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Topping and Fimming · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
• 0:03
  Sat across the table from me is Matthew Wallace. How are you doing, Matthew?
• 0:07
  I'm okay, Russell. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. I've dragged you back because
• 0:10
  we've got a subject that I know nothing about or very little about,
• 0:13
  and you seem to know more than me, and that is topping.
• 0:17
  Yeah, so topping, you would take your plant and to maximise its output,
• 0:21
  you would like to sort of make more tops of the plant, so to speak.
• 0:26
  So to do that, you would take the fresh growth at the top of the plant and cut it completely out.
• 0:32
  And from that, you will actually get two extra nodes from there.
• 0:36
  You can then also top those again.
• 0:39
  And so you'll go from two to then four to then eight to 16. You can keep going.
• 0:45
  Then obviously your plant will be a much bigger size and structure and will
• 0:51
  hold a lot more fruit as well.
• 0:53
  So if this is where you want to stimulate flowering and fruiting nodes yes so
• 0:59
  more more flowering sites.
• 1:02
  So you're not going to use this method on christmas trees i've got
• 1:05
  a local christmas tree village near me and they have special sticks they stick
• 1:10
  on their christmas trees to stop the birds from landing on the christmas trees
• 1:14
  and taking out the apical bud because obviously a christmas tree you just want
• 1:17
  one apical bud this is something we use just for flowering and fruiting crops
• 1:22
  yeah Yes, that's correct.
• 1:23
  So tell me the difference between topping and fimming.
• 1:28
  So fimming, make the abbreviation more polite, would be, oops, I missed.
• 1:33
  So it's like topping, but you've not taken enough of the node.
• 1:38
  So you would be leaving the bottom third of the node. And by doing that,
• 1:43
  you're going to stunt the growth of the plant.
• 1:45
  So if you're looking at it and the plants become rather quite tall,
• 1:49
  and you're thinking I could do with some more underneath than on top if you
• 1:54
  use the technique FIM the underneath will sort of bring itself up give you a
• 1:59
  bigger structure and then you could potentially look at using the technique
• 2:02
  of topping rather than FIMing after everything's caught up with it.
• 2:07
  So when you FIM a bud does that bud carry on growing then?
• 2:10
  It stunts for a little while and will sort of
• 2:13
  grow slightly mutated because it's been cut yeah but once it sort of gets its
• 2:18
  vigor back it will start growing again but by that point the lower sides of
• 2:21
  your plant will sort of come up and meet it meet it at that height so do you
• 2:27
  ever get fasciation where like the the growth.
• 2:31
  Deforms and you get a deformed flower yes you will do so you tend to find that
• 2:36
  obviously if you're cutting equipment or scalp all is potentially unclean yeah
• 2:41
  or your environment's unclean or you've done it when the plant's in stress.
• 2:47
  But generally, if the plant's in good health, it will take, give or take,
• 2:51
  three to four days, and the plant should start growing back from that node again.
• 2:56
  But by that point, you've also got growth coming from underneath,
• 2:59
  meeting it at the same height.
• 3:00
  So certain crops, you have autoflowering strains and varieties?
• 3:05
  Yes, don't touch them. Don't use these techniques on autoflowers.
• 3:08
  These are for photoperiodic ones only? Yes.
• 3:12
  So think of an autoflower as a ticking clock. every time
• 3:15
  that you mess with it repot it or anything else that clock still
• 3:19
  keeps going and you still need to keep make sure that
• 3:21
  that plant's growing at all stages if you delay it
• 3:25
  or stunt it in any way you'll lose
• 3:28
  a vast majority of its yield and height so
• 3:31
  you don't do it on auto flowers is it
• 3:35
  part of what's called super cropping it could
• 3:39
  be i'm not 100 i know the term super
• 3:41
  cropping but not the terminology i know within
• 3:44
  sort of super cropping you've got clockwork trimming
• 3:48
  and pulling the plant down to allow it
• 3:51
  to sort of gain more sunlight you've got
• 3:54
  you can pinch the stems and
• 3:57
  push them over between your index and your thumb you might
• 4:00
  look at the plant and think oh that's it it's gone no it will
• 4:03
  come back fighting you can do a lot
• 4:06
  to a plant stress wise by bending in
• 4:09
  the stems and everything else and you'll think that it's dead it's
• 4:11
  definitely not give it a couple of days and it'll come back
• 4:14
  fighting but those joints where you've damaged will
• 4:17
  be stronger than the rest of the plant and you can also
• 4:20
  do those knocking and niching and graph girdling
• 4:24
  that we talked about in the previous episodes as well so yeah
• 4:27
  you can also do that yeah so i think it's
• 4:30
  certainly part of super cropping like in that in that
• 4:33
  it's creating the architecture that you're
• 4:35
  looking for in the plant and then yeah so you take a look at your plant see.
• 4:38
  How it looks how could you create the shape
• 4:41
  that you want and what technique would you need to use to
• 4:44
  create that shape yeah and it's not just yield it's
• 4:47
  it's making sure that the produce is in the right shape and
• 4:50
  the right form and also that you're not stimulating fungal
• 4:54
  diseases further on by having a dense canopy and things
• 4:57
  like that so yeah too much low-hanging fruit right so
• 5:00
  fimming as in what should we say oops i
• 5:03
  missed or flip i missed flip i missed
• 5:06
  there we go that's the family friendly version and
• 5:10
  then topping is just where you remove the apical bud that contains the
• 5:13
  apical meristem and promote more lateral
• 5:16
  growth from lateral buds because you remove that
• 5:19
  auxin source traveling down to the roots and then that stimulates extra growth
• 5:22
  so it's a bit more extreme than knocking and niching that we talked about in
• 5:26
  a previous episode and it's definitely not something for autoflowers so don't
• 5:31
  try it on those unless you want a really crappy yield thanks very much matthew
• 5:35
  until next time see you now bye.