To Top or Not To Top - That Is The Question

Hi fellow farmers,
I am in week 3 with my autoflowering Afghan Express and I am reading many conflicting opinions on this subject. I am well into my 3rd sets of leaves with the 4th sets beginning to form, and I have a fairly confined space of 3x3x4 feet.

Q: Should I top these girls ? I would like to grow many buds but do not want to harm them in the process.
I am attaching a pic of one of them

Your expert advice will be appreciated.

Alienjohn

Topping gives you a better outcome, instead of having one main cola you can have up to 2-4 big colas(the amount of colas depends if you top or FIM). Another thing you should do is scrog. You can top your plant to create equal sized colas for equal amount of light then start to tuck the branches under the scrog screen to bring light for more branches to become colas.

Or just bend her over and let all the nodes shoot up and become colas.


(Note: just saw the auto part. Not sure on the timing as I don't run auto genetics)

Don't top auto-flowers. They don't do well with stress. Just make sure the leaves at the nodes where bud production will begin are getting as much sunlight as possible.

I agree with Trippy....I won't top an auto

I agree with the not topping an auto for now. I have seen it down at the right time to some success, with his being said, I have 2 that I topped and the same plant untopped to see the difference. So far they both are doing about the same, but if I wouldn't have topped as soon as possible then I might have messed up bud production. Tying it down is a safe thing to do at just about any point and it will force everything else to form a cola's without topping and stunting it possibly.

How about scrogging autoflowering plants. Does that increase bud production?

Most start to really flower between week 3-4 so scrog would have to be implemented far before that. But yes, it would help with yields.

So you guys thing I should scrog but not top or fim, right?
Sorry if my qurstions seem dumb but this is my first grow in 30 years

SCROG would be fun to do so I would try it out and start guiding that girl through a screen. It's not as productive as it is for photoperiods due to there long veg times.

Alienjohn said:

So you guys thing I should scrog but not top or fim, right?
Sorry if my qurstions seem dumb but this is my first grow in 30 years

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Scrog would do well, or you could keep it simple and just LST it kind of like Snaps mentioned. Just get some string and bend your girl till her top shoot is as horizontal as you can get it! These plants are very resilient and bendy, but be sure you dont bend too much and snap the stalk. Tie her down once you have her bent, and she will lean back up towards the light from there.

Just keep tying her around your pot and that will open up a lot more of your plant to light exposure. Boom, bigger yield or, at least you hope!

Honestly you can top, supercrop, lst etc it doesn't typically result in anything to productive. If anything you're just using these techniques to learn, not to improve the plants growth.

Just let the thing grow.

Well, I did the cool tube thing and got it down to a steady 82 degrees. I hope that's OK.
Have 2 Afghan Express and 1 Afghan Kush Ryder doing 24hr with a 400 HPS light (all autoflowers)
Jumped grew 1 and a half inches is less than 2 days, and man, the smell. Smells like I've just smoked
a bong in my basement. I didn't realize these 3 gals would be so fragrant. Next improvement
will have to be a carbon scrubber. As always, open to suggestions here.

TheTrippyHippie said:

Honestly you can top, supercrop, lst etc it doesn't typically result in anything to productive. If anything you're just using these techniques to learn, not to improve the plants growth.

Just let the thing grow.

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all of those methods are meant to improve your plants performance.

Im referring to applying growing techniques on autoflowers. Yes it can sometimes be done depending on the cross. Theirs so many different types of autos and they got pretty complex with breeding. Auto's don't typically care for stress so you may not improve your yield. That is what i am saying.

I think since this is my first grow in 30 years I will just water them, keep them cozy and hope they turn out well.
They do seem to be happy, growing fast and good-n-smelly.
Some of these other techniques would prob be more effective on a non-auto strain which I will attempt after
this grow when I finish building a better grow space and get some better equipment for cooling and filtration.
I will also not use the Miracle-Gro soil. Think I'll try to find that Ocean Forest Soil and my own nutrients.
Definitely open to good suggestions for nutes and other care.

TheTrippyHippie said:

Im referring to applying growing techniques on autoflowers. Yes it can sometimes be done depending on the cross. Theirs so many different types of autos and they got pretty complex with breeding. Auto's don't typically care for stress so you may not improve your yield. That is what i am saying.

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Ah, my fault TrippyHippie I see what you mean now. I agree with you, not sure all the work would be worth it on auto strains. Sorry again for the misunderstanding, my head was stuck on regular plants.