Trying to understand why removing would be faster... Help please?
So I'm not stating this as fact, just my feelings off the limited different things I've tried.
When you top, or do any other method to induce branching, you are stressing out the plant and taking away it's hormone production site. Until the plant generates new sites growth pauses.
So I guess we are discussing how to achieve the desired result, branching, with the least amount of induced stress and the least amount of a pause in growth.
By removing part of a leaf (apical meristem young or subtending leaf) I'm leaving most of that hormone producing area intact. If I only remove material from the subtending leaf the young leaf doesn't seem to slow at all. Once branching has been induced the plant will outgrow the trimmed leaves and they'll end up being undergrowth anyways.
LST results in a similar thing but does so by bending the stem, which I assume reduces circulation to the apical material. Having been choked out in jujitsu from time to time, I have to think thats going to have more of an impact, I've also snapped stems a couple times so it's not my go to. ME GARDEN, SMASH. lol. I do like it during stretch to slow down that one branch that wants to tower over the rest every time.