# simple topping method



## frankcooper (May 6, 2012)

I've topped my plants before, always been too weary of the consequences. Anyway I'm just wonder what sort of effect placing a cap or small cup over the tip of the plant would have on it? Would this cause the extra colas to grow, and then you could remove the cap to have an additional cola?? Or might it increase side branching?


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 6, 2012)

Hard to say, you'll probably have to try it out for us man. I read a study a few months ago where they used a small transparent piece of green material (like what a light would shine through to turn white light green) to change the spectrum to green and kept it over just one fan leaf for a few days. The green leaf can't absorb the green light, so it turned yellow and started to die.

So I'm not sure about holding a cap over it, but you this would definitely accomplish what you are trying to do. However, when you top, FIM, or pinch the top of a plant, the plant immediately works to heal itself and continue healthy growth. I'm not sure that trying to stunt or slow down the growth from the top bud is the best way for the plant to continue healthy growth, as it seems possible that it could cause extra stress to the whole plant.

But give it a try, let us know.


----------



## Nukebisket (May 6, 2012)

or you can just bend the tip down and the side branches will become main branches and you will still have the original "tip"


----------



## frankcooper (May 6, 2012)

Nukebisket said:


> or you can just bend the tip down and the side branches will become main branches and you will still have the original "tip"


what happens to the tip once u tie it down. i assume it tried to grow vertically again.


----------



## Saldaw (May 6, 2012)

i tried it by wrapping the top with a piece of black plastic.. it didnt really do anything except slow the growth. but maybe it wasnt light tight enough?


----------



## Nukebisket (May 6, 2012)

frankcooper said:


> what happens to the tip once u tie it down. i assume it tried to grow vertically again.


yes it will, and you will have a bunch of main branches with it


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 6, 2012)

Nukebisket said:


> yes it will, and you will have a bunch of main branches with it


Yea, that's a great way to go about things. Much nicer for the plant.

If you bend the tip to the left and right 90 degrees it will stop it from growing for a short time and slow it down enough for other branches to catch up as well.


----------



## frankcooper (May 7, 2012)

so is it better to bend the tip than to cut off the tip?


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 7, 2012)

frankcooper said:


> so is it better to bend the tip than to cut off the tip?


There's no better, just opinions and style. You have to find out what works for you. Even if your set-up was similar to mine, and your soil was similar to mine, and your nutrients were similar to mine, watering methods, temps, lights, fans, ducting...etc.....your plant would still grow a little differently than any of ours.

Cutting the tip off is a fine way to go. I used to top once, and then top 4 times 2 weeks later, then veg for two weeks and flip and I'd have about 8 colas and some lower branches for hash and tincture. I had good results.

Now I FIM at about 8 inches instead of cutting the whole tip, and then lollipop and either super crop or bend some tips back and forth. There is also another method that is I believe called breaking the "inner hurd" which I don't have any experience with yet.


----------



## mccumcumber (May 7, 2012)

Just super crop if you want to keep everything in tact.
https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/513558-crimping.html#post7156707
^post four I give a tutorial.


----------



## dvs1038 (May 7, 2012)

yeah exactly everyone already said it but what u wanna do is supercrop it, that will give u more grow tips.


----------



## TheNewGuyy (May 8, 2012)

can i do this 4th week in flower? i want the tops to stop growing. just bend them to the left or right 90 degrees?


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 9, 2012)

Plants don't do any vegetative growing during flowering. The advice we gave was for vegetative growth, and veg growth during the first 2-3 weeks of 12/12. After that you plants put all of their energy into growing flowers. But during vegetative growth you can bend the tops to the left and right 90 degrees and that should "Stunt" the bud that you bend enough to let the other branches catch up in height a little. Or you can just snip off the top bud.


----------



## skunkd0c (May 9, 2012)

+ WitchDoctor + said:


> Plants don't do any vegetative growing during flowering. The advice we gave was for vegetative growth, and veg growth during the first 2-3 weeks of 12/12. After that you plants put all of their energy into growing flowers. But during vegetative growth you can bend the tops to the left and right 90 degrees and that should "Stunt" the bud that you bend enough to let the other branches catch up in height a little. Or you can just snip off the top bud.


