Rookie gardner and first post

[hunterxt12]

Ok hey this is my first thread or post so im sorry if im way outside the box or screw up i promise i mean well! My first day so please let me have it im all ears.. But anyway say you had a few femails growing and they shot up to four or five feet and they are growing great but the top was getting a little thin and strung out? Is it a good idea to top them out wile they are young or is it to late? And iv hurd many ideas but is it true if you chop the TOPS they grow thicker around there skirt area? Grow More product? Or should you let them go?

 

[Bearlove]

Welcome to the site -

Moved to CD

 

[drug_mentor]

I assume they are outdoor?

Topping works fine if you want to increase the number of shoots and try and get a more even canopy. Because growth on the branches you top will take a few days to slightly over a week to start growing properly again the lower branches do tend to catch up a bit, but to what extent will depend on the strain and the growing conditions.

I should clarify that topping only works in veg, not flower. You have said they are female, but I am not sure if this is because they are clones, grown from feminised seed, or flowering already. If they are flowering definitely don't top them.

If the plants are still relatively young I would recommend tying them down over topping, if you google low stress training or LST you should get plenty of information on this. LST is also a viable option if you are in flower, but you have to be careful because if the branches are relatively strong you can run the risk of breaking them. Another technique for canopy management which can be useful is supercropping or HST, this essentially involves pinching the stalks tightly so that the branches bend over a bit. I have had good success with this technique in the past, but since you are a relatively new grower I probably would not recommend it. Also, I wouldn't generally recommend supercropping past day 21 of flower.

If you are growing indoor then it really is worth employing canopy management techniques as it will almost certainly boost your yield, and it minimizes the odds of your plants outgrowing your space. If you provide more details I can give you more specific advice, if you need me to clarify anything I have said let me know.

 

[drscience]

IME topping is always a good thing........especially if indoor.

 

[hunterxt12]

I think i just found the coolest dude alive haha, wow thank you for your advice and the support right off the bat i aprecate it! So yes these are grown out doors, im fairly new with it all because i most the time i leave them alone with little atantion, but to get them better results im trying other things. I grew two plants from seed inside to get them going. I only had 2 seeds but but they came from top notch genetics so i prayed for girls but one turned into a mail so i pulled him away from my only mother plant, and from there i started a few clones. So thats about all i knew how to do. So this is a great question for you, after the mother plant was in the ground i decided to plant that mail next to her to cross strains? The mail was a diffrent plant, the better of the two. I only took that chance on one plant so am i just really stupid or will i have a mix of the two when she buds?

 

[drug_mentor]

IME topping is always a good thing........especially if indoor.

I am a fan of topping but you can't top in flower, therefore it is not always a good thing... Also, LST generally gives better results than topping without slowing growth, tying down just takes slightly more work/time than topping does.

I think i just found the coolest dude alive haha, wow thank you for your advice and the support right off the bat i aprecate it! So yes these are grown out doors, im fairly new with it all because i most the time i leave them alone with little atantion, but to get them better results im trying other things. I grew two plants from seed inside to get them going. I only had 2 seeds but but they came from top notch genetics so i prayed for girls but one turned into a mail so i pulled him away from my only mother plant, and from there i started a few clones. So thats about all i knew how to do. So this is a great question for you, after the mother plant was in the ground i decided to plant that mail next to her to cross strains? The mail was a diffrent plant, the better of the two. I only took that chance on one plant so am i just really stupid or will i have a mix of the two when she buds?

The bud won't be a mix of the two plants, the smoke will be the same as if you had pulled the male plant. What will happen is the bud will be full of seeds, which means you are going to get less smoke out of it. If you plant those seeds then the plants which grow from them will have genes from both the mother and father plants. The technical term for such a cross would be an F1 hybrid, which means that the plants will not be uniform, you might get some phenotypes which are very similar to the mother, others which express the genetics of the father, and anything in between.

If you have access to seeds and the male has not dropped its pollen yet I would pull it ASAP. If you can't get more seeds then it might be worth pollinating the female so you have a healthy seed stock for the future.

Male plants generally grow more vigorously than female plants and wind up taller, this is so they can pollinate females more effectively and does not mean the male is a "better" plant. There are ways to select males for desirable traits, but given your limited experience it is unlikely you know what to look for.