heavyfreak said:
Will this speed up the flowering or just give you an additional bud? While, is it recommended to wait until the plant as started to flower? my tips look like the photo you have a couple pistils but that's it. Would this be recommended?
Pruning a plant, or HST as some call it, will create two branches from each pruned spot. You'll have a plant with more "top" buds. If you don't prune, you'll end up with one major Kola on the primary trunk of the plant.
It's been shown countless times that the final trimmed, dried, cured product weight is not affected by either method. It's virtually the same.
Now, if you mix in a whole shit load of other variables, yes, you can increase your final yield by pruning. If you take the cost to produce and compare it to yield your true advantage or/not of method tells the story.
You could for example, prune and heal one branch at a time so as not to stress the plant too much at once and you could leave no budding sites on the plant except your top buds that are cradled and supported with non-intrusive methods. Keep training the buds over and up over an extended vegetative growth until they have become big ass tops. Then flower them using the same support/training method until the buds have NO support required by the plants stem. The bud will get as big as any Kola on the plant ever could get.
However, you just used enough time to grow two crops.
So, advantage lost.
Do you see what I mean? Pruning will extend the time that you can grow within a certain height indoors. It will decrease the size of the main buds, but make more of them. Everything is a trade off.
If you're growing for just you, then why bother? Just let the ladies grow and bud. Stay within your height restrictions. You'll have one huge bud instead of 50/100 tops by pruning. The end weight will be the same total, and the single Kola plant will be one hell of a lot easier to manicure later.
Good luck to you.
Edit: I use the pruning method when growing superior weed because I like to have a shit load of small, very potent, whole buds to smoke. I pop one of them in the pipe or bong and it's like a neat little package from Nature to my lungs and brain.
If I'm going for oil, the bud to plant ratio using the one Kola method is easier to deal with. I use the top Kola for smoking and everything else goes in the processor to be chopped for oil production.