Nice tutorial Jon, have you compared your sombraro & ring training as to just bending a seedling over 90 degrees and keeping the apex cola lower than the rest of the plant ? to see which will produce more bud ?Ha! Okay @Carmen Ray -
What do you mean by minimal training and topping?
The Sombrero training I do is one form of this. Just letting the plant go natural is another. In Sombrero training, all you do is top above node four and let it grow up from there. Do not do anything else to affect the top. On the bottom, you’ll have branch pairs at nodes 1, 2, and 3. Think of a clock face and pull them out as evenly around the dial as you can. Pull them as flat as you can too. You’re looking to create a ring that when it’s done will clear the top of the plant. As you pull those out, they will develop side branching. Use the best of those to fill in the empty spots of your ring. When they have a node or two, if you want, you can top side branches too and generate more colas for the ring. So think in terms of completing that clock face evenly 1 to 12. If you can do that you will have an awesome lower ring that’s wide and low, and then the tops grow only up. That allows them to develop lots of stem length and therefore lots of side branching. That will fill out the top. The Apple Fritter is trained in this style, but lost her shape due to the top exploding. (Lol - nice problem to have).
But also letting them go is sometimes good too. The pink Rozay is 100% untrained. She just grew that way. And she’s amazing. Maybe the most productive of all eight despite the monster AF. HUGE buds. And letting them go with minimal training would mean just pulling branches out a little to create space and let light hit everything. Not flat, just out so everything isn’t going right up the middle. The Gorilla Zkittlez is trained like this. Natural except for separating branches.
I feel strongly that more stem = more buds. The colas are bigger and the side branches are more voluminous. With autos that give you 35-45 days of veg you can get a really tall plant after the stretch. So letting them go gives you longer stems.
If you wish to canopy, still top above node four, only then flatten out and pull out the two shoots from the topping. Establish the canopy right there. Then just do what you’re currently doing to keep it flat and all.
What do you mean by shape of a ring? I know that's round but what would I do differently?
This was sort of answered in the above info. Think of the central stem as your spoke and the ring you’re making as the wheel. That’s the shape I’m talking about. A ring works whether you canopy, Sombreo, or just pull out branches. If you always even out around the plant the lower branches, they will form a ring automatically and you’ll easily see where you want to fill in.
I hope that’s helpful, it’s a start. If you look back through the journal all of this is in there in pieces. Lol. And here’s a few pictures of rings and Sombrero training, the easiest training way I use.