This really depends on strain and when you put the plants into flower 
some plants will grow for many weeks into the 12/12 period before they reach a final size 
more noticeable on long flowering sativa and hybrids which can still be growing after week 6 of 12/12 

peace


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 9, 2012)

skunkd0c said:


> This really depends on strain and when you put the plants into flower
> some plants will grow for many weeks into the 12/12 period before they reach a final size
> more noticeable on long flowering sativa and hybrids which can still be growing after week 6 of 12/12
> 
> peace


I'd like to know which strain is still producing new growth from the top of the plant lol. I mean no offense, I understand that branches are still thickening and the plant may be getting a little taller and have more girth, but topping or bending to top shoot of a plant is a technique that is used to stop that bud in particular from growing taller, not the plant. 

So since his question was will bending the top bud 90 degrees both ways stop the top of the plant from growing, the answer is NO in my opinion. It would only cause the flowering plant (even a 14 weeks sativa would be in early flower by week 4) stress and the rest of the plant, including that bud, will continue to grow upwards towards the light. And at best the 14 week sativa would now be a 15 weeks sativa due to stressing the main cola. 

@NewGuy, if your colas grow to tall and are too close to the light, you can actually gently bend the whole branches down a little and zip tie or use twine to tie the branch to a stake or something. I have a low basement and before I got better at pruning my sativas would get to tall so I would have to throw in another 4 ft stake towards the outside of the pot and bend the cola down and ziptie it at whatever height it needed to be. Some of my plants looked like they had wreaths around them.


----------



## TheNewGuyy (May 10, 2012)

dang... well i bent a few of my main colas so their kind of broken... lol. I have a trellis up and their resting on that but broken at the same time. will the plant heal it and keep the buds getting fatter? and yeah mine is a bluedream skywalker hybrid and pretty much doubled in height since 12/12 cycle.


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 10, 2012)

Yes that big growth always surprises me, no matter how many times I see it. I flip my plants and they hardly grow for the first week, but then in 3 days BAM they're gigantic. Lol. 

I would take a piece of a stake or a popsicle stick or something and gently tie it to the cola where it is bent, like a makeshift splint for a broken finger. If it's bent to the point where the trim leaves start to droop and don't pick back up...cut it off cleanly as close to the next healthy node. It'll affect yield a tiny bit and might take an extra week or so to finish flowering, but you'll be ok. Next time that happens just throw another stake in the pot and gently bend the cola down to it. 

With sativas I like to use the 18" tomato cages they sell at home depot..not the big metal ones but the plastic coated green ones. You can top or FIM a sativa at about 6 inches and then a couple weeks later super crop. Then veg for another week or two until you've got at least 8 branch tips all around 12-14 inches tall. Then put the tomato cage on and flip them to 12/12. As soon as the the branches start to grow crazy fast I let the colas grow up inside the cage, and if any get too long I can start to wrap them around the side of the tomato cage.


----------



## frankcooper (May 13, 2012)

im growing hydro so im not sure how exactly im going to tie them down. i've no soil to put a stake into.


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 13, 2012)

frankcooper said:


> im growing hydro so im not sure how exactly im going to tie them down. i've no soil to put a stake into.


Ah, yea that won't work for you then. They've actually got this cool little thing at the hydro store by me. It's a 20 inch ring/rim on top and a 2' netting going down that wraps around it like a basketball net. It basically looks like you'd throw a basketball in it. But it hangs from above and sits over your plants the same was, and lets branches either grow through the netting or grow up through the ring.


----------



## frankcooper (May 16, 2012)

there seems to be a lot of misuse of training terms. so far from watching video clips on youtube and general web research topping seems be when you either cut of the stem of the plant at least 2 nodes from the bottom, and its also when you cut the bud at the top. which one is correct?
now fimming seems to be similar to the second topping method but instead of cutting the whole of the bud you cut about 75% of it. how is this better than cutting off the full 100%?


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 16, 2012)

Topping means you cut the top of the plant. Plain and simple. You usually want to top the first time when there are at least 2-4 nodes below it, meaning around 6-8 inches.

And yes, FIMing is where you cut off about 70-80% of the bud. What happens is that it usually grows at least 4 more main branches from where you cut. It's crazy, but it works great. I FIM first instead of topping now, and then I supercrop on some strains. And super-cropping is when you top some of the other branches as well, so the more branches grow from the other nodes on those branches.


