FIMming Failed on Auto, Should I Top Them?

[satisinatra]

Hello all,

I have 6 Jack Herrer Auto plants.

I had 2 of them good tall and topped one, 5 out of 6 were fimmed.

This is my 3rd time topping, second auto grow and first HST attempt on auto plants.

Topped one came out really good, a bit too stretchy but still strong and 2 main colas growing out. On other 5 plants fimmed, they are sill growing piny with one main cola.

I'm pretty sure I failed my first attempt of FIMming and did not cut enough of the growth to split the cola.

Did the FIMming on 5th node of seedling growth, near the end of second week from sprout. Now I have main cola growth over 6th node of fan leaves.

I also transitioned to HPS grow lights first time for those 6 girls from T5's and LED's so I had hard times balancing the ambiance in the grow room, which is a well isolated small bathroom with 300 m3/m in and ex fans, 600w mh grow light installed 45-50 cm over plants, no carbon filter installed yet. I'm reading between 32-35k lumens on side plants and around 48k on mid ones, which I'm rotating the 3 smallest plants.

As said, 3 plants seem to grow bushy and short. Those looked weak 3 days ago so I started putting them under highest light output but I think it's time to get them to the sides since they're strong enough but not tall enough now.

I have just completed 3 weeks from sprout on those. I'm not sure if I should go for topping on those 5 at this point or stick to LST and hope for the best yield.

What do you guys think? I'll appreciate any opinion.

EDIT:

I have been experimenting on those 6 girls past 2 weeks since I'm just getting along with HST and autos.

Anyway I was too impatient to wait loınger and topped 4 out of those 5 which fimming failed, and fimmed the last one just for comparison.

4 newly topped plants barely noticed the stress and kept growing overnight!

However the fimmed girl struggled for another week and just ended up with 3 strange and slow growing main colas.

I even topped one of the topped plants for the second time and she is thriving!

I'm pretty sure this is also something to do with how tough the strain is. I think I'm also doing good with lights and overall environment. CO2 bag, good air circulation, controlled light penetration and all the efford is working out and I'm even struggling with how big the plants became lately! I'm totally in need of a good defoliatioın but I'll give it another week or two since it has only been a week they have been into blooming.

cant post pictures rn, sorry.

What I'd recommend at the end:

As long as you are confident with toughness of your young plants (I'd call 4 well developed nodes at the end of 2nd week)

You're good to top over that 4th set.

Watch out for the growth for following 10 days and if you realise no to little struggle due to stress after topping you might even go for a 2nd topping before the plants start blooming. That's what I did with the last one just after the preflowers developed.

What I made wrong with this crop is the pot sizes. 10 gal pots is not a good idea for 600w hps grow light the strain came out to be too bushy to manage easily and the pot size made the plants even bigger than managable - god know what the hell ill do after the early bloom stretch!

I have added a custom made LED pannel on top of last 2 plants and slided the HPS light a bit further over the other end. I should have gone for scrogging or so but this is my first time dealing with that huge of a crop so...

[DingusKhan]

Since you have more than one, and growing is more art than science, this is a wonderful learning opportunity. You could do one each. Top one and manifold (or quadline) the other.

Have you read the supercropping tutorial? Basically, you bend down the top so that its not the tallest part of the plant, and the rest of the branches will grow out into a huge bush.

You could photograph the two plants on a frequent basis and write up your findings in a grow journal so we all see how they turned out.

That's how new grow knowledge is created. Like on the recent thread on quadlining, where someone shared a cool picture of a really symmetrical grow, and someone else said it looked like McCubed's style.

That's why the answer is it that it doesn't matter. If you don't fuck it up and kill your plants, you'll grow lots of nice pot either way. Even if you grow a big ol' donkey dick christmas tree of one single cola. I think everyone should do that at least once.

Even though I haven't done it yet, I haven't been able to not 'DO' something to my plant.

[oldjarhead100]

Fiming=Fuck I missed and came about when someone was trying to top but only cut a portion of top off thus it grew 3 mains instead of two, strange but true lol

[SoOrbudgal]

I've only fimmed photo plants. Makes them really bushy on top. Autos I just top do LST tie their arms down as it grows. This is down on mine all within a month with auto, mine go into flower by 4wks.

[oldjarhead100]

thats one of the reasons I dont like autos they go into bloom so early my contest plant is one strain is dark devil ,unbelievable taste,and a great high just goes into bloom at 21 days ,so they never get that big

[SoOrbudgal]

That's me too seems like I gotta get better with these.

[satisinatra]

thanks all for your comments. This matter came out to be an experiment rather than a struggle at the end so I'm putting the results to the OP. all went way better than expected...

[dm7211961@att.net]

What is the best way to train an auto. Ive always heard not to prune but can i use LST. Im currently growing one blue mystic auto from nirvana needs. Its huge touching bottom of lights in a 7' grow tent. I cant raise lights anymore but i i ve tied down the main colas. In lst fashion at around 8 weeks now from seed and i just started my nute flush i add 2.5 ml per gal of magic cal and 40ml of sugar daddy per galloñext week nill just be adding the sugar daddy only.then 3 days of just ph'd water.
right now there are a ton of buds but its starting to look like alot of popcorn buds and no huge ones developing. This is my first auto grow and ive iearned alot but still not sure if ill stick with autos or go back to just fems from now on at least with them i know what to expect

[DingusKhan]

If you can remove the ratchet hanger strings, and hung the light directly from the cross bar of your tent, that will buy you a few inches. Wait til your light is off. And cool.

There are many ways to train an auto, including topping, and either mainlining or quadlining. Check out the Time to Show Your Grow thread, lots of people are posting pics of short, fat bushes of monster colas. Look up a grower that impresses you and shares their methods. Like some of McCubed journals, he has like 8 or 9 grow journals showing how he did it.

You will find that LOTS of GWErs top and prune their auto plants.

You have to do it while they are coming up in veg while your plant is little. And if you prune selectively also early in veg and flower, and strategically REMOVE bud sites, you get fewer, bigger bud instead of so much larf.

[Eliot Pryor]

What is the best way to train an auto.

They are very different from one another let alone photo's. I've grown 3 kinds and one of them was 26 inches tall another one was more than 48. I think if you want to grow auto's you better find one you like and learn to train it. Personally I going with photo's inside and try an auto outside maybe.....maybe not. After they got buds on them I'd be sleeping outside.