just a few questions about the methods

I may get to start a legal grow here soon so I'm reading up on some different things and some questions have popped up.

So, first one.. if a growers goal is lots of well developed female flower from a plant, just purely to maximize his yield in the shortest amount of time he can.. then how in the world does cutting any part of a plant in the early veg development make sense? topping and fiming will result in more branches sure, and a more bush like canopy.. but at around 3-5 days minimum of repair and slight risk of disease being instead of continued rapid growth being the cost.

What are the reasons people top instead of supercropping or lst? I could see topping for a mother for clone sites though.. this does make sense. basically what I am getting at is, if the goal is getting the most usable plant matter off your girls, why would you cut off some of the parts that will make this bud earlier?

lollipopping is something I would do, removing the material light will not hit makes sense..

question two.. which is better for relectivity? mylar or white paint? mylar seems like it would be, but the thinner mylar lets some light through.. which got me thinking, if mylar can have light travel through a 2mil cross section, wouldnt the light still travel through that 2mil section if you used 5mil mylar? so would your light level increase or stay the same?

probably a dumb one but it's been bugging me..

I have many others, just cannot pull them out of my foggy brain..

Oh, has anyone ever run across a successful blackstar led grow log? those lights look interesting, I know they are not top of the line but I haven't heard much bad about them, and I bought one already for my mothers orange tree.. which seems to work great.

I like to top so all i have to do is spread her legs.Attachment 282481 So to speak. Its easier for me to try and get an even canopy when i do it this way. It's all about preference. I could be wrong but i think alot of people that do the perpetual grows mainly deal with SOG style. A bunch of small plants. A faster in and out production wise. If im wrong someone will correct me haha
As for the reflecting question i have a chart that i stole from Dutch.Attachment 282482

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if a growers goal is lots of well developed female flower from a plant, just purely to maximize his yield in the shortest amount of time he can.. then how in the world does cutting any part of a plant in the early veg development make sense? topping and fiming will result in more branches sure, and a more bush like canopy.. but at around 3-5 days minimum of repair and slight risk of disease being instead of continued rapid growth being the cost.

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To me it comes down to plant numbers allowable and the amount of time you wish to spend training plants. If maximising yield quickly is the goal and plant numbers is not a concern then a SOG grow ticks the boxes pretty well. Smaller plants, single cola, large numbers can do very well yield-wise.
If however youré limited to the number of plants you can have and aren't in a huge hurry to have them finish then you can have a very nice yielding harvest by using some of the training methods and tweeking nature. Yes it takes longer during veg but one well trained, healthy plant will yield more than one plant left 'natural' - within a reasonable time frame of course (not talking trees here). In my experience anyways.

I like to always use one training method or another on my girls and they respond well to anything - thats just lucky as not all plant strains will. If I'm busy and have little time then topping is very quick, easy and the girls bounce back quickly, although as its high stress training its a slower bounce back than LST. With more time I like to do LST on some, its fun and low stress on them and having a mass of tops florish in flower is pretty cool. Supercropping is pretty stressful for them but I've found the timing when doing it helps. If I pinch them just as lights go off, they've turned back up by lights on time. Its a help in keeping an even canopy and therefore making efficient use of your lighting.
All the best with your venture :)

I run a perpetual grow scrog - a flower room and a veg room. It takes 60 - 80 days to flower depending on the strain. During that time I'm vegging the next round. I LST the main stem and then top/fim branches as they go. At times I find myself needing to slow the plants down. Topping achieves this, to a degree. Note that while it takes 3 - 5 days for the top/fim to recover, during that time development is directed towards the lower branches. This gets me lots of branches for the scrog screen and hence more bud sites. Topping and Fimming is also a necessity for those with height limitations.

Flat paint is nearly as good as mylar. Note that moisture can get trapped behind the mylar and the wall leading to mold. Similarly, it provides a convenient refuge and breeding ground for pets. Plus at the end of the day when you move you will need to pull it down. Go with the flat white paint and be done with it.

I will weigh in on the LED question. There was a guy doing a comparison grow here using 3 LED lights... and I believe one of them was a blackstar. A little searching should find it. I am very interested in LED technology and am building my own lights. What I am seeing with many of the commercial lights is high cost and lack of good electronics engineering, in other words, the lights are not designed electrically to last the lifetime of the LEDs or 11 years. Some of the lights are well made but are 3-5x what it costs to build them and out of the reach for many hobby growers. Others are cheaper, but we are hearing many reports of early failure of these lights.

The general consensus from people experimenting with LED is encouraging however and it does appear to be a viable way to go if you can afford it. Just keep in mind that this is a new technology and many companies now in the business will fail while others with better and cheaper products come in to take their place. No one is an expert in this field yet, no matter what they tell you and a quick examination of the light spectrum's used by various competing lights shows a wide divergence in even the science of which colors to use. Electrically, some lights are designed to be very energy efficient and some are not. Some are noisy electrically (RF noise) and some are much better designed. I could not find a commercial light that impressed me in all of these areas. This is why I decided to build my own.

If you do end up getting an LED system, please review it for us. You should find that light penetration with the chromatically correct light is much better than any other lights, energy use should be much less, and heat generation is not usually a problem. You will also find that your plants loose less water to evaporation and your watering cycle will slow down a bit compared to other light systems. A light failure in the middle of the grow would probably be very traumatic however... and I have been hearing about a few of those too. Do your research!

look at it this way how much weight would you get on a main cola. now compare the weight differnces to side branch bud you will see the colas will make more. so know this i have made three with over 20 tops look at deep kush thread.... its a 15 week veg and it is not a foot tall maybe half

In support of what Emilya said RE: LEDs. Check the reputation of any company you buy from. Make sure they have a local (country) representative and that there are no issues with their service. I had 2 Welthink lights fail after 18 months of use. Both were replaced within 2 days of receiving my shipment with no questions ask. I can't see that happening with many of the "UFO" brands available on e-bay...

H2G, I think you are making the point that many smaller colas will out produce one main cola? I have two side colas now that are as big as any main cola I've grown. That is the point of SCRoGing. Many somewhat smaller colas = more than one main cola.