----------



## frankcooper (May 16, 2012)

+ WitchDoctor + said:


> Topping means you cut the top of the plant. Plain and simple. You usually want to top the first time when there are at least 2-4 nodes below it, meaning around 6-8 inches.
> 
> And yes, FIMing is where you cut off about 70-80% of the bud. What happens is that it usually grows at least 4 more main branches from where you cut. It's crazy, but it works great. I FIM first instead of topping now, and then I supercrop on some strains. And super-cropping is when you top some of the other branches as well, so the more branches grow from the other nodes on those branches.
> 
> View attachment 2169730View attachment 2169731View attachment 2169732


thanks WD for your responses so far. you're being very patient with my lack of understanding.

1. you said topping means you cut the top of the plant and you cut when there are 2-4 nodes below it. so do you pysically cut off everything above the 2-4 nodes by cutting the stem? are there any advantages whether you cut above the 2nd, 3rd or 4th node?

2. FIMing as you said is when you cut off about 70-80% of the bud. what is the term for cutting off all of the bud? and you're saying that cutting off 70-80% of the bud results in better growth / more tops than cutting off 100% of the bud?


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 16, 2012)

Oh, I apologize, I actually didn't explain that very well did I.  And you're welcome, you'll learn fast. 

Topping doesn't have to be done when there are 2-4 nodes below it, that's just a good time to do it. And topping IS cutting off the whole bud, or "tip". See, the benefits to topping, are that if you cut the very tip bud off completely, the two buds on either side of it act as individual colas and the will both grow straight up, producing more growth and branching. Then you can top those two a week or so later after they've grown a little, now you have 4 colas growing up.

So topping is simply cutting of the top of the plant, no matter how big it is or where you cut it. Sometimes I even cut a clone size cutting from the top of the plant if it has already grown too big. 

Fimming is basically topping. It's called FIM (Fuck I Missed technique) because a grower was actually trying to top his plants and accidentally only clipped 80% of it. He found as you saw in the pics I posted that instead of just 2 colas growing, 4+ colas usually grow. This is a huge advantage over just normally topping for a lot of growers because if you FIM when there are only 2-4 nodes underneath it, you will have more colas available while the plant is still short so that you can super-crop or top a few more times and end up with basically as many colas as you want.

Now "super-cropping" is just a fancy word for topping the plant all over. What this does...I wish I had a pic lol....ok say you've got a sativa that likes to grow tall without much branching. So you top or FIM the plant when it's short and then as soon as the lower branches have grown as far our or as high as you want them to, you top those as well. This causes the lower growth to grow out and give you more branching inside the plant.


----------



## frankcooper (May 17, 2012)

+ WitchDoctor + said:


> Oh, I apologize, I actually didn't explain that very well did I.  And you're welcome, you'll learn fast.
> 
> Topping doesn't have to be done when there are 2-4 nodes below it, that's just a good time to do it. And topping IS cutting off the whole bud, or "tip". See, the benefits to topping, are that if you cut the very tip bud off completely, the two buds on either side of it act as individual colas and the will both grow straight up, producing more growth and branching. Then you can top those two a week or so later after they've grown a little, now you have 4 colas growing up.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the explanation. I was watching a clip on youtube earlier about topping and the guy in the video actually cut the stem and referred to this as topping. 

Its strange how cutting off the whole bud results in 2 new colas, and cutting off 80% of it results in 4+ colas. But if it works for me then I know I wont be complaining


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 17, 2012)

Lol. The FIMing doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me as to why it works, but I get why topping does. It makes sense to me that if you cut the main cola, that it wouldn't know whether to choose the right or left side to grow from so it just chooses both. That's what I'd do if I was the plant. "Ah fuck it, both of you go...you'll be safer in two's" 

Maybe FIMing is kinda the same deal, except the plant says "Fuck, this sick bastard only cut of the tip of my tip! All four of you better go!" Lol. 

I actually just FIMed a Raspberry Cough that was already 14" tall and only had 3 sets of nodes underneath, and it's already grown 4 more bud sites within 4 inches of growth. She looks ridiculous now, I think I'm just gonna clone her out and scrap her.


----------



## dvs1038 (May 17, 2012)

WitchDoctor ur right about everything except the super-cropping, when super-cropping u don't cut anything off the plant, its alot like LST(low stress training), except it can also be called HST(high stress training), both involve bending of the plant, but LST you tie the plant down in order to train it how to grow, but in HST or super-cropping you bend the plant to the point where you break the inside of the stem which when it heals will be much stronger and promotes growth from those nodes below the break in the stem.


