When growing indoor plants you will inevitably be confronted with the ultimate question… To top or not to top?
If you decide to top your plants I highly recommend you use the FIM technique. This is where you cut (I use scissors) the top growth/node about 70% down rather than cutting the entire top off. With some practice you will soon be able to constantly get 4 tops rather than two every time you top your plants. This works on all new growth sites where the main top node is producing new growth.
The few times i tried it i could not get uniform results like you. Are you cutting the top 30 percent or do you mean you are cutting the top 70 percent and leaving the bottom 30 percent. The latter is what it looks like to me.
Thanks for posting this. I was just wondering a couple nights ago if people still did this. I remember back in the OG 1.0 days people were getting upwards of 8 tops out of a single FIM. The writeup is still in the growfaq here, but to my knowledge the original pics were lost.
That’s correct! I’ve got 6 tops before but usually just 4. I remember posting about this back in the day on the original OG. I think the first time I ever did this was about 20 yrs ago. I feel like if you’re going to top might as well get more bang for your buck!! Thanks for looking and much love!
I’d like to see follow up pics. It seems as if FIM often results in the new tops being different lengths and some new leaves having short leaflets (not a full fingered leaf). Ive seen FIM work and thanks for this thread. Though most of the time I find the new growth disfigured.
That def does happen and in fact I messed up a couple myself on this round. I’ll post pics of both the ones that were perfect and the ones that got cut to close and messed up one or both of the tops.