Need advice! To top or not to top?

Hello growers. First time poster here. I've been an on and off again grower for twelve years mostly indoors with a few successful outdoor adventures. I'm attempting an outdoor grow in the deserts of Southern California. I have two strains that I'm not sure whether to top this late in the season or not?

From my understanding you need at least one month's time from topping for all the hormones to be redirected to the new shoots before flowering commences, which I estimate to be around the end of July. So as of this posting I would need to do this now or pass. I want to top them, but I'm not sure if there is enough time in the vegetative cycle to make it worthwhile. The bottomline is will topping (one or both) of the strains now produce a bigger yeild as opposed to not topping it?

This picture is a sample of what I'm dealing with. The bottom two on the left is Acapulco Gold from Barney's Farms. The two on the right is AK-48 from Nirvana. The bush in the back is from an Orange Krush indoor clone that I topped on the 14th of May.

All input would be appreciated. Thanks

if you can please give me some help i am a first time grower and want to know just how you do it

they look good enough to top and I usually wait until the branches really come back , 4-6 weeks, and then I out it in 12/12
and you dont get two great colas, you get two decent colas, where if you didnt top and had one cola, it would be a donkey cock.
I do it because I can and like the look of 2-4 colas on one plant

try looking up low stress training before you decide to top i also am first time grower this year I wish I knew about low stress training before I topped mine

imacoltsfan23 said:

try looking up low stress training before you decide to top i also am first time grower this year I wish I knew about low stress training before I topped mine

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I did a search and found this quite interesting. I'm going to look into it more. Looks promising. Thanks.

agreed, i have many many many tops on my plants and I never topped them...LST works great!!!!

your welcome check mine out https://www.rollitup.org/outdoor-growing/341168-when-will-they-show-there.html

hey man also look up pinching .

imacoltsfan23 said:

hey man also look up pinching .

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Its calld supercropping man.

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Scrumscab i would have have too say only top like 1 and LST another one. Then if your feelin lucky try to supercropping, i personally have nvr done LST or supercropping. But i got a picture of my plant that i had toppd and well turnd out to be male. but i think you wouldnt mined seeing a toppd plant so you can compare.
Goodluck, plants looking very healthy.

i just topped mine a week ago and it is doing great, been in the ground since day one, i honestly think it is way too late for lst, that u need to do when it is only a few inches tall otherwise if u were to do it now you would most likely snap your main stem, and we all know that no bueno. here are som pics of mine, the first 3 pics are from about 5 minutes ago, showing the plant in its whole then showing where i topped it, keep in mind it has only been about 5 days, the other 4 pics are from one full week ago and 10 inches shorter than it is this morning. i persoaly liked uncle bens topping techniques in the advanced growers section of riu.

Dbo.
Ive seen plants LST like right before the 12/12 light switch. And pinching the stem is supercroppin. basically breaks the stem but not killin the plant.
But he could LST still Both the Gold and The AK's. Just saying man. I would top 2 plants [1 of each strain] and LST 2 plants. Just so you can see the difference in yeilds. They both increase your harvest in one way or another.

I'm definitely going to go with LST on all the plants, except for two that I will top to see how it goes. Where I'm at in the Mojave desert we had a cold, windy May that robbed me of some precious growing potential which maybe would have allowed me to top in the begining of June. I notice that there is a little lag/transition time of about four to six days after topping before it's back to full productive vegging. I want to take advantage of these last 40 something days of vegetative growth without interruption (as small as it may be). LST appears to accomodate that. I'm going to get some seven gallon pots as I want to use string to anchor around the rim of the pot. I guess they are going to go in their flowering pot earlier than I anticipated.