects the buds. The first picture is the plant which I pruned all the fan leaves before flowering. The second picture is the plant I just cut all the fan leaves off (picture is before my pruning). sorry about the sideways pics. I dont know why the went sideways :/

yeaa.. idk i feel like theres a good pint for both views.. i feel like there will never be an "accurate" answer.. some will say To cut.. and other will say DO NOT cut... =/

but for me.. I do trim the fan leaves... usually once i get to week 4 of flowering.. i start trimming any that will cover potential bud sites.. and do a few leaves every few days so i dont shock the plant.. i got over 3 ounces from my last plant.. and i trimmed the hell outta the leaves.. lol by week 6.. i had no more "big" fan leaves.. and the plant did fine.. in my opinion.. it did GREAT actually. lol. 3.15 ounces. =) and i only vegged for 3 weeks and im using CFL's. its Nirvana's White Widow if any1's wondering.. its actually the plant thats my avatar pic. =)

and my new plant (another White Widow.. check my signature if u wanna go to the journal) i have been trimming leaves as well.. and she seems to be doing fine. =) TRIMMING FAN LEAVES OFF. lol

I lollipop @ week 2-3 and I remove any fan leaf that isn't attached to a bud @ week 5, view pics.

I used to always cut of the fan leaves so lower buds would get bigger........Wich would give me fatty bottom nugs.....but i noticed growth is slower......this grow im leaving them alone

I cut some off and Saw my plants suffer for them. I did it to 6 of them
I just tie them back now and my results so far have been way better but I dont know crap this is just what happened with me
Still waiting for bud
My dumb but got up to 32 plants going I am down to 5