Andthen

Thanks to all.

g13, How would you decide based on those factors?

CRAZYTRAIN

Keep tying her down Bro until the space is about 75% filled, then flower them and hopefully you'll have a perfectly filled canopy with no light hitting the floor. LST yeilds more. I'd show you the photos but I don't feel like digging them up right now

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g13laze

if you have "just enough" lighting for your plants, I wouldn't mess with them. If you have more than plenty of lumens shining down on your grow space, I would do some LST/Topping
if you're growing in anything less than a 1gallon container(soil), I wouldn't mess with them, but that's just my humble opinion. I leave myself open to be corrected
I don't think that LST/Topping ALWAYS equals larger yield, but most likely it will. However, whether it's the type of bud-size/bag appeal quality your looking for, LST/Topping might detriment that unless you have the root-mass/enough lighting to support bigger fatter buds. space availablity is important too

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UpNorth

Not to mention height.

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Something clever...

Freakshow68

well, it depends on the strain and the size of the root mass. I have LST'd and/or topped plants and gotten a lower yield than one i left alone. Now plants i LST'd and/or FIM'd and transplanted into a larger pot did much better. people often overlook the root mass.

bigger rootball = more buds as long as you can throw a decent amount of light at the plant

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eleaf

You waited far too long to start training your plants. Ideally, you will want to start training ASAP during the veg stage so that you plant trains itself towards the light. There is a difference between training and simply bending.

speedracer-x

The snap you heard means you went too far for what you were trying to accomplish. Since it was the main stem that you snapped, the plant had to heal the main stem and while the main stem was focusing on healing, the side branches were still growing. I had this happen to a plant I was LST'ing a long time ago, it was hanging by a thread. I propped and splinted the damage and by flower time, the plant was 2-3 times bigger than the others and the knot it grew to heal the break was twice as wide as the actual stem it repaired.

grass_hopper

I would wager that the plant biomass between two plants grown under identical conditions, with one being trained down or scrogged and one being allowed to do what God designed it to do would be the same, however some of that biomass would be diverted to flowers in the trained plant where in the untrained plant it would be in stem and leaves to get that main cola up as high as possible.

Think like a plant - the goal is to reproduce, so the best way to do that is to get the main cola up as high above the canopy as possible so it has the best chance to catch any male pollen floating around. By training it down I will wager you will convert a bunch of that energy to flowers that would have otherwise gone to stems and leaves, although your one big main cola will be smaller and you'll have a bunch of nugs as compared to a big fattie.

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Ancient History:
Blueberry/Mazar (started in hydro, moved outdoors)...Skunk#1/Blueberry in Soil
Botanicare 42 Site Cloner - a Review...Grass_Hopper's Butane Honey Oil (BHO) Thread

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Grow Guide...Cecil_B's CO2 Enrichment Guide...Grower's Dictionary...Getting Females From Standard Seeds

CRAZYTRAIN

Also... when you guys LST your plants, I think it's best to do it when they are young. Here's a photo of a plant that I LST'd the day I placed the clone in the flood tray.... which also happens to be the day I took this photo. Can you see how the branches are already turning up to the light? If you wait until the plant is a foot tall and then bend it over you won't get the even canopy bush that you will get if you do it when the plant is smaller.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Sso

i lst because of height restrictions, i have no idea whether id yield more othervise, i cant test it.

but, lst should be started as soon as you can, 3-4rth node. the sooner the better.

start late and you will always lose 1 or more budsites, resulting in a less of a bush.

start too late and you will just have a plant on its side, one side getting better light yes, but half not getting any light, with the big cola being far larger than the rest.

begin early and you will have equal height, equal size buds, forming a massive bush, size and number of buds, depending on vegtime and you.

its a bit of a work, you dont just tie down and forget it.

you tie town, wait, tie down some more, wait, tie down some more. ALL the way through the veg.

in flower you continue till the stretch has stopped, then you can stop and little while later you untie them *i dont always*

if you dont do that, you are not doing lst, you are just bending your plant.