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 17, 2012)

dvs1038 said:


> WitchDoctor ur right about everything except the super-cropping, when super-cropping u don't cut anything off the plant, its alot like LST(low stress training), except it can also be called HST(high stress training), both involve bending of the plant, but LST you tie the plant down in order to train it how to grow, but in HST or super-cropping you bend the plant to the point where you break the inside of the stem which when it heals will be much stronger and promotes growth from those nodes below the break in the stem.


Ah, thank you dvs you are right. I guess what I was describing would still be considered topping the plant, just all over. However, they both accomplish the same thing, only with super-cropping the area recovers and you don't loose that bud site. I thought that this technique had another name but I guess I was wrong. I found this though when I googled it. I didn't think that I was going to learn anything when I clicked on it. Thanks man. +rep. Check this out Frank you'll like it.

https://www.rollitup.org/newbie-central/288113-step-step-how-super-crop.html


----------



## dvs1038 (May 18, 2012)

Yeah what u were describing is when someone wants to get a plant with 4 main colas they could do it how u were talkin bout, I think Uncle Ben or Buck there is one of each so i get em confused but he has a really good thread on here about topping and FIM, I think if i remember he suggests u top a plant around the 4th true node, then a while later top the plant again where those 2 new growths r at and u will end up with 4 colas. Of course I did a much shorter description than him.

P.S lol I think I need to change my name to Timmy on here cause I never could figure out that +rep thing till just now thanx to u witchdoctor, ya wanna hear sumptin funny too, ur RUI name is my real name, well Shaman I mean is my real name. Ya know Shaman/Witch Doctor Lolz and I'm not even stoned yet.


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 19, 2012)

dvs1038 said:


> Yeah what u were describing is when someone wants to get a plant with 4 main colas they could do it how u were talkin bout, I think Uncle Ben or Buck there is one of each so i get em confused but he has a really good thread on here about topping and FIM, I think if i remember he suggests u top a plant around the 4th true node, then a while later top the plant again where those 2 new growths r at and u will end up with 4 colas. Of course I did a much shorter description than him.
> 
> P.S lol I think I need to change my name to Timmy on here cause I never could figure out that +rep thing till just now thanx to u witchdoctor, ya wanna hear sumptin funny too, ur RUI name is my real name, well Shaman I mean is my real name. Ya know Shaman/Witch Doctor Lolz and I'm not even stoned yet.


Lol, well with a name like Shaman I hope you're making good medicine lol. Don't forget this isn't the only healing herb around lol, just one of the best. If people weren't convinced that they needed to pull or poison all their dandelions they'd probably make those illegal too!


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (May 19, 2012)

I actually had 2 Raspberry coughs that had grown too tall already before I had a chance to top them early on. I was going to just clone them and throw them out, but I though I'd try this bending the stalk technique at the top on one, and just topping the other. I'll take another pic in a few days or so and we can see which technique worked better as far as keeping the plant shorter and tricking the lower branches into catching up. 

As you can see in the pic, they were just about identical before I bent one and cut one. Even if I decide to throw them out I figure better we learn something from it first, right? 

View attachment 2012-05-18 10.33.28.jpg


----------



## ANC (May 20, 2012)

I've grown a 8footer tied horisontaly to the ground. ... It went on to produce 8 feet worth of 6 foot seconadry cola branches. Be carefull of swazi, they grow HUGE if you let them.

WHen I say tied down, I mean tackled to the ground and bound down with electric cord useing alot of force as it was a sprightly young tree allready, as my neighbour knocked out my rear garden wall to make it higher...


----------



## cues (May 20, 2012)

Topping=Pinching the new growth out at the stem, splitting the branch into 2.
Fimming=Pinching the new growth out at a node, HOPEFULLY producing 4 new growths. Personally, I hate the idea of chopping through leaves and get faster recovery if I do the bowl-cut, and instead bend the new tips 'til they break. (look it up)
Supercropping=Pinching and bending the stems to make the canopy height more even.
Three different methods, three different uses.
All are useful and they are all aimed at the same result, a more even, filled canopy.
Which you choose to use is defined by light, whether scrogging or not, variety of plant, area etc. Often, all three methods will be used in a single grow. i.e in a scrog, top when the screen is reached, fim sideways growth if you need more bushiness (say a sativa) and supercrop any growth that is getting out-of-hand and blocking light to other colas.


