Topping and Trimming Question

I've read many threads on topping and fimming and most have relatively similar methods and advice. My problem is that most of these threads are not meant for people like me who have let some plants get too big haha! Not only do I need to top, but to trim, Edward Scissorhands style! What are the rules for trimming and are they the same as topping?

I have been trimming for the past week or so but I don't know if I'm doing it right. I just take the highest leaves and branches, go to the first or second major node down and cut, making sure not to damage the developing leaf at that node. This activity seems to cause the plants to drink a lot more water. I think they've gotten bushier as well but it may be my imagination.

Is there a right and wrong way to trim?
Am I stressing my plants a lot by doing this?
(I'm at the end of veg and don't want to stress them into turning hermie)

Don't trim more than 1/3 of the plant at a time. Take the opportunity to also trim the small off shoots low down.

id start with the lower ones too. then try to open it up to get maximum light coverage. if you have the room tie them down and open them up that way as well

I prefer tying down myself, but your not going to make your plant hermie doing this, dont worry. If i do trim i do it all at once and get it out of the way instead of stretching stressing the plants out over a longer period of time.

Defcon9, I basically just do a few trims here and there every couple of days on different plants. I don't take that much off at one time, but good to know

Jason and darkdestruction, I think tying down would probably be a better way to go than trimming (less stressful), but I have to rig something to tie the stems to. When you tie the plants i.e. LST, do you ever untie them? Or do you let the side branches develop a bit and flower them in the tied down position?

What has happened is that I'm trying aero for the first time and the plants ran away on me a bit. I'm trying to obtain and set up a filter/fan duct system and it's been slow going, so the plants are still in veg because I'm not ready to deal with odor yet. I wanted to have it all set up 2 weeks ago, but it just hasn't worked out, and the plants (bless em) just keep vegging away like a freight train!

I use tape and the sides of the grow rooms walls or when possible the sides of the pots the plants are in as *tie points*. i dont tie the string directly to the plants, hook the string around them and then when youve got equal lengths of string from both sides tape it. Make sure you dont buy painters tape or duct tape for this, in my experience they both really suck at holding. Shipping tape is good and some types of scotch tape. i use 3-4 pieces of tape for each tie point to try to make sure the tie points hold.

I tend to remove anthing that gets in the way over anything else but to a point!! me and a grower from the GC did a test and we called in project nakedness, We stripped a few of our plants right back in the 2nd week of flower and they prodeced twice as much as our other plants!! topping can help as far as slowing the upward growt for a while but the side growth will catch up!!

"Project nakedness" haha !!! So now when you say you stripped your plants back, do you mean tied them back right? Could you elaborate on this a bit? Was the goal to expose the lower branches? I'm very curious, especially because you say it resulted in the plants producing 2x as much as the others. You're right about the topping, the side branches Have caught up, and now I'm just topping everything, it's madness! It's made all the stems much thicker too.

darkdestruction, I think I understand what you are saying. Is there something harmful about tying the string around the stems directly? Is that why you did it with tape and hooking method you described?

it can cut into the stems and its hard sometimes to untie them when you need to move where youve got it tied to the plant. however you dont have to do it that way, if its easier for you not to its not a big deal. just use real nice fluffy yarn or something like that.

Redoctober said:

"Project nakedness" haha !!! So now when you say you stripped your plants back, do you mean tied them back right? Could you elaborate on this a bit? Was the goal to expose the lower branches? I'm very curious, especially because you say it resulted in the plants producing 2x as much as the others. You're right about the topping, the side branches Have caught up, and now I'm just topping everything, it's madness! It's made all the stems much thicker too.

darkdestruction, I think I understand what you are saying. Is there something harmful about tying the string around the stems directly? Is that why you did it with tape and hooking method you described?

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Hi there, PN'ing involves what a lot of growers will not do at all and thats take every fan leaf barr the top 2 biggest off the plant!! leaving all but the bud sites and mini leaves!! it will slow the growth for about a week or so but then bang it will take right off, well did with ours!!

