What to trim and how to LST

don't remove leaves unless overlapping and otherwise congested. Try bending them to new location first. Lollipopping is a double-edge sword. It can often reduce yield, but increase proporiton of higher quality buds... sometims i'm sure oyu can even increase yield if you leave a bit more lower growth. I like to do it. If the plant sheds the leaves down below, so bet it, but i don't cut htem off. I do remove lower leaves if they impedge me watering the plants easily / quickly. you can do it ~15-20 days into bloom and do it 1 time, you could do a little minor spring cleaning before you send it to bloom and a 2nd/3rd sweep later, if you think it'll require taking more than 1/3rd of the plant off at one time. Better to split something like that up and not at certain points that shock would be a bad bad thing. LST / Top, whatever.. just get it done. You want even growth. 1 vertical shoot per 4-6" by 4-6" area. Mix topping with LST in less dense areas. Use apical dominance (tallest) to even out canopy height -- simply bend down taller branches for a day or 3 until shorter limbs catch up. Topping will slow it down too, and you don't have to keep 2 forks if you don't want.. .simply trim off the other one. it's worth your while to keep an even canopy. Distribution of resources will be more equal. Try to limit how many vertical shoots are coming off a branch.. 2-3? You start adding more and you get smaller and smaller colas each time it splits a new vertical shoot. After you bend it over, removing any leaves dragging along ground is a good idea. Anchor in opposite direction to reduce stress on roots. Axillary growth below the bend will typically suffer greatly. Consider removing it. I've tied them up to gain apical dominance, got them fairly even, and it still wasn't as good of bud as the other shoots. So, anything below that initial bend is going to be impacted. keep the plant after the bend as even as possible. How long before you let tip grow vertically? depends on the size of plant you are intending to grow. Timing is about it catching up to the rest of canopy. Simply know how the plant reacts to various things you can do... all tools to shape and form a level canopy that fills out your space in an optimal way. You'll want all the vertical shoots you need as it enters bloom, but the size should be about 70% length by 70% width of what it will grow into 4-5 weeks into bloom phase. (it'll double in size .7*.7=~50%)