To yield the most

Stltoed said:
Honestly I was just breezing through. I totally missed the outdoor part of it. My bad. My apologize to Bob, Duck, and to you Mary. No hard feelings.

Mary if you are ever interested in indoors please feel free to look me up.

You all have a great weekend... Cheers.
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Its all good brother - love having a discussion on topics. How I learn stuff.
 
bobrown14 said:
Not sure if serious. Hydro?? Well I like quality AND flavor over yields.

I run organic soil nothing but water the whole run which in flower in soil is 40-45 days from flip.

I just pointed out how to run a real experiment. I don't have the space or the energy to run 100 plants but that's how you do it, well its how scientists do it. You know, people like Mendel and folks like him.
In a lab. But hey, if you think your topping gets you what you need, do it. I'm just saying its not gonna get you more yields. I've been growing pretty long ... this topping thing is pretty much cannabis only and that to me, sounds like it needs more study.

You cant say it gets more yields without the science to back it up. Thats all I'm saying.

There's no science to back that up. Can we draw a conclusion based on the lack of science (evidence)? Ah yup.
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But the question was about yield. I love my bud.

Thats facinating... good for you.

Mendle grew pot?

What was the highest yield you ever had (indoors)?

Then study it.

And vice versa.

But thats exactly what you're doing.

I'm not going to do this here. I apologized for making a mistake, and I meant it. If you REALLY want to discuss this then instant message me. You know where i stand... Or simply get over it...
 
bobrown14 said:
Reduces yields - where ever you wanna grow.. Just is what it is some folks top plants for whatever reason but its not yields.

Many people think topping creates a bigger SHORTER bush which it will but it will also lengthen the time to harvest. This lengthened time reduces yields over time. Also your flowers will be smaller.

Yields is about bio-mass - you can't cut the apical meristem off and expect larger bio-mass.

I use training instead of topping. So if a plant is getting too tall and growing into my lamps I will supercrop the tops that are too close to the lamps. Doesn't waste time for the plant to recover as the recovery is overnight. With topping it could be 10-15 days recovery then stunted growth after.

So if YIELDS are your goal, topping is not the answer.

The real answer is: genetics genetics genetics
In that order.
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Bob you have done it again. This is so untrue it is almost laughable. Topping most definitely increases yield... by many fold. It is so dramatic of an increase from a non topped plant that to state such a ridiculous thing is absurd. Bob, you are flat out wrong.
 
It's amazing anyone who claims to have grown pot for "long" would think topping reduces yield. Sure you eliminate the top cola but it brings out huge nugs, as in more than one. Then the lights can be run closer without a huge top cola so you don't run into as much exponential light loss from distance.

Let's just grow Xmas trees with smaller nugs running smaller and smaller as they get farther from the light.

Ah yup cause we all enjoy larf....
 
Marybens said:
Hi all, Mary here from Mohave Valley.
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Hi, Mary from Mohave (I'll bet that would get old really quick, lol, so I'll just type it the one time).

Marybens said:
I am attempting to grow weed outside in a pot in the desert.
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Well, then, it looks like you have failed - because that appears to be cannabis ;) .

Marybens said:
what do you think of setup?
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Scares the willies out of me. I have never grown plants in an actual desert, but it gets hot here, and I've learned that the soil / root zone in a container can quickly heat up on a sunny day. Unless you feel that you'll have to move that plant, it might be better to plant it in the ground instead of a relatively small container. And that three-walled thing you've got around it... I'd lose that, for sure. It's not like you're likely to have to reflect more light onto it than the direct sunlight in your area provides, is it? Plus, where there's light, there's heat.

Me, I'd move somewhere cooler plant it in the ground. And if I felt the need to add some sort of shade mechanism (which I probably would, in that climate/area), I wouldn't do it by building a box structure around the plant; I'd do it by sinking four corner posts, add a perimeter frame at the top, and use some sort of lattice, shade cloth, screen, etc. as a roof - and, possibly, on one or more sides, but I wouldn't use any kind of solid walls.

Okay, yes, in the desert, the nights can get a little chilly. However, cannabis is nowhere near as cold-intolerant as the average citrus tree. And, if you plant it directly in the ground, the plant will have a huge thermal mass to help with that, anyway.

Is there much wind there on a daily basis? If so, a consistent breeze - along with good access to water - will enable your plant(s) to self-cool through a process called transpiration (think "sweating," for plants). Maybe a drip-ring setup around the plant, to both provide regular water and to keep from wasting it (I would guess that, if you just quickly pour a gallon of water onto the ground there, it's going to drain to where the dwarves and gnomes hang out ;) ).

Yes, it is possible to grow some awesome cannabis in hot, sunny areas! In fact, doing a web-search for:
Code: 
equatorial landrace sativa
...would bring up some of the lauded strains of yesteryear, lol (and give you some great suggestions in regards to strains you might like to grow).

Good luck with your garden!

Emilya said:
Bob you have done it again. This is so untrue it is almost laughable.
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I would say that it wasn't untrue, per se - but it's one of those general statements that requires "...in theory" at the end, and should have been explained at least a bit better. Alone, it presupposes a basic understanding of auxins, how the plant redistributes them, time it takes to produce more, et cetera... And also depends on so many factors that it's not really true OR false. At best, it's probably a conditional statement that merits many qualifiers, lol. For the record, I tend to agree with him - in theory. But even with that having been typed, sometimes I'll still top a plant. Again, it depends on several factors, including even how lazy I'm likely to be in the near future. Strain choice, of course... Although, in theory (lol) it shouldn't affect this thing, in practice, it can. Et cetera, ad infinitium, et ad nauseum . . . .
 
