Chop 'em off or keep 'em til the End?

Hello,

I've in week 6 of 12/12 always been of the opinion that you should keep all fan leaves until they yellow and fall off on their own late in flowering. My current grow has me wondering if thinning things out some so that the buds can get some more light would be better for finishing up or should I let them fall off on their own? And maybe bending is a better option? Any input is welcome. I've always kept the leaves and it's worked well but things are a bit more crowded that I usually let my closet get. I'm doing a test run on a new strain and growing four pheno's to choose the best one or two for future grows. Due to the constraints of space in my closet I experimented with putting two plants per pot. They are Mazar... very Indica, I flowered them at around 15" and they're topping out at around 30" from the soil surface.

I'm just starting week 6 and the buds are starting to put on some decent weight. Trich production has been especially good on two of the phenos and the other two are starting to come on in the home stretch. I'm just wondering what the collective opinion of this forum is... Keep the leaves and maybe do some bending or open up the canopy a bit with some pruning? Or all the above?

Here's a pic of my gals as of tonight - day 37...

Thanks in advance for your input!

imo i wouldnt cut them ,,,just bend them gently to one side ,,,
goodluck with the project :smoke1:

I agree with UKGirl, bend them to the sides of the buds. these leaves feed the plant itself. The more you cut the more the plant might go into shock and you know what that means! You should have trimmed and trained the plants at an early stage before budding and you would not have this problem. We all learn from fixing what we have done and improve next time.

Do not prune. All photosynthesis takes place in the leaves. Everytime you cut one off, you are taking away a part of the plants ability to turn light and nutes into THC.

I've been following your posts DOS and this seems like a pretty noob question from an obviously experienced grower such as yourself.

Plants are impressive. Everyone here will tell you not to cut off the leaves. But what are you going to do?

BBFan said:

I've been following your posts DOS and this seems like a pretty noob question from an obviously experienced grower such as yourself.

Plants are impressive. Everyone here will tell you not to cut off the leaves. But what are you going to do?

Click to expand...

I only get to visit with my girls 12 hours a day! Thanks for stopping by... I do appreciate it. I'll admit it sounds a little green of me to ponder this but with my current situation I thought I'd seek some other opinions. I've always given my girls a least a little more room for canopy development but this time I sacrificed crowding in the name of research. 6 weeks ago I had four healthy Mazar plants grown from seed at 15" before I had my 2x4x8 closet together. Rather than choose blindly the two that would comfortably fit in my space because they vegged the "best" didn't make sense so I opted to grow two plants per 10 gal pot to fit them in and carry out my quest for the best pheno.

Things are very crowded in the canop but the buds are all on top and are getting good top light. I value other growers experiences and I just wanted some input and opinion on my developing situation...

Thanks to all... I haven't picked off any leaves... I'm starting to lose a few now anyhow that I'm on week 6 that are yellowing down below and that will continue til harvest. I ended up drilling a few holes in the side of my pot to anchor to and I gently bent a couple of the stems to expose the sides of a few buds last night. I'll just keep doing more of that...

As far as the research... I have one of the four that is much danker than the others and another that is almost as dank but with much heavier colas so far... a third with comparable dankness to the one with the heaviest colas and a fourth that is lagging but starting to come on strong now that we're getting late in flower.

Peace!