Sometimes we come across a pheno that does nothing but stretch when we put it into flower and the main cola slams into the top of the room making everyone cringe. Is it too late to top if there are already some small flowers? or do we top anyway? so the flowers are nice and we don’t stress the plant. What would you do and why?
I topped a sour diesel plant that had crazy stretch after it it started flower of fourteen days. It’s a bold strategy and we will see if it pays off for me.
I’m interested to hear the community of opinion, thanks.
I would not top so late but I would Super Crop the main cola. That will bend it over and get it away from the light with much less stress. Thats what I do anyway.
I won’t top personally. I’ll fold the stems, use string to keep from full snap. They recover just fine even in flower. I’ve seen people growing landrace strains in a tent where they just fold stems and route them all over the place during flowering. Plants can handle it just fine. Cutting branches removes growth whereas bending/ folding redirects growth.
I’ve let too many plants grow too tall only to have them be burnt towards the end of flowering. Now I am not shy about topping or cutting back aggressively all they way through stretch.
Hello bud, yes I’ve topped after stretch got a bit too much and wasn’t disappointed by the results, I’ve since done it lots of times only a bit earlier to prevent plants getting too tall…i dislike tall plants they keep the light away from the canopy and lowers so I tie bend or prune to avoid leggy plants, tieing would be my 1st choice to preserve yeild.
I’ve since found flipping to 11-13 or 10-14 mostly cuts out that stretchy af tendency theyre more focused on getting to flowering.
Your not gonna be topping it now if its budding and stretch has slowed down. You’d just be chopping bud off that wont grow back thats in a prime spot on plant. Personally Id fuck that idea right off man.
Just bending it out of way is a much better way to go in my eyes. Look up HST or supercropping on utube. It would hardly be supercropping plant now but you use same principal and technique to bend stems out of way and lower canopy height.
What I normally do is bend the top cola over 90° and tie it down (to a bamboo stake or whatever you use).
The buds will redirect toward the light and turn into small colas. It’s a similar method to the super-cropping others mentioned.
In my experience, this is a better method than chopping the top in flower. When I top I like to do it before flower. But I have topped plants in flower out of necessity, like when even bending them 90° wasn’t going to work, or when a bud got badly light burned. I do think it probably slightly hurt overall yield but it’s hard for me to say for sure.
I also think it somewhat depends on the grow method being used. Like in soil or soilless I’d say it’s more likely to slightly hurt yields. Maybe not as much in hydro or any method with faster growth rates.
I have done it with plants in the old general hydroponics AeroFlo system with a net screen above it but that’s a whole different ball-game. In the Aeroflo it didn’t hurt yields. But the speed of growth in that thing is insane. Faster than any other method I’ve ever tried (coco, DWC, top feed drip, flood & drain, soil, soilless).
I think I heard of this technique before I started exploring LRs indoor with long flowering times and unruly in there stretch.
I’d be bummed if I had to chop the main cola off, I prefer to supercrop multiple times.
Malawi Gold (14wk flower), Knuckled stem from supercropping. This one was the more tame
Lambsbread (20wk flower) I had to supercrop the in half to keep her under the lights. Also keeping them in one gallon poly bags helped keep them from getting too unruly as well.
Latest MH x DE in flower. First photo was from last week, Full steam ahead into the lights. Second and third pic are from yesterday after supercropping. She was above the light. May have to do it once more when she recovers.
Wow, there are so many techniques to try. I see many experiments with this stretchy Sour Diesel bx4 f4 in my future. Once you know it’s going to stretch like that you can plan accordingly.