----------



## Snowman309 (Jul 23, 2012)

Looks like this thread might have died a couple months ago. But i'm eager to see which method had the best results. Got ne more pics WD?


----------



## scotty bagmonster (Jul 25, 2012)

View attachment 2268712View attachment 2268716View attachment 2268717


frankcooper said:


> im growing hydro so im not sure how exactly im going to tie them down. i've no soil to put a stake into.


lots of ways to do it drill small holes in your lids and use stainless steel bolts to hold whatever your using you could even drill holes ans use zip ties the black bucket and blue bucket are mine I use pipe cleaners to make the plant do what i want and i pulled a QP plus of the plant in the last picture with only a month veg in DWC hope this helps and pictures are worth a thousand words fellas!!!!


----------



## skunkd0c (Jul 25, 2012)

+ WitchDoctor + said:


> I'd like to know which strain is still producing new growth from the top of the plant lol. I mean no offense, I understand that branches are still thickening and the plant may be getting a little taller and have more girth, but topping or bending to top shoot of a plant is a technique that is used to stop that bud in particular from growing taller, not the plant.
> 
> So since his question was will bending the top bud 90 degrees both ways stop the top of the plant from growing, the answer is NO in my opinion. It would only cause the flowering plant (even a 14 weeks sativa would be in early flower by week 4) stress and the rest of the plant, including that bud, will continue to grow upwards towards the light. And at best the 14 week sativa would now be a 15 weeks sativa due to stressing the main cola.
> 
> @NewGuy, if your colas grow to tall and are too close to the light, you can actually gently bend the whole branches down a little and zip tie or use twine to tie the branch to a stake or something. I have a low basement and before I got better at pruning my sativas would get to tall so I would have to throw in another 4 ft stake towards the outside of the pot and bend the cola down and ziptie it at whatever height it needed to be. Some of my plants looked like they had wreaths around them.



not sure what your post is about, the op's question was about placing a cap over the top of a plant and what effect that would have on its growth
weather it would produce the same effect as topping

my response was to your comment about plants not producing vegetative growth during the 12/12 photo period you were generalizing way too much 
as i stated plants can stretch for varying amounts , a plant flowered at 2ft can end up over 6ft each branch the plant produces can be several feet long
also plants flowered very early 12/12 in the first week or from seed, can grow a huge amount before they finish and reach final height depending on strain etc

an example of a strain that still grows after week 2-3 of 12/12 look at this one https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/458333-mr-nice-angel-heart-v-2.html lol

peace


----------



## + WitchDoctor + (Jul 29, 2012)

Snowman309 said:


> Looks like this thread might have died a couple months ago. But i'm eager to see which method had the best results. Got ne more pics WD?


Hey buddy, I had taken some pics and had them on my phone but since this thread died I never uploaded. The one that I super-cropped grew bigger, but the one I cut the top from was more manageable. But that could have been because that's what I was used to doing. Now I'm trying something new, I start my rooted cuttings off in 1 gal pots under a T5 and FIM right away. I usually get about 4 branches pretty fast and then I cut the tip off of those. Then when they are ready to replant I put them in 5 gal pots and I use an 18" tomato cage and zip tie the branches to the lower ring of the cage and pinch off the tips once again to promote more growth from the inside. Once that growth has caught up to the height of the lower ring I flip them and I just got a 12 colas inside a cage, but I think I should be able to do 16. I'm sure there are more gentler ways to achieve the same results, but this is working great right now.



skunkd0c said:


> not sure what your post is about, the op's question was about placing a cap over the top of a plant and what effect that would have on its growth
> weather it would produce the same effect as topping
> 
> my response was to your comment about plants not producing vegetative growth during the 12/12 photo period you were generalizing way too much
> ...


Yea, the OP's question had been long answered on this thread, and my response was to the question on that page about whether he could top a plant 4 weeks into flower to stop it from growing taller. While looking back on that now, I probably should have just told him that the plant isn't likely to keep growing much either way...I'm pretty sure the advice not to top a plant that has been flowering for 4 weeks was pretty solid.

I don't have any experience with flowering from seed though, but I assumed flowering from seed would be a sea of green setup, so I'm not sure what kind of growth you would be getting after 4 weeks of flowering. Even with a 14 week sativa.

Cutting a branch from a flowering cannabis plant is never a good idea. Unless it's absolutely neccesary.

It's all good though.


----------

