Tutorial on Crimping Tops for a bushier plant instead of cutting them

[Owl Mirror]

Yep, 6-10 top colas would be better than 2 right?

Well, I suppose so. Unless those 6-10 cola's equal in yield the same as the two cola's.
I've heard that each time you reduce/split the main cola, that in turn reduces the eventual size of any future cola's. The method you describe does create 6-10 cola's yet, it also serves to increase the footprint inside the growing area. Doesn't that decrease the number of plants which can fit under the lamps? Take four round domed shaped plants, each covering a 2-3 sq ft area.
Now take a plant such as depicted in my pic.
How many more plants could I fit inside that same 8-12 sq ft area?

I can say, your technique would be very useful on parental stock.
It might be even more beneficial to be applied on Male plants, increasing the number of pollen-filled spikes. I'm re-vegging a Nepali male now, maybe I'll apply this on it. It is a very tight internoded plant so, not sure how well I'll be able to squeeze the stems between nodes.

 

[Mist]

I understand what you are saying and when you grow this way you do have to take into consideration how many plants you are doing and what space you have to work with. Strain also plays a big part since you don't want too much stretch in flower or things can get way out of hand. The phenos I kept from this strain were for that very reason, low stretch.
Now on the yield you should have a much higher yield doing this that just having the two at the top. Just keep an eye on the tutorial all the way through and you will be able to gauge it against the same plants done without this method on my last grow that are on my ST#3XBlack Russian grow diary.
I purposly didn't do any training on them the first run so that I could see how they grew naturally and get rid of the phenos that were too stretchy or poor performers. Now I will have something for people to gauge from on this next grow and will be able to show the same pheno with and without training and also the amount of bud will be obvious in the pics too.

 

[Owl Mirror]

I understand what you are saying and when you grow this way you do have to take into consideration how many plants you are doing and what space you have to work with. Strain also plays a big part since you don't want too much stretch in flower or things can get way out of hand. The phenos I kept from this strain were for that very reason, low stretch.
Now on the yield you should have a much higher yield doing this that just having the two at the top. Just keep an eye on the tutorial all the way through and you will be able to gauge it against the same plants done without this method on my last grow that are on my ST#3XBlack Russian grow diary.
I purposly didn't do any training on them the first run so that I could see how they grew naturally and get rid of the phenos that were too stretchy or poor performers. Now I will have something for people to gauge from on this next grow and will be able to show the same pheno with and without training and also the amount of bud will be obvious in the pics too.

I will definitely watch and learn ;>}
Do you keep males? I'm curious how this effects their growth and production.
I'm hoping to keep a stable of vegging males and this could be helpful with that.

 

[Mist]

I don't keep any males right now. There just isn't enough space for that with my current setup. I am going to be adding a tent for clones and vegging and have thought about adding one just for a couple males. But that is low on the list right now. I do have one project that may require it which is a DAB and Maple Leaf Indica cross. But first I have to get a true female out of the DAB seeds I have. They are real bad for hermies.

 

[Owl Mirror]

I don't keep any males right now. There just isn't enough space for that with my current setup. I am going to be adding a tent for clones and vegging and have thought about adding one just for a couple males. But that is low on the list right now. I do have one project that may require it which is a DAB and Maple Leaf Indica cross. But first I have to get a true female out of the DAB seeds I have. They are real bad for hermies.

Yeah, I think I got lucky in finding this one Nepali male right from the start.
I took a couple of clones but, I would like to be certain of keeping this plant going so, I decided to reveg it. I can see how your method might produce many more clones in the future.
I will only be keeping a few males, one each of the Nepali, Ethiopian, Mazar and perhaps one more if I find something too good to pass up.

 

[Mist]

I was going through all the plants today and crimping all the tops and limbs that had reached the top of the canopy and saw one that I thought was perfect for doing a series of pics showing what I am doing to the plants.

I did every limb top on the ones that had reached the same level as the main stem top. Some were actually higher than the man top.


Done!


Then I went through and did all the other plants. Took about 30 minutes and you can see in this pic that they are getting really bushy. If you look you can see all the places that I criped the limbs on all the other plants.

 

[Owl Mirror]

Hi Mist, thanks for the great tutorial. I enjoyed your pictorial but, found it a bit hard to follow due to having to open separate windows for each picture. I hope you won't mind but, I went ahead and made them in to a: Tutorial on Crimping Tops for a bushier plant Slideshow.

If you wish it to be taken down and not available, I shall remove it immediately.
Otherwise, enjoy

 

[Mist]

No problem, I like it. I would be able to get better pictures if I had someone else taking them too. It is kind of hard to get the right angle and hold the camera steady with one hand while actually doing the work with the other hand.
Hmmmm, I may try to get some better pics the next time I run through them and maybe you would make another slide show that would look better. I should have done it with the lights off anyhow. It doesn't look as clear with the HPS light on.

Thanks again.

 

[Nemesi5]

thanks for the tutorial mist. wish i would have read it sooner lol. next run i will use your info
from the start lol

 

[pipi taco]

hi all superb tut . always nice to see how other people do this method .just to share my expeirence tipping the top to two main branches veg for two weeks yeild i had avg 40g per plant, then in the same set up same strain same nut method .superd them for 3.5 weeks, yeild went up to a avg 155g per plant with the biggest one topping 186g.iv done pretty much the same as this for the last couple of years .now im trying 30 days veg just to c heres a couple of pics
keep up the good work always keen to improve on this method

 

[pipi taco]

for some reason i cant see the pics ill try find out why 1st time iv writin on a forum

 

[pipi taco]

 

[Mist]

Those are some serious bushes. It will be interesting to see how wild they get in flower. I hope you have a 10ft ceiling in that room, LOL!

