Pruning vs no pruning experiment

[Death The Cultivator]

Sounds like more of an issue of not being able to move enough outside air through the tent. Would bigger exhaust fans be the solution? It seems like you’re having to “treat” the funky air that you can’t get out of the tent fast enough. I have a single 130 W QB in the end of a 2 1/2 x 7‘ closet. I will admit that I don’t have to worry about sealing it off because I live alone and the strain that I am growing is not particularly fragrant. As best as I can tell the small fan I have on the floor pointing up does more to cool the light down a fair bit than to prevent any funk from growing. But I am also in Central Florida where I have to have a 5 ton heat pump in a house where a 3 ton would be sufficient in some less hot and humid conditions.

It's about environmental control. Have you seen SOG grows? It's so efficient because in part you don't spend time pruning leaves for air flow. Cut some lowers, transplant, and leave them alone. This helps prevent pathogens and disease. If air circulation around buds is an issue get more fans not prune leaves. Know the strain and control environment.

Indoor growers shouldn't even be worrying about excessive foliage, pathogens, or mold with good housekeeping. Environmental control is going to influence auxins and morphology of the plant.

 

[Kinezokyprios]

It is not only a weather issue, but also light penetration issue. Perhaps at a huge cost and at a fragile balance you can overcome the weather problems and maintain an adequate air circulation/temperature/humidity ratio.
It is a light distribution problem. Unlike the sun indoor lights are a static and weak source of light. Without intervention, foiliage is inadequately penetrated by light. This means no strong branches and colas, but lots of popcorn buds, or maybe even not even them. No light no buds.
There is also the problem of nutrients. Plants direct all food to leaves only. If buds happen to be on they way then they eat. Since cannabis cannot live on high nutrient doses and gets nutrient burned, or if it does it has very low quality, then you are faced with a dilemma, leaves or buds. The only solution is compromise. You retain the upper leaves to draw food towards them and buds benefit on the way

 

[Death The Cultivator]

It is not only a weather issue, but also light penetration issue. Perhaps at a huge cost and at a fragile balance you can overcome the weather problems and maintain an adequate air circulation/temperature/humidity ratio.
It is a light distribution problem. Unlike the sun indoor lights are a static and weak source of light. Without intervention, foiliage is inadequately penetrated by light. This means no strong branches and colas, but lots of popcorn buds, or maybe even not even them. No light no buds.
There is also the problem of nutrients. Plants direct all food to leaves only. If buds happen to be on they way then they eat. Since cannabis cannot live on high nutrient doses and gets nutrient burned, or if it does it has very low quality, then you are faced with a dilemma, leaves or buds. The only solution is compromise. You retain the upper leaves to draw food towards them and buds benefit on the way

A lot of commercial greenhouses use DLI meters to add extra light when outdoor conditions some permit. Modern indoor LEDs provide more than enough PPFD that over 1000 is easily achievable with anything over requiring c02 injection.

Shade leaves serve a different function than sugar leaves and fan leaves. Removing fan leaves can damage shade leaves that aren't equipped to handle strong light.

What you're saying isn't how cannabis works or plants in general. Those leaves work in conjunction with the roots and osmotic pressure to transport water and nutrients all through the plants. Buds cannot photosynthesis otherwise they would have petioles with their calyxes.

 

[Kinezokyprios]

Let's put things on a perspective closer to reality for the majority of growers. It is not economically feasible to do this in a small home grow. This is of interest only to large commercial growers that can afford it. Still it is debatable if the result pays off. Yes you can intervene in the climate and lighting in exactly the way you describe, but at what cost?
As far as the photosynthetic capabilities of plants are concerned, when you defoliate you make a strategic compromise. You strip all the foiliage that has low or no access to light. Not all foiliage. At the final stages when you strip everything off still nature has the solution at hand. It is called sugar leaves. Even if you strip them all the plant keeps on growing new ones until you chop. So 2 weeks you rely on sugar leaves. It is a very concetrated point of osmotic pressure right where you need it.

