1) Nah, should be fine. Just make sure to be careful when bending it, you might want to do it gradually to get it used to the shape.

2)Doesn't slow down growth at all. In fact, under our HPS light, the leaves and top are turned back toward the light in only a few hours.

3)What I did was tie the plant over first. Then the side shoots from the crotches of the leaves grew up to form a new canopy of tops. I just bent thos back away from the center to even the canopy out. You can tie the new tops down sideways too to get them to form side shoots as well. Take a look at the grow log in my sig to see a LST in progress. We just started training like 3 weeks ago and look at the difference it made.

Quote Originally Posted by faithlessxxx
Dunno, didn't do that, just poked the fan leaves behind the little budsites and they stayed there.
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Yeah, bend the leaves back behind the bud sites. Also you can bend the shoots that come up from the very bottom behind some branches to position them to get light withought tying. Like use branches to hold other things in the place they need to be.