How To: Bend and top your way to a 1 pound monster

TheCapn;1759908 said:

HipsterDoofus;1759863 said:

Too funny, man. Your topping photo is of a plant in flower. The third one with the yellow circle.

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Hey all, Hipster chimed in here with a sarcastic remark. He can see pistils in this picture, so he thinks this plant is flowering. This subject is not really in the scope of this article, but since Hipster brought it up, lets talk about preflowers for a moment. I also talk about this in my article on sexing plants.

When we say, "pre-flower", that means the plant is starting to show it's sex, but won't "flower" until moved to a 12/12 hour light / dark cycle. The male staminate is almost round, where the female Calyx is longer, tear drop shaped. Frequently you will see the female Calyx before a pistol comes out of it, and with some experience you will be able to "predict" the sex before actually seeing the pistol. If you start a plant from seed, you will typically see pre-flowers in 6-9 weeks. EDIT: If you start flowering before 2 months of vegetative growth, you might never know what pre-flowers are. Once you take cuttings from a mature mother plant (with pre-flowers on it), you will usually see female pistils on the clones as they grow. You can usually tell if a plant was grown from seed, as the nodes will be directly symmetrical or across from each other. When a plant is mature, the nodes will alternate (and so will clones taken from it), as shown in the pictures below.

Here is a close up of that same picture with the yellow circle, giving a little better view of the female pre-flowers. Sorry the picture is not in focus, but you can see the female pistils:

Here is another good article on pre-flowers:
https://www.420magazine.com/community/threads/what-preflowers.71168/

Here is a picture of this plant (with the yellow circle) during the same photo session when I topped it on 5-1:

And here it is 9 days ago on 6-5, putting it into flower (you can tell it is the same plant because of the "Y" at the base):

Again, constructive comments welcome.

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