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Topping plants
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 6:14 am
by fdashty
I was a watching a video by Chef Derek Butt and he's explaining that the moment you top your plant, the tap root stops growing and you'll fail to develop a strong root ball resulting in smaller yields. I'm worried now, I just topped my plants at around 8-10 inches (the 5 leaf set). Did I just lose any chance of developing a massive root ball?
Re: Topping plants
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 10:13 am
by majorana
fdashty wrote: ↑Mon Mar 26, 2018 6:14 am
I was a watching a video by Chef Derek Butt and he's explaining that the moment you top your plant, the tap root stops growing and you'll fail to develop a strong root ball resulting in smaller yields. I'm worried now, I just topped my plants at around 8-10 inches (the 5 leaf set). Did I just lose any chance of developing a massive root ball?
No.
I don't actually know what happens to the taproot during the life cycle of the plant, or what effect topping has on it. But once the plant gave its 5 set of leaves the root system is definitely robust enough to grow as big as the pot its growing in, regardless of any issue (if there is one) with the initial taproot.
Re: Topping plants
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:17 pm
by Grower
I transplanted after I did top.
At harvest root ball was definitely bigger than it was.
Re: Topping plants
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 4:51 pm
by Maxxor
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Re: Topping plants
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 8:25 pm
by bvolt
Topping your plant, during early development - even after the 5th or 6th node is going to slow down root development and biomass development - until it recovers.
In a day or three, it’ll continue growing above and below the surface.
Re: Topping plants
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 10:09 pm
by Grower
Maxxor wrote: ↑Mon Mar 26, 2018 4:51 pm
I still can't see your grow log in this section! Man I wanna see it
Would be interesting to see something about root development.
Btw any stress does slow down the plant, transplant, top, ph ...
Is topping supposed to slow down root development or does it stop it?
Re: Topping plants
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2018 11:02 pm
by Maxxor
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Re: Topping plants
Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:22 am
by majorana
Maxxor wrote: ↑Mon Mar 26, 2018 11:02 pm
Growing up as a cautious child of Prohibition, it took me 12 months of lurking online before/after 9/11 to learn how to, and to develop the guts to grow pot in a box.
I'm curious, since stealth seems to be a top priority for you, how do you handle smell? In another post here I've mentioned that for me the biggest problem isn't size, but the noise of an extraction fan needed for the carbon scrubber. I wonder how that works with such a small size.
Re: Topping plants
Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 3:33 pm
by Maxxor
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Re: Topping plants
Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:51 pm
by bvolt
Maxxor wrote: ↑Tue Mar 27, 2018 3:33 pm
In my flowering cabinet, I use an exhaust scrubber made from an 8" x 8" x 8" plywood 'plenum' box containing a pair of 120mm Noctua computer fans stacked together vertically, with a 2" deep tray full of activated charcoal resting on top of it. (The tray's bottom is made from window screen with a piece of furnace filter cloth on it, to keep the charcoal dust out of the fans.)
The scrubber is attached to the upper wall inside my growbox via a short piece of 4" ABS pipe and 4" pipe coupling, and is detachable for maintenance. It takes up much less room that the smallest 'can' type of scrubber and extractor fan combo, and the only sound it makes is the white noise of air being exhausted.
It all works because I have an abundance of passive air intake, via a pair of 8" square, louvered darkroom vents @ the lower end of my cabinet.
I used to have a larger cabinet, and made a similar scrubber using an extremely quiet 80 cfm Panasonic bathroom vent fan. This is where I where I got the idea from :
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=45196
(Apologies to the original poster for hijacking your thread! I really should start my own...
)
For the most part, this place is a free for all (sorry LEDG). But the topic of your post probably does deserve its own thread. I've got one of those short 2 x 2's currently with no filter on the fan... how much air do those 120mm fans move? Are they PWM (4-wire)?