Topping and Trellising
Topping and Trellis Techniques
Topping:
We want to top our plants no sooner than they are able to grow to the height of about 10”. If we top our plants any sooner this will cause them to have a genetic tendency to runt out on us and be small plants for their entire life cycle. For this reason and for optimal results, do not top before your plant(s) have reached the vertical height of roughly 10”.
After about 10” we want to then take our pair of sterilized scissors or a scalpel, pruning shears, etc. and run the blade down the top of the plant’s stem until we reach the first intersection or node downward. Just above this junction, we want to clip. (Please see picture). The top circle (pictured) is where we want to snip our top off. If this is 4” or longer it is viable for cloning, if wanted.
Trellis Techniques:
Net trellising, while simply string tied into a grid pattern with knots, is extremely helpful to increasing yield. How we do this is by maximizing our plant canopy to be spread as much as possible. If we are to (bird’s eye view) be looking down at the plant canopy From the perspective of the light) we want the grid aka trellising to be as lush and dense as possible with all squares filled in with plant flowering sites. As the plants are generally speaking, ready for flowering at ⅓ of the usable grow space, we can anticipate them growing very rapidly when we transition them from the vegative state to flowering. They almost “time and a half” on us in about a week and a half to two weeks, as this period is often referred to as “flip” or “stretch”.
Knowing that the plants are going to grow quite rapidly, we want to anticipate this and put up our first layer of net trellising about 6-8” above the plant canopy when converting to flowering. When the plants then hit their aforementioned stride, please weave the tops of the plants into the trellising, filling all available grid squares thus maximizing the yield potential for your plants and allowing for light to penetrate into the lower levels of the plant as well.
If you would like, you can add an additional layer of netting, to support the plants above the first layer at about 10”-12”. This will keep the plants, when they have a mass of bud weight on them, from falling over. The second layer of netting is more for support of the plant itself once it is close to finishing flowering and is not as crucial as the first layer which is more for driving up our yield.
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