Topping

They're still a little small for my liking. I doubt it would kill them, but why don' you wait and let them get a little more size on them before you start chopping on them. Any time you cut on a plant or prune it in any way, it causes the plant to be stressed...some things more than others. But I generally don't do anything to mine until they're well rooted in and have been growing good for a week or two. Keep in mind that the more tops per plant you have, the less size you will get in the tops. So topping a plant too many times doesn't really help you out that much. I top mine once or twice (max) so that the tops I do have will be nice and big and fat. Those are small plants in pretty large containers. If they're autos, I get it. But if you're not growing autos, you need to start them in small containers (Solo cups) and keep the plant size and container size relative as they come up through veg to get the fastest foliage growth out of them. When you put a tiny plant in a huge batch of soil, it just means it's going to take longer to establish a root system. While the plant is creating a root system, you don't get the greatest growth above soil level. When it's got roots in place, you'll notice the overall foliage growth of the plant start to really pick up. At that point, you'll know the plant is in good shape. Leave them in the containers they're in until the plant gets larger than the container (wider and taller than) and then repot into fresh soil in a container a size or two larger than the one it was in. I don't use nutes. Use good formulated grow soil and repot plant when expends nutrition in soil it's been growing in....throughout veg and flower. Always let your plants dry out good before a repot since they hold together best then and it's less stressful to the plant. But you can pop these things in and out of pots easily and I would rather the soil do the work than me. Best of luck. TWW

 

I prefer to top them early on the 3rd or 4th node. This helps to promote early branching and makes for a more manageable structure later on.

 

i learned to not use bag seeds. usually always a hermie. i went to an actual breeder and got true bred seeds they doing really nice.

 

Too much topping can lead to too many tops per square foot/area and you start to reach diminishing returns once the tops get too crowded together and start blocking out each other's light. Also a larger rootmass will be able to support more tops...as each top needs it's own share of nutrients/water/space.

How much you top depends on the area you plan to fill out. I always try to work backwards and imagine what the perfect grow would look like in the end...with buds stacked side by side filling the whole canopy. Then I try to top and train the plant into that shape.

If I plan on a plant filling out a square foot of canopy, then I'll top it just a few times and end up with 4-6 branches or 'tops'. If I plan on filling out a larger area like a 4' x 4' I might end up topping it over and over until it bushes out a fill the entire 4x4 area before switching into flower.

You learn alot as you go and begin to understand how the plant responds (physically) to training. The best way to learn is to skim through other people's finished grows and see how their plant developed after topping and throughout veg/flowering.

 

I had a couple that had 4 nodes working on their 5th and I topped them. This was about a week ago and now they're pretty big.

 

The advantage of topping early is you can work a fork into the stem way low down on the main and start spreading the plant apart. I've never killed a plant topping it. As long as there's serrated leaves left on it, it will come back. My last root ball tried to regen from a single tiny pair of leaves on the bottom of the stem. Cannabis is so hard to kill by cutting and training it is ridiculous. I don't know of a tougher plant. You can break a branch all the way in half, put duct tape around it and it will be good. It won't die. It's crazy to watch.

Talk to anyone who has significant yield in their garden. If you're growing large plants and not SOG method training is so huge it can't be understated. The people that get the best yields are the people that can train plants into a perfectly even canopy so everything has optimal light distance in the garden that possibly could.

After doing quite a bit of experimenting with topping I discourage the practice. LST and supercropping will give you all the tops you ever need and you never really need to remove anything from a plant. In fact every time you do it slows the growth down just a little bit. LST done properly is overnight recovery. The plant doesn't bat an eye. With LST most plants I've had to remove many tops to thin the plant out because there's just too many fighting for the top of the canopy it chokes the plant out.

Topping is a last ditch method I use when I have a top that is consistently powering above the rest. I top that one and end up with two that are even with the rest of the canopy.

With the scrog net method you can just tuck that overpowering top back under the net to reach for a further square while the others reach up above it. Simple tying off and training does more for a plant IMO then topping ever could and scrog nets really take that to the next level.

 

I take back my comment about not removing anything. If you train your plant properly you'll have so many tops fighting you'll have to thin it out a little. You will want to start at the bottom and remove the lower 10-15% of growth entirely from all the larger branches. This will help the plant breath, increase light to mid level buds/hence production, and divert energy to the big tops at the upper part of the canopy that are actually producing. This is the only type of cutting of the plant I endorse.

 

Awesome love to see pics of them.

 

Grand Daddy Purple. 5 weeks in bud. Never topped once, only LST'd. I removed most of a paper bag full of tops off the bottom.

 

TBonre- I think you answered the question I have but just to clarify- once you're pleased with the LST results and are allowing your plant to grow through the screen, you remove what you have keeping the plant down? In my case I'm using large paper Clips to train. When would I remove these? When I switch to flower?


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I don't ever remove the tie downs until harvest. I'm only LST. I'm not using a screen. I find that every week or so I can go back to some of the branches and tighten them down a little more to spread the plant that much further. I attempt to do this every time I change the water. It really helps light penetration to mid level and lower buds the more you can spread the plant out. You spread it out and the tops turn back up towards the light the next day.

I think that even if I was using a screen I would leave the strings. The screen would serve as a secondary training since the strings are so low they won't interfere. LST is done starting about a week or two in veg and the screen in the scrog doesn't come into play until after you've got it somewhat LST'd and several branches fighting for the top.

I would advise against paper clips. They're too skinny and sharp. After time of branches flexing in the fan against them they may cut into the plant. You want a fairly thick string so it spreads out the pressure on the branch. I really like the pipe cleaner method. I'm using halibut ganion string I had leftover in the shop since it's pretty thick and holds a knot really well. I think it's about 500-1000lbs test strength. I've been commercial halibut fishing and caught 11ft long sleeper sharks on this line and never broken it once. Funny thing to use really but I have a bunch of it laying around.