 

[Mist]

I did some pics with the lights off and using the flash so that people could see better how many branches there are at the top of the canopy of the plants. These pics will open up really big when you click on them again after they open in the new window. You can even see on many where the stems were crimped and repaired themselves. These plants will be put into flower in 7-10 more days. I just did all the tops again yesterday and most have already repaired themselves and I will be letting them reach for the sky this last week and then they will be in flower and there is now more training after that for me. It is going to be one crowded canopy on this grow for sure. There will have to be some netting to keep these girls all supported, LOL!
The results of the training will become way more evident when the plants start to stretch.











Here is an overall shot>

 

[pipi taco]

nice pics ,shes lookin like its going to b a full house in there .just gona pick your brains for a bit here mate if its ok,is this the last time you do any training until the end ,and whats your total number of vegie days ,just curious iv been using the same strain and nute regeime for some time now diong basicly the same method your doing here,now what iv been playing with is the time vegieing to give max yeild ,iv grown this strain straight up tipped for two weeks and yeilded rouhgly 40g per plant,then i tried twisting supercropping what eva you want to call it for 2.5 weeks with roughly with just a bit more ,wasnt what id call worth it . then done 3.5 weeks and huge difference 155g per avg ,now working on 30 days and looking promising cant tell which one is the main head any more ,just tryin to work out what is the ideal time vegeing ,its a huge jump from 2.5 to 3.5 weeks ,have you played with this at all or what do you recomend or thoughts cheers

 

[Mist]

Well funny you should mention this. I just posted about what you are asking last night on my grow diary. On my last grow with this strain I was just trying to sort out which pheno's I wanted to keep and put them into flower very early with no training. Some of the plants were just 8" tall and had very little limb growth at all. On this round it is a whole different ball game with almost twice the number of plants, longer vegg time and of course the training. So when I put these into flower on friday it will be 4 weeks of vegging.
But in the end it all comes down to what you have space for. I have done one mother plant that had been used for 7 grows and was HUGE in the same space that I was doing 6 of her daughters.
On the up side, if you let a plant mature for longer it will produce way more bud. Training or not. If you can let them vegg until the stems start to get woody and hard you will see a really big difference. But then again it comes down to space. This is where outdoor growing kicks the shit out of indoor. The plants get to vegg for 4-6 months, depending on what zone your in, and have no limitations on growth. You should see what an outdoor plant looks like after being trained like I am doing here for several months. They become monsters!
So with a strain that you are familiar with and know what to expect I would say push the envelope a bit and see what happens.

 

[Mist]

Well they are on 12/12 now so the training is all over. They are some really thick little girls and I am confident that I will see a large increase in yield over the last showing of this pheno.

Total vegg time was 4 weeks. That isn't counting the extra time they had to sit in the cloner though.

You can see all the growth that is at the top of the canopy in this pic since the new growth tips are lighter green and stand out.






This shot shows them from the side and you can see the many limbs that reached to top and how full the plants are.







I will post some more shots as flowering progresses to show how much bud is up at the top of the canopy.

 

[LadyLargely]

Fuck yes! Don't cut the plants, crimp them!

This is the basis for my advanced ScrOG technique:



Tops everywhere and I never cut any of these plants at all!

I don't care what anyone says, even super-brutal supercropping like I do doesn't slow the plants' growth as much as cutting them. Once they've endured a couple early treatments the toughened plants will take incredible amounts of abuse in their stride!

 

[Haps]

I wanted to come back to this thread and say this technique is working very well for me here. I just did the flip this morning, and I will keep crimping for at least another week. After several crimps, all of my girls are showing good results, all will yield more than they would have with any other training I would have done. Thanks Mist, great technique!
H

 

[pipi taco]

I wanted to come back to this thread and say this technique is working very well for me here. I just did the flip this morning, and I will keep crimping for at least another week. After several crimps, all of my girls are showing good results, all will yield more than they would have with any other training I would have done. Thanks Mist, great technique!
H

I wanted to come back to this thread and say this technique is working very well for me here. I just did the flip this morning, and I will keep crimping for at least another week. After several crimps, all of my girls are showing good results, all will yield more than they would have with any other training I would have done. Thanks Mist, great technique!
H

hows it hangin haps . make sure you hammer the crap out of any lower branches and lats under the light canopy they dont mount anything and decrease chances of budrot later in the game and a lot less work at the end ,imo iv found that if i stop crimpimg at the turn and let the main branches stretch straight up i got heaps of large flowers ,those stems of the main ones get bigger .and if i want to open up the plant to let more light in or genrally make it wider to fill canopy i drill hoes in the pot and tie down the ones i want down, it still lets them stretch for the bigger ones and puts most if the growth in strengthining the main branches,and if i crimp for another week or two not letting them strecth but promoting the smaller lats to get bigger i get a couple of large flowers and heaps of medium size flwers and for my strain less yeild.mayb try and test that one for your self id b interested to no if it works diferently for other strains but for afgani's ak47's and mac daddy id stop crimping now .i think the key is to aim for a dense canopy full of big main colas apossed to a larger canopy full of mostly medium sized ones just my 2 cent worth of blabbering ill try and get a pic on here and show you what it looks like