Topping?

What is topping a plant and what is its use. Also how and when would you do so.

Topping the plant means that you remove the main shoot located on the central stem. By doing so you will encourage the plant to grow into a bush with a lot of shoots, instead of one big main shoot that you get on the untopped “Christmas tree”.

The reason why the plant behaves this way is because the centre of growth control is located in the apical meristem or main shoot. The main shoot sends suppressive hormones down to the lower branches which stops them from growing. This is called apical dominance, a mechanism that favors the energy efficient, triangular shape of plants in the wild. By removing the main shoot, the lower branches become free to grow at full rate in order to take its place.

mikey0 said:

What is topping a plant and what is its use. Also how and when would you do so.

Click to expand...

Look into LST too. Seems to be a bit quicker.

so you cut off the top layer of leaves just underneath the leaves and it turns into more leaf clusters?

mikey0 said:

so you cut off the top layer of leaves just underneath the leaves and it turns into more leaf clusters?

Click to expand...

you cut the main shoot and it creates 2 or more main colas

wait i think i get it now. Normally it has only one top and the other two smallr tops that arent going to grow but by cutting out the middle one the two others grow instead of just one?

yeah pretty much..go read through the link i posted.^

Just say no to TOPPING!

lol it didnt look like a link on my computer till i moused over it lol

yeah ive used that technique and it works out really well, if youre gonna top, do it uncle bens style.