topping while in flower?

IF the plant has just started to flower this will be OK to pinch once. If it has been flowering for several weeks you should leave it alone. Topping for shape and branching should be done in the early stage of the vegetative cycle.

 

I don't think your plant is flowering. You said it showed pistils just the other day which doesn't neccasarily mean it's flowering yet. Could just be showing sex or pre-flowers. Topping or FIMing can take awhile to recover so I'd say as long as it's not FLOWERING yet, you can cut her up...

 

No worries buddy. Female plants will show their sexy pistils usually about 3-4 weeks into the veg stage WHICH doesn't mean there flowering yet. Just means there showing sex. When you flip the switch to 12/12 about 2 weeks later your ladies should start to flower. When there showing sex at first you will usually see just 1-2 pistils comin out of the calyxes by the nodes. When they are flowering there will be dozens of pistils

 

a SquaRe is right in that showing pistils and flowering is not the same thing, as a plant in veg can show some pistils and it doesn't mean that it is flowering. However, in your scenario, it does mean that your plant is flowering. If you have a plant that isn't showing sex, and you flip the lights to 12/12 and then it shows sex, then the day you first see a pistil is day 1 of flowering. If you have a plant that has already showed sex during veg, then the day you flip the lights is day 1 of flowering.

I would not recommend topping at this point. Your plant should have already recovered from any training techniques by the time flowering starts. This will stress your plant, and any stress during flower, even in the early stages, will lower your yield drastically. If it is to tall for your grow space or something look into tying the plant over, but removing any of the plant at this stage will only lower your yield.

I have found that when I top a plant, it takes about a week or 2 before I would say it is fully recovered. This is a week or two that your plant will be focused on recovering from the damage you did instead of producing bud. I have nothing against topping, just not at this stage in your grow. Good luck man!

 

Yup, that's what I'm saying! If it first showed pistils yesterday, then that was your first day of flowering. Topping is a pretty high-stress way of training your plant. Stress during veg isn't bad, in some ways it can be good, think of it as lifting weights... lifting damages you at first, but you grow back stronger. In flower, however, stress is always detrimental. The basic frame of the plant is already decided by the time you start flowering, it just stretches out from there. Topping at this point will only get rid of your main cola.

 

I just thought of another good explanation along the lines of my lifting weights example.


If topping and super-cropping and defoliation are the equivalent to lifting weights, then flowering would be equivalent to a marathon, or some other event you would train for. You want to lift weights and prepare your body in the months coming up to the event, but you want to rest your body for a week or two before in preparation. You wouldn't want to enter a marathon sore as hell from last night's workout. The same ideas apply to flowering.

Another misconception about topping is that it is some magical switch that makes your plant yield more. This is not the case. It allows you to grow the plant into a shape that may fit your grow-space better and allow better light penetration to the bud sites, but it does this at the expense of a few days of extra veg time for the plant to recover from the wound you just gave it.

 

Correcto o mundo. If you switched to 12/12 and then they just showed pistils that is day 1 of flowering. Sorry if i missed that part?

You said you veged for 3 weeks and there at there 7th week and just showed pistils yesterday???

That seems like a long time to me for it to start flowering. Ya growing a bagseed or...?

Either way, just let it run its course. Itll start to stretch here soon and just keep her happy with P nutes and H2O

 

Hey bud is your bhd flowering like in extremely slow motion?

 

What do u mean exactly HDCruiser??

My cola is looking quite nice n plump. Allready has quite a few amber pistils and stinking up my room. Mine is exactly 24 days into flower and I feel it's farther along tho. Just because of all the amber hairs. I supposedly have about 4-5 weeks still but I don't think it's gonna take that long becuz alot of my fan leaves are allready yellowing and some even dying towards the bottom...

Also, are any of your branches purple? I have purple branches on mine
????

 

Haha...thanks for the input headoverhills but I was asking HDCruiser who's growing the same strain as me

 

Here's a question, DownShift. I've more or less shaped my plants during veg. I've topped them, trimmed off the lower branches, gotten them to where I think all the colas might reach the canopy.

Now that I'm two weeks into flowering, I've noticed that several stems that I thought would make it to the light are really being shaded by higher branches. Also, I notice that many lower nodes are producing flowers. What I've been doing is selectively slicing off the branches that I realize will never make it to the light, and eliminating the lower flowers that appear on branches that are tall and are already flowering well at their colas. That is...I'm shaping the plant during flowering...which by your standard is incorrect.

What I'm wondering is if it's appropriate to pinch off/cut off the new growth off the lower nodes (not the fan leaves) while the plant is flowering...or is it better to simply leave them on and take their [presumably] wispy flowers and grind them into shake so that the top cola has energy to produce a dense bud. Seems to me that after two weeks of flowering, it's better to eliminate all that undergrowth, clearly stressing the plant, yes, but by doing so I expect that the top buds will receive all the growing energy instead.

Yes? No?