Optimal Number Of Colas For Indoor WW Plant?

[MaineGreenery]

So I am growing some WW plants and am trying out mainlining. Here is what I have so far.

They have all been topped twice at this point leaving 4 current colas per plant. When the training and veg is done they will go into a roughly 3x3 tent with about 4 feet of usable vertical space. My question is how many colas do people generally think is best for a grow like this? I was leaning towards 8 but am wondering if 4 wouldn't be just as good. I mean, my grow space is small and the light penetration of 4 colas per plant will be better than 8 right? Or would 16 be even better? What say you?

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

I'm not overly to sure on the meaning of mainlining is & as far as i can tell it just topping to a degree to get those main colas...

Now, er i done a experiment some thing like this & i'll explain.

Topped at the 5th node on the main apical stem leaving 10 branches to be topped hopefully to get 20 colas & unfortunately the 1st & 2nd node point branches where removed basically poor performance leaving me with 6 branches to work with topped once making 12 main colas the 4th & 5th branches where topped at their 2nd node point so that the lateral branches would form minor colas to fill out the center of the plant with some LST work.

This is what it looked like.

That is just one plant in a 90 cm by 90 cm tent not much bigger than your own as you can see takes up quite a bit of space to be honest with around 10 weeks of veg growth, i can not remember when i done the topping tho but ya need several inch of regen growth after topping to make it worth while.

A tent your size 3 by 3 no more than 8 with 4 plants perhaps get away with some LST work to help fill stuff out a little

 

[MaineGreenery]

When I first thought about having 8 colas I was worried it would be tight in my space but after looking at your pic fuzzy I think 8 would be ok. It would be 8 with three plants in the tent.

Mainlining I think refers to having the distance to each cola from stem as equal as possible. With LST you basically add length to nodes to create an even canopy that maximizes the size of all minor colas at the cost of the main cola. With mainlining you don't have different classes of colas, major or minor, because the plant considers all of them to be equal as they are all equidistant from the ground and all have equivalent stem support. That is my interpretation. Here is my plant red. It has now been topped twice and has had all fan leaves on lower nodes removed.

I think she looks good.