Defoliation question, purple punch auto

purple punch auto, first signs of pistils 3 days ago, had too much light early on so nodes are superrr tight and i have a mess of lil fan leaves all bunched up and touching, is it safe to remove a few this early on or should i even do it at all

i was checking it out and it looks as if i were to cut 3 of them out it would be quite open compared to now

It will stretch a lot during flower. I would wait and see what happens before removing the fan leaves.

I always try to tuck any leaves I can but there’s always a few I have to cut … this is up top I always keep the bottoms of my plants pretty clean to make watering easier and airflow.


@Spiney_norman
@MeEasy
whole plant

Those lower branches will grow past the fan leaves very quickly. Fan leaves produce sugars for the entire plant so if you remove them you are reducing plant food production. If it was me I would let it ride for now.

my pineapple express had to have 2 fans removed due to lst pushing them into the soil

It is best to keep leaves from touching the soil. Fungus and rot take place when you neglect that.
Overall that plant looks great.

I think it’s looking good :+1: I can’t see every leaf but if there’s a big fan that is covering budsites just try to push or pull it down under them so the budsites can see light and shades the big leaf instead and if there’s any you can’t tuck cut it… if that makes sense :laughing:

Edit = as @Spiney_norman said you want to leave as many fans that you can

heres the pineapple express

both popped their heads above soil on 3/13

Pretty work Sir :ok_hand: I can’t see anything I would have done different

Especially with autos I try not to do much more than top them once and push n pull branches around to give them space for light penitration and airflow

heres my last auto- gg4, it was my 2nd grow, current grow is 3rd

but anyways ill leave these 2 alone for the next week or 2 and see what they do

Yeah it looks great :+1: it’s a little different style than I use but seems to be done with the same thing in mind :grinning: I haven’t tried to pull a plants main stem over like that but I’ve seen it done many times and yours looks good especially being your second run . I wouldn’t change it if mine looked like that. Here’s a skunk from my last grow and the others shows the method I use for all my autos… the drawing I stole from Beardless it shows my method except I leave one more node so I drew it on in red to show it…of course plants grow and act different from each other so you have to adjust your style to fit each one

Again your plants are done beautifully and I’m just sharing my method not trying to change yours

oh i love seeing new ways to do things, i love to learn

only bad part on my 2nd grow was i had to chop a bit early…need i say i live in an illegal state lol so you could only imagine why i had to cut early

Oh yes I understand illegal, I’m legal now since about the middle of last year but I’ve been growing since the mid 80s