@001100010010011110,
i don't give a shit if you select an answer, lol - the least important thing is that contest
That's perfectly fine by me, I'm asking questions to gain knowledge.
I'm sure if you do it enuogh you can find the point at which you get nearly guaranteed results but wether its 2+1 or 2+2 or 2+3 is maybe less certain (2 axilllary buds that exist plus what comes out of the mutilated growth tip).
And this is exactly what I'm trying to understand โ where those "extra" nodes are supposed to pop out from?
I'm not yet intimately familiar with the plant's anatomy, and it probably varies a lot depending on genetic composition. What I saw with my plant is that early veg structure is the following: there are nodes with two symmetrical fans on either side of the plant, and they rotate ~90 degrees on the next node, meaning the leaves are N-S on one node, then E-W on the next one etc. Branches grow just above petioles from the same "attachment" points, one branch per fan.
So, my thinking was, if you Top (clip a grown internode in the centre), you keep the branches the plant already had, and after a quick wtf the plant redirects growth to those branches within 2-3 levels (nodes) below the cut.
If you FIM, at least the way it's taught almost everywhere, you effectively top a yet-undeveloped internode and also damage two fans. Hopefully, the branches growing out of this node are small enough that you don't damage them, and thus you get the same as you would get after Topping, minus two healthy fans on the top remaining node. Same number of nodes, same number of branches, even if the top two branches are just tiny green dots you can barely distinguish at the time of clipping.
Now, if the plant is capable of growing additional (extra) branches which do not follow the scheme I described above, I would be interested to know where they can grow from? Can more than two branches grow from one node? Can additional branches appear on internodes? I'm talking about regular healthy plants of common genetics, not some mutant oddities.
It appears that later in the cycle, the node structure begins to change, and fans do not necessarily "attach" on the same level. There can be one fan and one branch, and then slightly above there'll be the second fan with its branch. It's kind of a "single-leaf/branch-node".
Not sure if I managed to explain myself clearly enough, but in short my question is "where the fuck would those extra branches grow from", specific points/areas on the plant. And when they're called "extra" how do people know that the plant would not have grown exactly the same amount of branches, had the plant been topped (as in clipped in the middle of a developed internode)?
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