 

[Death The Cultivator]

Let's put things on a perspective closer to reality for the majority of growers. It is not economically feasible to do this in a small home grow. This is of interest only to large commercial growers that can afford it. Still it is debatable if the result pays off. Yes you can intervene in the climate and lighting in exactly the way you describe, but at what cost?
As far as the photosynthetic capabilities of plants are concerned, when you defoliate you make a strategic compromise. You strip all the foiliage that has low or no access to light. Not all foiliage. At the final stages when you strip everything off still nature has the solution at hand. It is called sugar leaves. Even if you strip them all the plant keeps on growing new ones until you chop. So 2 weeks you rely on sugar leaves. It is a very concetrated point of osmotic pressure right where you need it.

Defoliation isn't a strategic compromise though it is a method of removing all the leaves off cotton plants for easier processing.

The only pruning that should ideally occur is off branches that aren't going to produce. By stripping the plant of leaves you are triggering vegetative growth while a plant is trying to flower creating a bunch of new small fan leaves that are going to draw more energy than they produce until maturity.

Osmotic pressure occurs at the rhizosphere not in the sugar leaves. By stripping leaves you're choking the plant and inhibiting the natural transportation of water and nutrients.

One could argue that reducing foliage will help prevent leaves from the top, from blocking light and reaching lower into the canopy, however this is only going to end up with the same 'total' photosynthetic yield. All that is changed is where the photons will land. Any light which is not absorbed from higher leaves will pass through to lower leaves. This is called the transmittance effect. The idea that top leaves block lower leaves and waste usable energy, is incorrect for this very reason. As light is captured efficiently. Infact exposing shade leaves could be harmful because of the shade vs sun leaves problem. Shade leaves have a different anatomical structure compared to sun leaves, as such its capacity to process light is limited and is negatively affected through factors such as photoprotection and photoinhibition. It takes time for leaves to adapt to new lighting environments. Removing sun leaves and exposing shade leaves, could slow growth and add time to the overall schedule. This is the reason why plants have problems when being introduced into new lighting environments.

 

[Kinezokyprios]

Forgive me but it is the first time somebody describes cannabis as a "photophobic" plant...
Perhaps you can elaborate further on it and reveal as the secrets of shading heavily cannabis on order to achieve a huge yield...
I understand your point of view but if you aim at 200 to 300 grams of very potent dry buds from a plant then treating nice will achieve nothing. It is a strict systematic torture that can only achieve high yields with maximum thc.
To further explain here pictures of an auto mazar last June, roughly 1 week before flush. The dry weight was 326 grams. Organic super soil with minimal water, LST, 200w led lights and extreme pruning
Auto Mazaar

 

[Kinezokyprios]

And that is its pair a green crack auto, on the same pruning day. Same conditions. Dry weight 234 grams, this plant was facing issues like nutrient burn initially so I flushed it twice. So much water affected the final crop. I had 6 more.plants but I guess these are the only pictures I haven't deleted.
Green crack auto

 

[Death The Cultivator]

Forgive me but it is the first time somebody describes cannabis as a "photophobic" plant...
Perhaps you can elaborate further on it and reveal as the secrets of shading heavily cannabis on order to achieve a huge yield...
I understand your point of view but if you aim at 200 to 300 grams of very potent dry buds from a plant then treating nice will achieve nothing. It is a strict systematic torture that can only achieve high yields with maximum thc.
To further explain here pictures of an auto mazar last June, roughly 1 week before flush. The dry weight was 326 grams. Organic super soil with minimal water, LST, 200w led lights and extreme pruning
Auto Mazaar

I sincerely disagree that it takes stress to grow. High density planting is a perfect example of high yield with minimal stress. It doesn't require training for high yield or quality and it begins with genetics moreso then torture techniques. THC shouldn't be the only focus as high levels doesn't necessarily mean better.

Crop steering techniques, environmental control, grow medium, nutrients, and lighting are all going to contribute to final yield with quality to some degree. If I want more yield I grow more plants because larger plants are more susceptible to problems over time with higher nutrient demands.

I wasn't describing photophobia or implying it leads to huge yields. The transmittance effect is what nullifies the idea that leaves need to be removed for bud sites, that don't photosynthesize, to grow larger.

 

[Kinezokyprios]

Forgive my sarcastic comments and my arrogance, I must learn to be more humble. We all have the right to debate and disagree, it is called constructive dialogue.

 

[Kinezokyprios]

After all even if we strongly disagree, we do learn from each other, even if it is an unconscious process. No information is a loss and time comes to exploit it.