Even these trichome-heavy, tiny leaves will give your buds a harsher experience, so it's best to remove them — but definitely don't waste them! Why? Because if you collect all the plant matter you cut off your buds, you can later use them to create other products such as hash, teas, butter, tinctures and edibles.
Right before you begin to harvest buds, you can remove most or all of your fan leaves. However, always allow two days for the plant to recover before harvesting buds. You may want to prune fan leaves just prior to flushing, because the reduction in nutrients will tend to yellow some of these leaves anyway.
Usually, growers trim the fan leaves weeks before harvest, which is a period that leads to senescence, a phase in the plant cycle when the larger leaves start fading away. It is safe to start removing these dying leaves and continue until harvest.
As plants grow taller, the bigger leaves on top shade the lower leaves and branches. That can lead to small plants with buds on only the highest tier. By gently bending the top of a plant, you bring light to the lower leaves, increasing the colas (nodes where buds form) and bringing light to lower-level buds.
To some degree, more light translates to fatter buds and higher yields (you'll need to pay attention to the distance between your grow light and plants or your plant may suffer from light burn). Increasing light intensity is the most effective way to fatten up buds.
You can remove fan leaves during flowering in much the same way you do during veg. Prune away large leaves that are overshadowing bud sites, as well as dead or dying fan leaves. One thing to keep in mind is that you should prune in intervals, giving at least a couple weeks between each session.
If there's any doubt about removing a particular leaf, play it safe and leave it in place. Don't remove more than 10–15% of a single plant's foliage. If you're more experienced, however, we recommend defoliating from the bottom of your plant up to 3–4 nodes from the top of the canopy.
Arguably the most common mistake that newbie cannabis cultivators make is stripping too many of the fan leaves from the plant. Cultivators should not prune more than 1/3 of the fan leaves on a cannabis plant in any given pruning session.
It is important to remove damaged or dying leaves from the plant so the healthy leaves can do their job. Many cultivators choose to trim the leaves from the plants for only the first two weeks of the flowering stage to allow for appropriate bud maturation.
Plants have to spend energy growing leaves, stalks and buds. By trimming off the unnecessary leaves, more energy is left to put towards bud growth. Additionally, every time a bud site is pruned, two more will be created to take its place – leading to more buds on a single plant.
Removing these fan leaves opens up light and produces better air exchange to the lower canopy. Healthy leaves at the bottom of the canopy should be kept to trap valuable light from being lost and wasted. The more quality light a flowering site receives, the larger it will grow and the faster it will mature.
At times, they are merely a natural part of the growing cycle. Cannabis plants often shed older fan leaves (especially at the end of their life), which turn yellow before falling to the ground.
Begin trimming the stem at the bottom of the bud. Cut as close as you can to the stem without breaking the bud. Remove the little leaves at the bottom—called crow's feet. Trim away any excess plant material for a perfectly manicured bud with a uniform surface.
So how do you know when it's time to harvest? The telltale sign of harvest-ready weed is when the hairs of the plant, or pistils, have fully darkened and curled in. If your buds are looking thick and dense, but there are still some straight white pistils, it's not time yet.
Some growers choose to remove all fan leaves before hanging the branches to dry, while others leave some fan leaves on the branches. Leaving fan leaves on the branches can slow down the drying process.
Yes! During the night, late night to early morning you see new buds proliferating, at dawn or soon after they start to unfold. Daytime is the time for (most) plants to produce food by photosynthesis as that is when they get sunlight and the food/energy generated during the day is utilised at night in performing growth.
If you completely defoliate cannabis or remove too many leaves it severely compromises the plants ability to photosynthesise and grow effectively. For that reason, less experienced growers may wish to start slowly and gain experience gradually.
Once between the beginning of Flower and the 3-week mark. 3 weeks after beginning flower is the last time you'll want to defoliate.
Pruning also may indirectly stimulate growth of lateral shoots by allowing more light to penetrate the canopy of the plant. Pruning a young plant will stimulate vigorous shoot growth and will delay the development of flowers and fruit.
In summary, pruning can promote flowering by breaking the balance between vegetative growth and reproductive growth in plants.
The stem has to be in the water. The leaf however serves no purpose in the water. In fact, it has a negative effect! Therefore, it is recommended to remove the lower leaves which would otherwise be in the vase water.
Lack of light is perhaps the most common reason that cannabis produces fluffy, light buds. You may have noticed the lower, puny 'popcorn' bud sites that form below the main canopy. Often these buds are discarded by growers allowing the plant to focus biochemical energy on the main blooms.
Week 7: The calyxes in the seven-week varieties swell to near bursting as THC is produced in the glands. At the end of the week they will be ready. The trichomes stand more erect and the caps swell with newly produced resin. At the end of the week the flowers reach the peak zone.