Can you grow multiple colas on one plant? The answer is yes. In fact, it’s pretty easy. By carefully pruning the plant when it’s young you can get 2 or 4 main colas.
Before we get started, what exactly is a cola? Simple. Cola means tail in Spanish, and is the name given to the long buds that the plant produces. Not all plants produce them due to how they are grown, and some produce huge ones. However, if you’re growing on a small scale but want to impress yourself and your friends, I’d recommend growing the biggest colas you can.
If you want the biggest colas possible you’ll probably do better growing single ones. Some gardeners feel that more cola means more yields, however, and they have a point. There are two methods to get multiple colas – training and trimming. We’ll talk about trimming in this article.
By trimming I mean pinching off the central stem near the top of the plant. This is a time honored gardening technique. It’s a very common practice. If you’ve ever grown fuchsias, for example, you know that if you pinch off the growing tips while the plant is young you’ll get way more flowers. This technique also works with plants that you want to develop more branches. You can keep a plant that would normally grow tall small and bushy.
There are two ways to pinch off this type of plant. You get a slightly different outcome with each technique. Each technique has its fans. You can try both and make up your own mind about which you prefer.
You should let the plant grow until it has5 or 6 sets of branches. The place where these branches leave the main stem are called nodes. They occur on the main stem, and the plant keeps growing up the center by popping out a shoot between the nodes, going upwards.
If you pinch this growing tip off just above the 5th or 6th node the plant will replace the pinched off tip with two new ones on each side of the main stem. These will create two new main stems. Each will shoot off leaves and branches, but each will remain dominant stems.
You can do this different ways. If you like, you can just keep pinching off any central shoot that you see. You’ll get lots of little buds, but no huge colas. Or, you can pinch less. One way will create 2 big colas, and the other will create 4. Either way, you should get some big ones.
The first method requires you to wait until the plant has developed five or six nodes. You cut off the main stem leaving two nice healthy nodes below. You’ll get new stems from where you cut the stem as well as from the node below that. Two sets of new stems means 4 colas. The second way is to pinch the plant off one node lower. That will only leave one good inter node to sprout. Two sprouts equal two colas.
Can you wait until the plant is bigger and pinch it off higher? Will that create 6,8, or 10 colas? Not really. It will cause more sprouting, but the stems come from growth hormone that goes to the top of the plant. That hormone has less effect lower down. Also, more colas means smaller colas, and small colas are not really colas at all. They’ll still work for the intended purpose, but they’ll be small.That’s because the growth hormone will be spread to widely. No big fat colas to make your buddies smile.
That’s basically it. Growers argue about which technique will produce more bud, but it’s very hard to get a true answer on this. There are too many other inputs that can vary. Remember, light also plays a huge role. If you have all the light coming from above it won’t reach lower parts of the plant as well as it reaches higher parts. The lower buds will suffer as a result. Two or four buds will tend to get a balanced amount of light and do well. As they start growing they’ll also tend to spread apart and let light into the center of the plant (and as a result get lower into the plant, letting more of it get light energy). Besides, the goal is good production and fun, not absolute maximum possible yield. Have fun with it, and don’t forget – you can root the cutting that you pinch off and have another plant for more experimentation!
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