Hi
@Sneekthafarmer The first stage when you can LST is at the very start of your plants life cycle when the first or second true leaves are fully grown. At this stage cannabis tend to grow only straight up and you can start to train it to get multiple tops. This technique when started at the young age will yield the best results and are usually done deliberately with an end goal of maximal efficiency.When you don’t start LST your autoflower at the early stage the result would not be as good as when you start from the beginning, but it will still massively improve the performance of the plant. Second stage when growers usually start to LST autos is at the first weeks of flowering or a week before flowering period when a cannabis plant is growing most vigorously and producing the most branches.
When a grower sees that his autoflower is getting out of control and will soon outgrow its grow area he/she needs to do something that will help to train that plant. This option is a very common occurrence between new growers who can’t or don’t anticipate how high their cannabis will grow and don’t train those plants from the beginning. At this stage an autofloer plant is usually more mature than it should be to perform LST most effectively, but you can still do it and it will still be helpful and can save you from increasing grow space or performing High stress training.The only thing that is different at this stage is that the cannabis plant is mature and it will be difficult to train it as it is strong, hard to bend and usually inexperienced growers will force the plant too much and it can fold over or even break. Good luck mate 👍