Removing leaves from plant...

[norkali]

Hey Rusty, I know what your talking about.

I've been taking various leaves off of my plants throughout the last couple of weeks and have been wondering some of the same questions.

My experience is that when you are able to gently "pull" a leaf off of the plant, the plant was ready for it to go. If you look at where the stem of the leaf connected to the main stalk, you will see that there are no tears, or "open wounds" on the plant or the leaf itself, it kinda looks like the leaf had almost been glued to the plant and fell back off......kinda hard to explain.

So I'm pretty sure that when you pull/cut a leaf before it reaches that stage, you are trying to do something that the plant isn't yet ready to do itself; therefore stressing it. So, the reason for not pulling/cutting a leaf would be to avoid stress. Not to mention, like Perp said, fan leaves are where our buds get a lot of their "energy."

As for removing a fan leaf to expose other bud sites? I agree with you, I feel that it is beneficial, not detrimental, to lose a leaf to gain a bud site. Acknowledged, I may be ass-backwards on this logic.

[Rusty Trichome]

Acknowledged, I may be ass-backwards on this logic.

Same here, but it works for my little med grow.

[Opie Yutts]

So modest.