I went Neanderthal on the clones today. I snipped over 50 sprouts, none bigger than a quarter.
The thing I found last grow was that every sprout is covered with pistillate calyxes. At some point, every damn one of those will put out a sprout if left alone.
About 2/3 of them pop immediately, and the shoots start growing. The rest sprout throughout the grow. I ended up having to attempt this on the last grow when they were a few weeks older. I kept waiting for the sprouts go get long enough so I could see a stem to snip, and it never happened.
On this pic it's clear what happens at the nodes. you get one main sprout per flower site, topping helps, so topping the flower off of lower flower sites would probably speed them up, but they are hard to get to in week 3.
One limb per flower, the rest is junk coming off that limb.
So this time, I even sacrificed a few lower limbs because it was so crowded at the base just to make sure the trunk was clean and I could see what was going on in there. I'll let this grow out for a week or so, then cull the non-hackers.