How To Remove Fan Leaves Using The Schwazzing Technique (2024)

FAQs

How do you remove fan leaves during flowering? ›

Tips for removing fan leaves:

Pluck a few leaves, wait for recovery and then pluck a few more. The heavier you prune in a single session, the more stress that plant will undergo. Some genetics can take a lot of stress without too many negative consequences.

Schwazzing is a term used to describe an intense form of defoliation. The process involves removing many fan leaves from a plant, allowing much more light to pass through to bud sites.

When performed properly, trimming fan leaves can increase the yield of a cannabis plant. Trimming or defoliation helps fight pests, reduce the chances for mold, and increase light exposure and airflow to lower nodes which can increase production.

Your plant experiences a rapid growth spurt in the flowering stage, and any significant pruning at this stage could lead your plant into a state of shock. Any time you remove the fan leaves, growth will temporarily slow down, and nutrients can be left behind in the substrate, causing growth to pick up rapidly.

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.

Remember that fan leaves removed during flowering won't grow back, and removing too many can throw off the plant's energy balance, stunting bud development in turn.

Schwazzing involves stripping your plants of all fan leaves beneath the top two or three nodes at two key times: Once at the start of the bloom phase, and again at the beginning of the third week of bloom.

While it's simple enough, there's definitely some risk involved with defoliation. Specifically, it's all too easy to over-defoliate a plant, stunt its growth, and remove nodes that could've developed some great bud. Many growers question defoliation.

Time to trim the so-called sugar leaves, which are the small leaves that stick out of buds. Again, we recommend removing all of them to make a less-harsh product. Plus, it makes buds look better.

In optimal conditions, plants should be kept in their vegetative stage for approximately 60 days. This time period should give the plant the opportunity to maximise yield and acclimatise to growing conditions.

How late in flower can you defoliate? ›

So there are three different times we recommend defoliating during Flower: Right before you switch to 12/12. 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.

Often growers will plan a cannabis defoliation around the third week of bloom. After this point (in the second half of bloom) many growers feel the the plant shouldn't have to endure too much stress and should be allowed to focus her growth and energy towards bud/resin production.

Removing all the yellow leaves is not recommended surgery, especially for young plants. Correct identification of the source of the problem and swift remedial action can restore marijuana. Senescence is when plants will naturally yellow off and die. During the final weeks of flowering do not be alarmed.

They can be identified by their mushroom-shaped structure attached to the plant without a stalk and are often located on the underside of sugar leaves and fan leaves. These trichomes produce cannabinoids throughout the lifecycle of a cannabis plant, but at much lower levels than capitate-stalked trichomes.

At the flowering stage, the plant experiences rapid growth, and any significant pruning at this stage will lead to plant shock. Although defoliation is still effective, it should only be done in the first period of flowering. Trimming is one of the most popular and easiest ways to boost harvest.

The sugar and fan leaves protect the buds while they dry and can help to create an ideal moisture level. When they are removed before drying, it can cause the buds to dry up more quickly than they should and negatively impact quality.

Big, green, healthy fan leaves are a sign of a robust, healthy plant. As long as these leaves are healthy, it is normally advisable to leave them in place at trimming time, especially during the veg state of growth.

The Room Must Be Dark

The ideal drying room must be dark, as light can damage the THC in your buds. While it does not hurt to have a light source inside to check on the progress of your buds, you should keep it off most of the time, and block all other passages of light that can enter the room.

We recommend watering every 2-3 days, but test your soil as usual to see if your plant even needs water. There is a simple way to remember when to water cannabis: When—If the soil is dry an inch deep, you can water. If the plants are drooping, you can water.

Pruning, or defoliation, is a technique that keeps your cannabis plants healthy and growing properly. By removing small amounts of foliage during various phases of the life cycle, growers can increase a crop's yield and potency by allowing light to hit bud-producing nodes more directly.

What should my buds look like at week 3? ›

Week 3. Your cannabis plants have still not entirely stopped growing and will now be about 50% bigger than what they were just three weeks earlier. Although still stretching a bit, the stretch will now gradually slow down and soon come to a complete halt.

For optimal results, limit defoliation to Two Sessions during the flowering period. You can defoliate a little bit every week, but that's not what we do. Here is why: Back to the topic of stress, pruning your plants and yanking off fan leaves is a form of stress.

The first time I defoliate is at the end of vegetative stage and right before flipping the lights. At this stage, you are shaping your canopy to be nice and even, and removing any large leaves that are shading nodes or are low in the canopy.

Cutting off more than 50% of the fan leaves will definitely stress your plant, so just to be safe, remove a maximum of 20-25% of the foliage.

It seems that defoliation slows down root growth, what could cause imbalance in a a plant kept in vegetative stage. This deelay take long to recover, until plant has balanced again. To keep plants working again it is very important to feed them properly.

