hey feroce,
when you pull the lower buds, do you keep having to do it? I tried that method on my first grow and the little popcorn buds kept coming back. I felt like I was fighting the plant and it didn't seem right.
Nope, not if you do it right...Give me a few hours and I'll take some pics of how I do it...the ladies are asleep right now.
Edit: Pics up!
Ok, Darth Budder, here's how I do it...a lot of folks are afraid of pruning plants, I'm not one of them. Properly done, it can improve yield and make harvest much easier. I tend to do my pruning a week or two after flip, after they start stretching.
I like to leave the lower fan leaves on as long as they remain healthy, so I remove the branch below the first node, like so...no more growing tips, so no more growth.
I strip all the branches off the lower half of the plant, at the minimum.
You can see that I left one too many set of branches on this plant...result popcorn.
When you do it right, you end up with something like this...a big, easy to harvest cola
And this.
HTH...