Well if your plants are big, like two ish or longer month veg the branches can get heavy enough to break without any buds on them at all. The biggest factor is how wet the plant is usually. Dry plants break much more easily than wet ones. every time ive come out to an 80 dollar branch laying on the ground its been when the plants are dry. The other thing you can do is add silica. Read into it and youll see the possible benifits. Im no plant biopsyer (made THAT word up
) but i know what the literature says about silica. I think it works often in one application. But i never did side bys and biopsied the plant after