I waited until she was 16 inches before the first topping and training. Bent the main almost all the way horizontal but with a slight upwards spiral shape because it seems like the optimum shape for getting the most light to branches that normally would never make it through the canopy so they would be cut off. This is a wedding cake. It’s 16” tall and was just topped off for the first time(I’ve never waited this lon to top but wanted a better deeper root system.) the soil may have a little to much nitrogen as those leaves are really dark green but that could be the strain. Let me know what your thoughts are on this or if you have any ideas or tips. I had this plant outside but it just wasn’t doing good so I brought it inside. My metal halide burned out so I’m using 1000w HPS though I know this is not ideal. This is a difficult strain to grow so any tips and info are more than welcome. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum And one week later, filling in nicely. The spiral is working!
Those bottom branches are doing great which seems to confirm my hypothesis of optimum light But are those small branches worth the energy?
Just tied down... Hours later. Already can see a bunch of future colas Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum And one week later... 2 days later... And don’t forget, this plant has only been topped one time at 16 inches so I’m more than happy with the way she’s filling in. And all those colas!
The leaves are a different color in the last pic because all the other pics just happened to be taken with the hps dimmed to 750. This was at 1000. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I've given my babies the swirlie in the past; helps promote lateral growth as well as many other techniques. My Nest of Vipers here has just started short hours - a side shoot cutting from a very vigorous donor, it spent almost two months on 20/4 and offered a wave of clones of her own before the flip. Mom has been filling out for about a month now
There used to be a guy on here that grew like that and had pretty good info on doing it. I've done it a few times but prefer to scrog
I did this to a late planted outdoor Do Si Dos last year. While it was successful at achieving good light penetration and a short stature, I feel like I’ve gotten much better results with lst and topping.
So glad I came across this post. I've got three that I've been training to do a spiral as well but are turning out to be more like bonsai trees. With more training and more growth tho I'm hoping to put a full curve in the main stem. Yours looks great, exactly what I wanted to go for!
The idea is the promote a horizontal growth in the stem to keep the plant short, while letting branches and future colas to grow up and bush out with the extra sunlight vs having a thick top canopy. You can get very creative with shaping the plant to your liking, just be careful not to break any branches or the main stem itself.
Okay so it’s been a while moved outside. So it worked as I thought it would every branch made it up. So instead of one big cola I will have about 12 smaller ones. The only thing I’d change is That i kinda wish I hadn’t topped it at all and just continued tying down the main. Just follow that curve and this will always happen Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Okay so Dealing with some humility issues but this photo shows that this “curve” technique(horizontal growing) does work. you can see in this photo that the first 2 branches on the plant are actually the longest branches on this plant. Normally these lower branches would be cut off because they wouldn’t get enough light to ever make it to the canopy. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
This photo shows annother plant the same age but just grown differently. The plant on the left has more than twice the amount of colas as the plant on the right. With The plant on the right Is grown vertically like normal and has been topped one time. Both of head plants still have a couple months of veg left. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I have to agree. With this training method it may be better to only top side branches. Keeping the main center stem whole would definitely make this training method easier and maybe would be able to make a fuller twist on it. As soon as the growth started focusing on the split rather than the main stem, it began to be a bit of a hassle to train the two branches to spiral as well.