Hi there,
Welcome to RIU. Basically ever time 2 new shoots come out of the stem it is a node. Take a look at this. Can't tell specifically from your pics but this should help explain it so you can count them. It looks like you have about 4 or 5 nodes but as I say, a bit hard to tell from pic. What are you trying to accomplish by counting the nodes?
Thank you
Agreed! Especially if you just got one lil girl, I know it’s hard to leave her alone ( you just love her so much) but I recommend getting familiar with there natural growth rates/patterns, feeding, proper hydration etc. As he said at most scrog or lst, and then experiment. Also helps to identify if that particular strain reacts well to certain training methods (sometimes breeders will let ya know)
Yes I was planning to top. Like honestly I wasn’t until I was told I should be. Because I was going to just do the LST and SCROG because I had read that you too the plants if you want popcorn buds and not to if you want larger buds. But someone else now has told me to top the plant simply to get a higher yield. I was given this advice because my outdoor plant from this summer only grew around 25 grams.
I actually have 2 the other one is significantly smaller because it sprouted 10 days after this one. And I don’t even know if they are girls yet. I used reg seeds
Ahh I tried to get decent photos. But it’s so short the leaves are too close together to get a clear photo of all of them. I was going to top the plant if it had enough nodes to, this is my first indoor grow and my first grow to kind of actually do anything to the plant. I grew over the summer outdoor. But I didn’t do much of anything to the plant, just let it grow basically. I only got about 25 grams off of it. But I was told had I of topped it, that it could have had way more.
I figured. The fact is you don't need to top unless you want to, yes it will increase yield if done correctly but it is not necessary. As an example take a look at this plant, it was 1 plant in a 5x5 tent, not training at all. It was supposed to be an Auto but did not start to flower so it ended up vegging for 3 months. I am pretty sure this plant did not need topping. As for popcorn bud, that is really about buds lower down that don't get light so they are under developed. Some chop the tops when ready and let the lower buds keep growing. Some just cut off the lower growth to avoid it all together. I agree with other posters about just growing it out healthy to start with and not doing any high stress training like topping until you got it dialed in. A healthy plant can yield quite a bit with no training.
IMO only top when your new to growing is l if you are going to have less then 6 feet of top grow room... Once your comfortable in growing you can top and clone the top so you have 2 or more plants to work with...
All the more reason imo to not go through too much trouble and high stress training to start with. Just my opinion. Look all around the forum here, there is a wealth of information and a lot of it is conflicting, there are a lot of differing opinions. One thing I can tell you for sure is topping doesn't help with yield near as much as proper light, nutrients, temperature, humidity etc. Which is why I like dialing all of these in and making the plants look healthy as possible from start to finish before experimenting too much personally. I grow a lot of plants other than MJ in my garden and greenhouse and to me the biggest difference has been the ease of overwatering indoors in soil as opposed to outdoors (where the water has unlimited places to go). With LST, and there are some great guides here on it, you can start now and increase the numbers of tops your plant will have just like topping without going through the high stress and extra recovery times.