What would happen if someone removed ALL of the branches except for one?
In my perfect world, It would become a super-huge cola because all of the food went straight to one main stalk.....
.... but in reality it would probably just kill the plant, right?
Ok, I'll just let myself out now...
It's an interesting question. It might be a little silly, but not so much. Anything that allows us to ponder how plants grow and how we can do things to get various results is worth discussing. You waste no energy, seeds, clones, soil......discussing ideas....
So trying to picture what you're talking about, the first thing I'd want to know is, what kind of strain are we using? A pure Indica that tends to grow one main central stem? Or a lanky Sativa that branches out all over like a tree......each variety is going to react differently to pruning all the branches except the main one.....
You'd have to do it rather slowly, carefully.......not hack the thing up while it's too young. We don't want to shock or harm the plant, we want to leave enough leaves to keep the plant growing, no long, stunted pauses waiting for it to recover from getting hacked. We'd need extra time to shape it, and it would need enough leaves left around the main stem to be able to flower well. If it's a branchy variety, we'd need to cut the tops of the branches so growth stays close to the main stem, but again, slowly, carefully......you may need to double your growing time....
If you had patience, pruned/trimmed slowly and carefully, I'd think you could do it with any variety, without killing it. Of course, there would still be a difference between how an Indica finishes and a Sativa, but you could definitely shape plants into one large cola. Would it be efficient? Probably not time-wise. But if the goal was to grow many of them, nearly crowded together (but not too crowded)......that could be interesting. Imagine being able to fit 25 of these in say, a 5' x 5' space. Instead of 9 branched. If you did it right, and each plant got what it needed, could you harvest 25 large, fat, long colas?
