Topping in Flower

I have a question that I am sure has been asked but here it is anyway.

If I top these plants, they are just going to get too close to the lights, what can I expect to happen?

Bud sites are well formed about 3 weeks after entering 12/12. The plants are healthy in 10 gallon pots. Soil is living organic. Zero additives with the exception of bone meal and blood meal, ash.. I make teas with a conservative dose of molasses and my compost. They are 5' 6" tall.

The two inside row are white queen, the back two are AK-47. I potted them up just prior to the flip, let them harden off a week or so and put them in bloom. They didn't stretch per say, but the entire plant got bigger. They are essentially unpruned and have many sites that will benefit from the topping. They are under a 600w section of the room.

I want to top them because I just don't think the top cola's will have space. Tieing back has worked in the past but becomes a pita when they get heavy.

The room is 3200w... 2-2k and 2-600w HPS. They are fed outside air by a 780cfm Hurricane on a variac netting about two hundred when the lights are on. (It's cold here)

Which brings up what to do with the tops. I will most certainly put them in my propagation room. Can I expect to have to reveg them or will the just root and go into veg.

Signed,
Poor Planning

Yea...plant canopy height is important. Cut4- 6'' off the top main stem, they are healthy they can handle it

Right on. The nodes are pretty tight on the tops. It will give me a backup in the ol strain library. I could handle a long term reveg on them if I had too.

Dude dont cut those. Just bend em down, use a string or whatever and tie one end to the too and the other to the base of the plant and tighten it up. Or build a frame and attach trellis netting. Or snap em at the ends. Do anything besides cut those up.

That is the argument I am having with myself. I guess I need to look at it again. Lights have been on for a few now so they will be waking up.

If I bend and train them I do have a nice parabolic hood I can put over that part of the room and plus up the footprint and even gain a few inches of distance. I've always done well with minimal topping.

I guess I just need to overcome laziness and do it.

The White queen reacts really well to bending, pretty soft stemmed. Not so sure about the AK its hard like a pencil. I tried rolling it to bend once and it broke pretty good

You can lst but its going to cause them to go into repair mode once you damage the inner stem. It will focus on that instead of bud production. Chopping the top will give energy to the rest of the tops, Either way tho they are healthy and can prob take a beating

I forgot to mention that particular hood is not vented and glassless. I could always close it and put the free 10 degree air to it. That would help, they could grow right to it with a little light stress. The inside of the plant might suffer from that light adjustment though I think.

Supercrop them, I've done it way late into flower and it works fine.

Sent from Northern Colorado.

Be a man and tell those plant what you want them to do. Not the other way around. I have a big garden and not a single plant has the power to tell me what to do. My first few years of indoor growing i would scramble all around like oh no they need this or oh my dont do that they will get mad. Darn things were running my life. Until one day i grabbed my balls and said fuck this im a man, you are a plant and this is how i do things over here so get with it. If not ill replace you with ones that will. That moment was pivotal in my career. Give it a try dont let those sissy plants boss you around, go in there and kick some ass my brother!!

supercrop that shit.

Exactly...why would you want to cut off what will be the top cola??? Bend em...something. Don't cut them.

leave em alone if there's no sign of stress. i would prefer to bend em if i had to. trim that larfy shit on the bottom for air circulation, looks like they're crammed together.

Pretend there was a strong wind from the west and bend those bitches out of the way.

I switched the unvented 600 to a 1K and cooled it with another 1K with intake air. The room gained a lot more air by turning the intake fan up to about 600cfm.. I also spread them out a little more. If I need too I can lean them now. I might try tieing over one of the Queens just to see how she does, I gained a lot of penetration.

I dunno...i just trimmed some fanleaves 3 weeks into flower and growth stalled for a week... ever since i just dont cut anything when flowering. Just tied them down... or scrog...

Bend them I wouldn't cut them and use a paper clip to hold them at the angle u want

Had this problem with my last grow. Tie them down at an angle, they will grow just fine and not need to be trimmed.

I have had my share of plants growing too tall in the space provided. One time, I hacked the lady 3 weeks into flowering, right where you're at. She was going right for the bulbs and I had no room left. So, I took about 2 feet off the center cola and almost cried doing it. This was years ago before I started topping my plants with UB's method, which I do every time now.

This was also the first time growing this strain, and she was a Sativa that will reach for the moon if you let her.

Well, to make a long story short, I watched that plant produce buds I've never been able to duplicate again. They were so fricken dank and potent, it was a growers dream come true. Here's a couple of pictures that show how they turned out.

I still grow that strain, but like I said, problem solved with topping in Veg. I still get incredible weed from this strain, but not as good as these turned out. I also didn't get a very good yield, but that's to be expected when you cut 3 weeks into flowering.

Guitar Man said:

I have had my share of plants growing too tall in the space provided. One time, I hacked the lady 3 weeks into flowering, right where you're at. She was going right for the bulbs and I had no room left. So, I took about 2 feet off the center cola and almost cried doing it. This was years ago before I started topping my plants with UB's method, which I do every time now.

This was also the first time growing this strain, and she was a Sativa that will reach for the moon if you let her.

Well, to make a long story short, I watched that plant produce buds I've never been able to duplicate again. They were so fricken dank and potent, it was a growers dream come true. Here's a couple of pictures that show how they turned out.

I still grow that strain, but like I said, problem solved with topping in Veg. I still get incredible weed from this strain, but not as good as these turned out. I also didn't get a very good yield, but that's to be expected when you cut 3 weeks into flowering.

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The plant actually never misses a beat when you cut it, it just dries and scabs where you cut it. LST imho would be more stress on the plant especially when your bending and have a woops''. Then its spending energy on repair mode

Diabolical666 said:

The plant actually never misses a beat when you cut it, it just dries and scabs where you cut it. LST imho would be more stress on the plant especially when your bending and have a woops''. Then its spending energy on repair mode

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And what happened to my plant, at least what I think happened, is all the energy went to the only buds left on the plant instead of that big cola going up the center.