Trim the plants below where you think the light has lost effectiveness so the stem are bare. At the top, do your best not to cut if you don't have to, but trim the ones that you can't tuck and are covering too much area. What ever you do, do it in stages so the plants doesn't do into shock, shrivel an die.

sticky, so stripping off all the fan leaves during flower doesn't stress the plant into turning hermie on you?

do you think it's possible to achieve similar results with LST and tying?

I'm curious to try some nakedness, but a hermie would be a disaster as my plants are all together in an aero unit

the stripping of fan leaves is a horrible idea, ive seen lots of claims but ive never seen any proof it helps in any way. All its ever done for me is reduce the final yeild. Leaves are not as solid as they look. 85% of the energy goes right on through the leaf, only 15% hits chloroplasts for photosynthesis. Those big fan leaves are the most effecient and main energy source so your plant gives them the first crack at the light. Trimming excess/bottom shoots and stuff like that is fine, but dont remove the plants main energy makers because they look like they are in the way. The plant grew and has them where it is for a reason, it knows what its doing.

forgot to add-No, it will not make your plant hermie. Stripping fan leaves will stress the plant and reduce the amount of energy it can make to keep growing. the stress from them being stripped in itself isnt what i would be most(or at all for the most part, these plants are tougher than you could imagine) concerned over, its the loss of the energy making capabilities.

I use the 4 cola bud method.


I wait intill 5-6 nodes, then cut above the second 'real' set of leafs -- that means the first two branches (the seed leafs, and following branch wouldn't count towards the 5-6 nodes; as they are basically starter branches).

When you have the nodes cut it like this..


-|-
-|-
-|-
-|-
-|- ........... -|-
-|- ........... -|-
---- ....... . ----
Before ..... After topping


Use compost tea for every watering after topping, this will help the plant recover very quickly and become bushier and bigger then ever.

Using this method you wont need any other topping method; Also you can re-top the for main buds and get the possibility for double the amount (8-6) of cola buds. If you do this you need to run a fan constantly at the plants to get really thick stems to be able to sustain feeding all 8-6.

now i have actually done both ways (trim dont trim) and can say my trimmed topped plants always yield about double what the untrimmed ones do. here are some pics first three are from untrimmed white widow, second three are from trimmed white widow (same veg time same height). now the funny thing is with my trimmed ones there where 5 plants, with the untrimmed there where 3 plants and yielded 2 oz's more dry and with virtually no popcorn at all. now of course no one is here to feel the differences in density but take my word for it, i wouldnt lie i promise you all if i had done some defoliation and hacked some branches and it affected my yield in a neg way i would be the first to sit here and tell you it doesnt work but the truth of the matter is it does and is widely used in many area's of gardening (not just mj) to increase yield of produce and such in tomato plants its refereed to as multi stem pruning.

Again though you dont show a side by side w/exactly replicated growing conditions with clones of the same age from the same mother. The topping them and lollipoping so you dont get any popcorn buds is fine and is what doubling your yeilds. I said dont cut off fan leaves b/c they are supposedly blocking light or a drain on the plants somehow or any of the other rumors like that. It's also really quick and simple to either tuck or tie the fan leaves out of the way so that makes it all the more unneeded and unwise to remove the fan leaves. We are pretty much on the same page. You kind of misunderstood me. When i see strip fan leaves in this context and the logic is that they are preventing light from getting to the budsites or that the plant has to waste energy on the fan leaves to keep them alive when its the other way around and the leaves are giving energy to the plant. the guy who we were talking to advised to cut every single fan leaf off all but the top 2 fan leaves, which is an unbelievabley bad idea. How does reducing drastically your plants ability to make energy for new growth speed up new growth? it doesnt, it also throws away all the stored energy they contained that would of been given to the buds towards the end of flower to add most of the buds final weight. thats the whole point of it storing energy...... to be used for the flowers.

darkdestruction420 said:

Again though you dont show a side by side w/exactly replicated growing conditions with clones of the same age from the same mother. The topping them and lollipoping so you dont get any popcorn buds is fine and is what doubling your yeilds. I said dont cut off fan leaves b/c they are supposedly blocking light or a drain on the plants somehow or any of the other rumors like that. It's also really quick and simple to either tuck or tie the fan leaves out of the way so that makes it all the more unneeded and unwise to remove the fan leaves. We are pretty much on the same page. You kind of misunderstood me. When i see strip fan leaves in this context the logic is that they are preventing light from getting to the budsites or that the plant has to waste energy on the big fan leaves when its the other way around. the guy who we were talking to advised to cut every single fan leaf off all but the top 2 fan leaves, which is an unbelievabley bad idea. How does reducing drastically your plants ability to make energy for new growth speed up new growth? it doesnt, it also throws away all the stored energy they contained that would of been given to the buds towards the end of flower to add most of the buds final weight. thats the whole point of it storing energy...... to be used for the flowers.

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i have been running the same strain, system, nute schedule, and all of the above for a long while now nothing has changed i can assure you down to the ppm's of my res's in all weeks of flower and veg and the both from the same mother as well and like i stated in the beginning, clones where vegged to same age. i am the same way i dont ever recommend eliminating all large fan leaves and in fact you are correct, the fan leaves do not need to be taken away for light penetration but in fact they are the factories of energy to feed the flowers IMO. i noticed even the lower buds that where covered (and i tucked away daily but the bastards would come out each day lol) where still large and dense as well, so i saw no need for taking them away as they where feeding the flowers. so you are right, definitely IMO dont strip any foliage thats not necessary, i will eliminate the lower node and fan leaf thats directly off the node on the main stem AKA lollypopping and thats it no top foliage gets cut, ever..

darkdestruction, thanks for the input. What you are saying intuitively makes sense and I don't think I'll be stripping off the leaves, at least no this time anyway. Maybe when I have a plant I don't care about, I'll try it just for shits and giggles. I'm going to top one more time before flower. I am at a point where the side branches are as big and branchy as the main cola. Actually I can't even identify the main cola any more on almost all of my plants now. They seem to split into 2 or 4 equally thick branches. I guess this came from an earlier round of topping. I have to say that I am now a fan of topping...it's almost been too effective. I'm still not sure how far down I could or should top on the branches. I always feel like I'm doing something harmful if I go more than 3 nodes down but these plants have gotten so damn tall! How would you say topping affects node spacing? Help/hurt/neither?

drgreentm, that's pretty much what people say. I can't speak for soil or hydro as I have only ever done aero, but in aero, the plants recover very very quickly. Also I've noticed that topping causes the plants to double or triple their water consumption.

Canadian, you're gonna force me to look up plant anatomy Do you do this on the main cola only, or the side branches as well? And how many times per grow do you do this?

darkdestruction420 said:

I prefer tying down myself, but your not going to make your plant hermie doing this, dont worry. If i do trim i do it all at once and get it out of the way instead of stretching stressing the plants out over a longer period of time.

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I use a netting technique that is shown on my link below. It makes it so you prune ( cut off ) any branches ( yea the whole branch ) that will not reach the canopy. So basically to explain easily.. Its like running a branch horizontal weaving it through a net so all the branches that usually get little light are now even with the top canopy ( yield is based on canopy penetration ) I used to top but not anymore.... That is untill i start to flower then at about 3 weeks or so when you have little buds coming in I top the buds by just pinching out the middle. This has the same effect as topping but with your buds. They start to almost have 4 tops from that 1 from doing this and has increased my production. I can post a better video that shows more of the bottom and how I prune in about 2 hours when light pops. Bending does not have the effect of topping either where your plant takes a while to recover and start to grow again. cutting off the bottom branches that will not get to the canopy before they start to produce buds will increase your production but if they already started to produce do not bother because if you cut after they start to produce it doesnt make the other one bigger has to be before it start producing usually about week 2 maybe 2 and 1/2 weeks maximum.

https://www.rollitup.org/blogs/blog10746-more-grow-pics-videos.html