Topping

Suci said:

my plants are like 1-1.5 feet tall and I heard you were sapost to top like 1 week before flower is this true or should I do it now? im planning on veging for another 1.5-2months

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yes top them now let them grow. if u wait till the last week the 2 new tops wont be big at all & u waisted your effort & will get less yeild.
also waiting will also slow down the sides from growing mcuh bigger as well.

I think its just like if you were to have 20 arms instead of two. You have to try to do more things at once, more multitasking. Not saying you cant do 10 things effectively im just saying it may be a little harder, you may fuck up with a couple hands, and it may take just a little longer but im sure we could get the hang of it. Same goes for Mary id say.

natmoon said:

I have 18 tops on one of my plants.
I have never noticed any loss of strength,in fact i only notice an improvement and 18 stems instead of one

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damn! I wish! Like they say 18 heads is better than one! I was having trouble with growth speed, probably due to temperature fluctuations so I was impatient and had to go to flower before making more cola's, but I would imagine you can't really have to many, unless they get inadequate lighting. Which may be causing what looks like even distribution, or less potency

Ive grown both ways.
Growing many smaller colas from one plant also reduces your chances of mould occurring from having one big fat cola.
If there was any noticable loss of potency i can guarantee you i wouldn't do it

u will only loose potency if u dont have the proper lighting i would think cause then the trichs wouldent form to well .

natmoon said:

Ive grown both ways.
Growing many smaller colas from one plant also reduces your chances of mould occurring from having one big fat cola.
If there was any noticable loss of potency i can guarantee you i wouldn't do it

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I was thinking the same thing. My last plant had a ridiculous cola on it and I ended up throwing out about a 1/4 z because of that, and I do have good airflow and keep humidity and temp in check. The pics are exactly what I am trying to avoid again; it was cool looking but it was not efficient at all.

Ive always found that smaller ones are more juicy
Big colas are great looking but you have to be real careful as you said

This is an interesting thread.

What week into flowering is best for topping?

Or - what height should plant be for topping?

I dont use topping myself only fimming which is like topping but you leave between 10 and 20% of the tip on.
If you want detailed info and pics on what i do click on the top tinyurl link at the bottom of my posts

I've never posted on this site before, but I have a question. If a plant is about 1-2 weeks into flowering with 3 42 Watt 2700K CFLs, is about two and a half feet, was allowed to vegetate for about six to seven weeks, is it still OK to top it? The buds are starting to form, but since the grower was very inexperienced, the plant has almost reached the top of the grow box it was put into.
Nat, I have read your posts and I know that you are pretty good at this, so what would you suggest? It was grown in a cabinet for stealth, but now the plant has outgrown the cabinet. If anyone has any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated.

if u have no choice then u have to top it.
the only problem is your going to loose alot of your yield because the plant isnt going to grow back much now that u are so far into flowering.

how about some LST ( tie the thing over & keep bending it day by day till its low)

ill have some pics tonight of our lst that we are doing.

so wait, from what i understand from this thread topping is just pinching off the very tip of the plant so the two branches growing just below the growth tip resuly in 2 colas....I always thought that topping was cutting the top 1/4 of the plant off and rooting that tip/cutting and then that was the topped plant. So in reality the topped plant is the original plant that the top was removed from?

Yes. A topped plant is a plant that
was X feet tall and is now just under
X feet tall. You can, from what I have been
told, clone the topped clipping, but that would
just be a clone. Topping can help when your
plants are reaching the Max hight in your room
and are too close to your lights... Or it could
be done to potentially increase the number of
colas. Either way, you top in the Veg stage if
not the very early Flowering Stage.

Someone correct me if I am wrong.

well, i think the best method would be to do what i did, use the fim method to develop many branches close together, let that grow out a little bit, then top that two nodes below where the fim was done. It seems to me that one gets the best of both worlds this way...and you don't throw out the clone from the main growth tip... flower the topped plant,harvest and keep that to smoke on while you wait for your fim tops to grow out and then when its time to harvest those, your yied will be much larger. I could be wrong, but then again i thought there was more to topping than just removing the very top portion of the main growth tip...too easy, apparently i had been topping my plants and cloning the tips while at the same time wondering what this topping method was all about. Only recently did i make the connections and understand how FIM works. Good stuff i utilize it now

Sounds like you are natural!
I will read up more on the FIM method.
Got any good links?

yeah, GROWFAQ there is one, if you look in the misc folder of the grow FAQ there are a few other perspectives, but that's the general idea. happy topping

I learned to top mine after the 3rd node(s) and when I top them, that's how I do it. I will usually get between 2-4 new stalks after the topping, plus the lower branches perk up as well.