trimming shade leaves???

hey guys,i thought you was supposed to trim off the shade leaves when growing indoors to let the light in on the whole plant, and leave them on outdoors to help fight off fung. bugs and so on? have run across that a few places,

if under the fan leaf you remove you have an equal amount of new growth surface area then I think it is hepfull to remove the older leaf

So what If The Leaves have holes or insect bites taken out of them?, I pruned Mine off but i would like to know what every one else does, I my self hate going to the woods and seeing Leaves with bites taken out of them, its ugly and in my own mind it makes me think im not doing a good job, But if it would do the plant better to leave wounded leaves on i would like to know Please.

Thinning:
This really only applies to outdoor
growers, but some indoor set-ups such as ScrOG,
SOG and BOG may need to be thinned.
Growers like to grow their plants in a
uniform condition. That is - growers like all
their plants to be the same height. That way we
perfectly arrange our light so that it is too
far away or close to the tops. If one plant is
racy then we would have to adjust the light to
suite that plant. This means that we may end up
with light gaps like the following.
-Distance from Plant A to light is 1 meter.
-Distance from Plant B to light is 0.5 meters.
-Distance from plant C to light is 8 inches.
In this case you could imagine the plants
in a slope shape in there grow environment.
Obviously we are going to be wasting light, not
to mention space on this set-up so we need to
prevent this slope from happening. That is
where thinning comes into play.
The reason for the slope or curve is because
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some plants might tend to be a bit racy. Some
of the plants will try to grow quicker than
others to try and receive more light. If this
happens the racy plant will cause the smaller
ones beside it to receive less light. To
control racy plants we use a process called
thinning.
If you discover a few racy plants then just
cut them down to the same level as the others
(called pruning) or remove them all together.
Once you have done this you will see all your
plants growing nicely along at the same level.
Now, do not throw away the cuttings from
the thinning before you read the next line. You
can clone these cuttings into new plants!
By the time you have finished your thinning
you will have an even grow area with some
clones that you can use to grow more bud.
Now the other thing to remember is that
some people may tend to thin the other way
round. That is - leaving the taller ones and
remove the smaller ones. Again in Cannabis
growing the taller plants are generally male
and the smaller ones are female if you have
started from seed. Do you want a garden full of
possible males?
During the thinning process you may want to
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tackle some dead leaves or leaves that have
some mould build up on them. Mould looks like a
rust or fluff on the leaves and will most of
the time spread to other parts of the plant. So
why not cut these away too while you thin your
grow area.
Thinning your grow makes it look nicer and
tidier and helps to improve your overall yield.

The 'fan' leaves that we all refer to have a whole host of other names on other plants and in other circles. The name 'sun' leaves is also common. We're dealing with a flower here. One of the reasons that flowers produce their flowering shoots on the intererctions of leaves and stems is the internal structure of the plant. It places the most important part of the plant in the most convienient place to obtain its nutrition. Simplified even further you are dealing with a small solar collector. Every square inch of photosynthetic tissue you remove is either a loss of energy input, or something that the plant has to work harder to grow. Plants arent growing with the thought of getting you nice big buds. They are growing to produce enough viable seeds to continue it's species. One plant that produces 100 seeds has more than done it's job. Removing large sugar factories (the leaves) is one certain way of slowing down the plant. Pick up a biology books and look up common plants. No disrepect to anyone, but the only time that the plant isn't really using that much sunlight is once the large fan leaves start to yellow and drop the week before harvest or so. That isn't to let light in to the flowers, they are nearly if not totally mature. It's simply because they aren't needed anymore. If you look at any plant in nature, they do not grow unnecessary structures, it is a tremendous waste of energy. Nature is incredibly efficient, and even though most of us are going to very unnatural steps to produce our fine products, it's still a plant and follows those rules.

Congratulations! You've officially dug up the oldest thread: 2004!!!!!!

Stinky or another mod, maybe a sticky about how it's bad form to resurrect dead threads just to get your post-count up or am I just being too picky?

Happens quite often, lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MVilleToker

This is my first time growing , plus im 15 and dont reallly know alot bout prunning so cood you explain how 2 top the plant off.

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surely your too young for this kind of site no ?:eek::bnd2::icon506::admin1:

15 years old in 2004 would make him 19. This thread is ancient and even has a discussion about resurrecting old threads in it!

doh! my bad must stop smoking and reading threads @ the same time lol :jointsmile: