Plant Size

Hi guys -

I ordered a whole bunch of seeds from Pick n' Mix recently, going to put them down outside soon after the last winter wind.
Generally, I was considering size when I ordered the seeds, but I've just been looking up some of the freebies and some of them look like they might be too big to manage (e.g. Dinafem's Power Kush, can apparently reach 9 feet?). Is there any way of controlling plant size without destroying that delicious apical bud? Can you sort of trim just the very very top; will that work?
If there's no way I'll just put some of them in storage and do a better job site scouting next year. Or get a closet.

Stoner love
x

Do some research on lst (Low stress training). Right now my girl is a little over a foot tall with 40-50 shoots

Thanks mate +rep for ya there

LST is cute, but a lot of work. May I suggest:

https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/151706-uncle-bens-topping-technique-get.html

...instead? My grow journal in my signature shows what the plants will look like after 2 weeks of flowering if you vegged using this EXTREMELY simple topping method. THe canopy for the topped plants, versus the untopped plants, well, there are pictures next to each other and they are both growing at the same time. The canopy is much nicer for the topped plants.

You control height of a plant in veg, figure it'll get twice to three times larger when you begin flowering before your ready to harvest. Generally after the 6th week you wont see much vertical growth, just nuggets. Good luck!

I think LST involves less risk, is easier, and makes for a more efficient use of your space and light. While you might get a few more top colas from topping, the lower half of the plant is still having a hard time. While the LST method gives all the leaves and tops an equal footing and maximizes your canopy for your space and you don't have to worry as much about the light penetrating to lower levels. I'm on my first grow and I only used LST on one of my plants because it grew so much taller than the others, and that plant is the one I like the most. It takes up little space and uses it more efficiently ( a rectangular canopy is easier to fit in to most grow spaces than a circular one), each cola except the very last/main/top are on an even plane and equal in size. While the 2 plants that grew straight up have decent main colas and the rest of the plant isn't very impressive. Although there are certainly reasons why a no training grow could outperform an LST, most of the time an LST should do better than no training, and may perform better than topping. *THOUGHT* Does topping really give you a greater yield or just redistribute your main cola into several? (I've heard a bit of experience on both sides)

I truly believe that LST is the best for growing (indoors at least and unless you are doing some crazy spiral grow with a main light and cfls encircling it)
LST opens up your whole plant to light and lets more sites grow up into decent chunks, where if it was growing vertically like normal the sites might not bud or not as well (so you might get a couple more main colas but the rest of the plant suffers)

It would be great to seem some hard experimenting done on LST vs topping vs both with plants of the same strain!
Think of all the cool experimenting people will be able to do openly when marijuana is legalized and it won't always be about making a buck!

The only time I wouldn't LST is if you have plenty of say back up cfl lights for the lower half and sides of the plant, or if you plan to run a SOG or auto flowering strain (not sure how well they react to LST)

top after 5 noode then lst till they finish works great!