no diss but a lot of people overthink this aspect of when a light company states “4x4 or 5x5” coverage
yes the light can give you light at that range but….. look at the led/ led lab tests of the intensity or par meter test em yourself , it’s obvious when the 1-2ft away from peak or mid range buds and under it’s not above 750-900ppfd and a lot of the time 50% and that’s peak, no womder people think they can’t penetrate . you need to overlap your lights to make that main core higher light pppfd make all edges strong enough to be adequate on every brand from 2ft under canopy.
another key it’s not just de-leafing, it’s focused if you want those mid range to bottom to receive better light is to remove and choose the proper leaf instead of all leafs, so therefore plant can use the correct leaf to produce energy but not shade your buds also by removing the shaders , what I do is keep the plant where the light is and put my finger or look exactly is shading a good bud . I start by lollipopping a week-first day of bloom , meaning pruning all the bottom obvious core and and any branch that looks obvious it will be shaded and not worth the energy.
after stretch (10-21 days) continue to step 2 of de-leafing , relook at bottom and see what is worthy of keeping and remove any branches and leafs that are obviously not going to intake anything and are wasteful to have. at this stage this is the first stage to map where the bud items are and remove any larger leaf that is shading it
21-30 days, do same step as above
4th-end of harvest
keep removing any leafs covering buds, trust me they cover quickly what as a grower wants, for me at least I’m not growing and trying to have the most leafs for production, I want the buds
best thing I figured about de-leafing for me is to not butcher the plant and think it won’t come back, when you remove needed to energy it just stalls it, but there’s way more pro’s vs cons on removing big leafs and under canopy buds that are obvious they won’t ever pull to their potential
even if you already know this,a good tip for majority and there’s many guides that say butcher it