bostonblazer

Is pinching the process of splitting the top of the plant to create 2 main colas? If so does anyone have any directions or pics of doing this?

Nottheman

Well hello bostonblazer, nice to see you. . .welcome to the HC.com boards!

Yu've got the right concept of pinching, but you are a little bit off on what it produces. Two main colas. . .not exactly, but not impossible.

Where you do the pinching and at what stage of growth you do it in will greatly determine what you end up with. Most gardeners pinch once the plant is well established and vigorous (early to mid vegetative growth), doiing so earlier may stunt the plants growth, and possibly even resign it to a life of lost potential. Any pinching done later in the plant's growth cycle may in fact reduce yields due to the removal of flowing points that will not be regenerated.

If you were interested in SoG you may indeed be doing a fair amount of pinching. The key to being successful is to know what exactly you want your plants to do, and then making them do it by removing some growing points and branches, and also by using a little LST (Low stress training).

I don't have any pics, but you can easily imagine the process by looking at any tree, or branch. YOu can easily see that by cutting the plant at a certain point, will give rise to two or more, smaller plants.

hope this helps. . .

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Last Successful Grow: Durban and Medicine Man '05

'07 Grow: Early Pearl

Beener

Pinching is done by removing the growing tip with a pair of tweezers. When the new growing tip is pinched off, the resulting growth branches out into two tips.

Topping on the otherhand, is when you cut a portion of stem. They can accomplish the same thing. Topping is usually done to shape the plant so that all the growth tips are at the approximate same height.

There can be a number of reasons for pinching or topping. I recently pinched all the tops on some clones waiting to go into flower. I needed them to prduce more roots before transferring them to flower, but the were starting to grow too tall while I was waiting. Pinching the tops at this point stopped the vertical growth, and allowed the roots to develop without the plant growing past its max size.

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Beener