Emilya said:
Bob you have done it again. This is so untrue it is almost laughable. Topping most definitely increases yield... by many fold. It is so dramatic of an increase from a non topped plant that to state such a ridiculous thing is absurd. Bob, you are flat out wrong.
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Prove it - you cant you wont you dont and you know it.

I'm wrong on the flushing thing too right? lol
 
Topping for yields should not be the reason for "topping". Try super cropping and training the plants.

When you see a practice that is only done in the cannabis growing world, that should be a sign to do more investigations and read some SCIENCE and learn something new. Quit going by what someone told you works from anecdotal evidence.

Read the science on how plants grow. There are many horticultural books on how plants grow and what the purpose of the Apical Meristem is and how it relates to plant growth.

Apical Meristem - this is what you are removing when you top a plant. This will need to be re-grown by the plant so that the plant can continue to grow. That takes ~5-10 DAYS. There's no way you're going to make that time up with more yields. Impossible. You want to grow your plant for 6 months have at it that doesn't give you more yields.

Here's the science - I have a lot more to add.....

Apical Meristem
 
I am not going to get into this debate, topping does retard growth for a period, how long depends on he plant. I do top my indoor plants to allow for better light penetration, but this is only one of many ways to train a plant, whether it yields any better than none topped but trained plants, I really don’t know nor do I have the time or space to test the theory.

I believe that you should do what works best in your situation and gives you what you are looking for.

I will point out though @bobrown14 , cannabis is definitely not the only crop that gets topped and pruned, the fruit tree industry had been doing this for centuries and tomatoes are actually a plant that produces better when it is topped.
 
When I top a plant, immediately the lower growth starts rising up to the top. There is no stunting of the plant whatsoever. This works for me every time and I find it silly to be arguing about it. When I produce a plant with an extra month of veg that has achieved 36+ tops, I don't care how many scientific terms you want to throw out to sound important, I know I am getting way more yield than I would from a non topped plant running in the same time period that I have had to supercrop because it got so tall. If what you said was true Bob... no one would ever top their plants and it would be common knowledge that one should not. Instead, there are hundreds of threads just on this forum, devoted to this practice. I also top and train my tomatoes, grape vines and fruit trees in order to produce shorter and wider plants so that they are sturdier and therefore produce more fruit. The same theory holds true with cannabis...only if the plant can hold it up, more will be produced.
 
Y'all seem to be championing ways that work best for you. Which is fine, but it doesn't prove either of your positions on the issue are THE correct one (IMHO, of course).

Emilya said:
When I top a plant, immediately the lower growth starts rising up to the top.
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Pull the top(s) down below other branches and the same thing happens. I'm just saying ;) . And you didn't have to remove mass from the plant to cause it.

Emilya said:
If what you said was true Bob... no one would ever top their plants and it would be common knowledge that one should not. Instead, there are hundreds of threads just on this forum, devoted to this practice.
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Yeah, right on! It might be the third-most popular garden practice subject here. Right behind... defoliating and flushing.

Lol.

The Celt said:
I believe that you should do what works best in your situation and gives you what you are looking for.
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:thumb:. Bear in mind, though, that when comparing methods/practices that we have used/followed enough to become comfortable with and proficient at... the "new to us" method/practice is pretty much going to have an automatic handicap, so to speak. Therefore, this should be allowed for. But, other than that, yes - people are not machines; our foibles, idiosyncratically, habits, physical abilities, mental states, personalities, et cetera are all relevant factors when trying to figure out which is the best way for the individual to do a thing. It also means that the best way of doing that thing may actually be far from the best... for them. One example out of countless possibles: When it comes to plant "training" methods, topping is not at all labor intensive. I mean... <SNIP> done. That, alone, makes it popular in the commercial gardening industry (IOW, food production and such). Also, it does not require the plant to be flexible.

Back when two-speed automatic transmissions were not terribly uncommon, my aunt had one in her... some General Motors car or other, I forget. Her husband had a manual transmission in his. He would have gotten better fuel economy. One day, he'd gone somewhere in her car. She got mad and decided to take off in his. But she couldn't drive a manual-shift vehicle (IDFK why, some people just don't have even basic coordination, I suppose...). So she drove the 38 miles or so from their house to my parents' house in first gear :rofl: . I'm guessing that her husband's car didn't get better fuel economy during that little trip. BEST... Isn't always "best for me."

And forgetting that basic quality(?) of Homo sapiens can turn a simple debate into an argument. . . .
 
Emilya said:
but I end up with two buds, and you only one. Still undefined I'm afraid...
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Well, no. Plant turns into a forest. That's the point, all the secondaries (etc.) take off without my having needed to remove the (original) primary.

It may have been Bob's original point, too, IDK.

I hope we haven't chased away the OP.
 
It would be interesting to run two clones, topping over and over on one, and LST and topping the secondaries. I think that both methods will work well and indeed that is generally how I run clones. From seed however, I prefer to top at node 5 or 3, depending on the shape I am going for. Yield isn't even really a question for me at that point... it is the shape of the plant that results from all my meddling, and as mentioned before, the topping method is so much less time intensive than meticulously placing all those restraints almost each day for a while.
Original poster.., sorry we got carried away with this discussion... have we answered your question?
 
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