Topping ?

How many Top their Autos? I was told not to. Just bend them over.

With many of the auto strains you just don’t have the time needed to top and allow the plant to get through it before it starts flowering.
I would say that if you really have your conditions dialed in and are getting optimal growth, then topping is fine.
I would totally recommend some type of training to even out the canopy and increase yield.
Recently I’ve been trying to grow this one strain of auto and the minute I do any type of bending it stunts and starts flowering….I’ve tried with 4 different seedlings. After giving up on that strain I read some info from the breeder that stated how the strain was very finicky when trying any training and it should not be done.
I wish I’d known that in the beginning.
i think most strains will not be so unforgiving but it’s worth looking into beforehand.
Anyway, autos can be tricky and you just don’t have much time to mess around in veg.
Good luck with whatever u decide.

I do pretty good but always want a safe way to get more.

Autos are strange. Just cut Gorilla Glue waiting on Wedding Cake. Plastic Pots seem to finish faster than Fiber but Fiber does better.

Grow before last cut a lot of leaves off, last Grow did nothing. Seems both about the same.

It's fine to top autos if done at the right time. If I top, I top above the 3rd/4th node, just at preflowering...my only purpose is to control the canopy. Since I use several lights in my grow, sometimes I'll let a couple do their natural thang. Even though I'm a 'bonzai' grower, in 3 ltr pots, I can say from my experience, topping is preferred simply for the multiple colas vrs one big cola and small sats....I've not seen one way yeild more than the other consistently but after years of autos, I do prefer topped.

I don’t, and probably never will lol, but I just like to keep a couple in my veg tent and and have so far done a new one strain each time, gonna keep doing it that way too cause I like trying new things.

Oldguyrealy said:

How many Top their Autos? I was told not to. Just bend them over.

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Topping is just one of many tools in our bag of tricks. If you must top I must ask why? Bending can achieve the break of apical dominance just as good and stress the plant less. I prefer to top only when height and width are the issue and I just have to do it.

I usually top the bigger strains to keep height managed or do LST but this Nurple I have in flower now, I topped just to give myself a few extra colas. It worked out well this time as it had been stunted bad from being left in it's seed starter for too long.. It won't yield much but I'm fine with that, I just have it in with vegging photo plants I'm getting ready for my next flower run and it's easy to enough to water.

Bill Ward has a YouTube channel on Autos and the one episode on the Skittles dropped my jaw ...he topped the heck out of his crop and they seem to respond well with a huge bouquet of flowers. Maybe not for the beginners as this guy seems to be an old school legend with how he carries himself. If you know what your doing I guess you can.