I have two main-lined plants outdoors. I'm at 8 colas now, and probably about a month away from flower starting. I've pruned to roughly 1 node beyond the last topping, but this is where I'm stumped.
How long do I keep cutting the secondary (suckers?) branches as these main stems keep growing?
Can't flip to flower outdoors, so I'll let main stems keep growing - but if I cut off the secondary shoots as the main stems keep getting taller and making more nodes, will I reduce how big the colas get? Large finished colas seem to encompass many nodes. I'm just not sure where the colas begin, and the secondary branches end (if that makes sense).
In the my plant image below, you can see my last topping, and how the two stems have grown out. I've pruned to the first node beyond last topping, but now have secondary shoots coming out as the main stems get taller. The drawing kind of represents this.
Here are some pictures of the original Nugbucket's photos. It looks like his main colas are made up of multiple nodes, yet I don't see any secondary branches in his colas (but there are fan leaves). Guessing that this was because he had flipped to flower, and those nodes appeared after that, but wasn't sure.
I’m order to address my immediate problem, I just decided to top and the plants once more (16 cola prune) to keep them tamed. Trained all heads to create an even height and spacing as well - Photo below.
But if anyone finds this and would like to have a discussion about how buds set in to nodes, and when plants stop branching, I’d love to chat about it!
You're getting zero response because most people don't believe in cutting suckers.. Why don't they? Because they cut their high nitrogen plants during extreme wet cycles and the unhealing wounds contracted a growth inhibiting pectobacterium.
There isn't a definitive answer. Lots of things go into it. A lot of strains react differently to it. It's more of a seat time question on specific genetics vs what should I do. Once you grow something a couple of times you usually get a feel on the prune/topping/ training and pinching. Once you do it long enough with enough plants you can spot the different ways they grow and can have a good idea on how they will react.
Best thing to do is have 2 of the same plants. Do one and not the other and see what works best for you. The only real way to get a definitive answer on that is if thats a clone and someone has run it outside in your area.
Thought I'd follow up with some photos and notes of how that plant turned out. Well... it continued to grow VIGOROUSLY until about the 4th week of Flower (around Sept 1st), so I had to do several prunings. In the end, I did my last pruning of secondary branches on week 3 of Flower (Aug 22nd), and ended up with about 3 or 4 nodes below the top of each Cola. Worked out very well for this plant, and I didn't have any buds that weren't getting sunlight at the end.
I guess it does depend on genetics. This plant really took well to all the pruning, whereas a different plant (of different genetics) really struggled from the pruning and became very stunted. I'm growing this same genetic line + a different plant, indoors right now, and will report any notes I find.
But here are some photos of that plant as it continued. You can see in the last photo, where they are hanging, when I stopped cutting the secondary shoots.