Buds also dry faster when you remove the sugar leaves on it. On the logistical side, bud trimming before drying gives you more space on your drying racks. But, trimming wet buds can be tedious as buds can get very sticky. The buds may also dry too fast, which reduces the flavor profile.

Prune any leaves that have branches shooting from their base. Snip any buds heavily shaded by the canopy branches. The unfavorable location of these buds means they will not have access to adequate light and may have nutrient deficiencies.

Pot size will have an effect on the final yield. Put simply, a bigger pot means a bigger potential harvest.

The longer you keep your plants in the vegetative stage, the bigger your plant will be, resulting in bigger yields from plants that were vegetated longer.

How can I speed up vegetative growth? ›

Give Your Plants More Light – If you're growing indoors, then as long as you give your plants more than 14 hours of light each day, they'll stay in the vegetative stage. But you can actually give them 24 hours of light each day and it's like “forcing” more growth.

WHEN TO LOLLIPOP CANNABIS. Most growers will agree that week 3 of flowering is the right time to start lollipopping. After a couple of weeks in the bloom phase, most cannabis strains will begin to display multiple bud sites along shoots. Marijuana will stretch during this phase, some strains more than others.

Generally, you want to water every 2 or 3 days during Flower and you want to water enough that 10-20% of water comes out from the pot as runoff. You can check your soil moisture by sticking a finger in the pot: if the soil is dry a couple inches down, then it is time to water again.

An overcrowded grow room, poor spacing between plants, or bushy vegetative growth—due to the lack of pruning or training—can reduce the amount of light that a plant's bud sites get, affecting bud growth and size.

More growth and stretching of the plants in Week 3

You will notice continued growth and stretching. You can see in the video how bushy everything has become. This rapid, almost non-stop growth is all a sign of the post-vegetative stretch that these plants go through after switching to the 12/12 light cycle.

How to Defoliate in Week 4. The best practice is to completely remove everything beneath the first layer of trellis. Even if it is a bud site that is flowering, get rid of it. These puny tiny branches will never yield anything worth actually trimming, drying and curing.

The yellowing of plant leaves is simply due to a nitrogen (N) shortage which is a perfectly natural phenomenon as the plants nears the end of its life cycle. You are in the eighth week of flower, so you are likely close to harvest time depending on your strain.

Generally when a houseplant leaf turns yellow, that leaf is dying. Chlorophyll gives a leaf its green color. When the leaf loses its chlorophyll, the plant abandons it and begins to absorb leftover nutrients from the leaf. That's why once the leaf turns yellow, you generally can't make it turn back green again.

Pulling Away Yellow or Brown Leaves

Trimming or plucking away yellowing or dead leaves is an easy way to help prevent any unwelcome plant pests from settling onto your plant, which are attracted to decaying or dead leaves more than healthy ones, and they are more likely to appear on a struggling plant.

At the absolute minimum, you should wait until 50% of the trichomes are cloudy and 50% of the hairs have changed color. Again — do not harvest if fewer than 50% of the trichomes have turned milky. And do not harvest if fewer than 50% of the pistils have turned brown/orange.

What happens if you wait too long to harvest? ›

Waiting longer to harvest gives the trichomes ample time to develop. But the longer you wait, the more highly intoxicating and sedative your flower will become. This is especially true for indica strains, but even sativa strains can become sedating.

Fan leaves have low concentrations of cannabinoids like THC and CBD (usually less than 0.1%) but are still a good source of nutrition benefits. This means fan leaves likely won't get you high because of their minimal amount of THC. However, they may contain trace amounts of cannabinoid acids like THCA and CBDA.

Lollipopping is a pruning technique that helps your cannabis plants focus their energy on their biggest bud sites, usually around their canopies. It's easy, low-stress, and it can help you produce heavy harvests of some exceptional buds.

The more you cut them, the more they bloom. These flowers benefit from pinching, because doing so encourages them to create more stems. More stems equals more flowers–and that's some math any flower grower can get behind. Some examples include snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias, and dahlias.

Remove fan leaves only when you feel that they are affecting your plant in a bad way. Because of this, if your plant is too bushy and you think it is affecting it in a bad way, it is recommended to slowly remove around 20% of the fan leaves to allow a better airflow and light absorption to the lower part of the plant.

We recommend defoliating vegging plants just before you switch them to bloom: Start by removing big, hand-sized fan leaves first. These tend to overshadow almost anything below them, making it hard for light to properly penetrate your plant's canopy.

Care after defoliation

After defoliating the tree must be kept in its normal position in light. If the tree is moved to less light the new leaves may actually grow out larger than the original leaves. Watering is reduced since the tree without leaves will not require a normal amount of water.

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.

Wet trimming takes up less space, as you remove all the foliage off the buds before drying instead of hanging up the entire plants to dry. Wet trimming allows the buds to puff up, making them more visibly attractive. For growers selling flower, this is important, as consumers often buy based on how the buds look.