How long after I tie down my plants should I wait to put them in 12/12? It's been about a week and all the branches have fixed themselves so they're growing up toward the light. Also, when you LST a plant, do you still get crazy vertical growth in the flowering period?
LST as much as you want up to the end of the first 2 weeks of flowering. After that all the vertical shoot will turn into colas. I guess my plants have put on about 4 to 5 inches of vert since i started flowering. The more you veg the more you bud. With LST the more shoots you have than the more colas you get. Keep the main stem as low as possible and keep all the shoots at the same level. Piece of cake.
So if the main stem starts growing up with the rest of the branches, I need to re-tie it to keep it down?
when you tie down the top cola, there will be a race by the others, to be the top cola. this is caused by auxins. after that race is over, and there's a top cola, tie that one down below the others and the race is on again. you can really manipulate your plant that way.
So you have to keep tying down the branches when one gets taller than the rest? I thought you just tie down the main stalk and all the other branches start to act as the main stalk. Like when you top a plant the highest two btranches take over as the main stalk.
no, you don't "have" to keep tieing them down. it's just a good way to force your plants to produce more colas. i've had as many as 15 nice size colas on a single plant. (thanks colin! that's the only way i could think of to describe it.)