GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - "Pinching" buds to promote further growth

15-10-2004, 08:14 PM

In article ,
(Beecrofter) wrote:

(Max Caviar) wrote in message
. com...
How precisely, is this done? I keep reading about this, but not sure
I understand what is being suggested. Are you to just pinch new buds
once, multiple times, ...? How hard are you to pinch these things
anyway? Enough to slightly crush them, or less?

Well you gotta start somewhere.
The term "Green Thumb" comes from pinching buds and foliage between
thumbnail and forefinger to remove them.
What you do are doing is breaking apical dominance, a mouthfull that
means the bud you remove was keeping the buds below it from fully
developing. That's why pinching back makes the plant fuller, those
lower buds wake up and grow.
If you have hoochie nails or some reason not to have sap stained
fingers use shears.

There is a technique some refer to as "pinching" which does not involve
removing buds or growing tips. It is done during vegetative growth to
promote shorter internodes and beefier stems in order to support larger
flower mass at maturity. The internodes nearest apical meristems are
squeezed between thumb and forefinger enough to mildly crush and bruise
them, but not so hard as to cause the growing tip to die. Another
method of beefing up stems during vegetative growth is to twist the
internodes such that the phloem is sheared away from the xylem, and the
plants respond by reducing internodal length and fattening the
traumatized stems. These techniques are predominately used by cannabis
culturists, but are also used for increasing yields from some fruit
trees and presumably can be used on many species for various purposes.

Do a google search on "supercropping" and you will find plenty of
variations on the techniques of "pinching".