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here: Issue
#210 - Sunday, May 01, 2016 Dear Fellow Grower,
In today's issue... - Skip the techniques and get the basics of plant training without any special lingo!
- If you do want to check out the special plant training techniques, I've listed them all for you!
- What's the difference between CFLs vs LEDs? What about HPS vs LEDs? Are the buds different?
- Check out this week's trophy pics featuring a Super Skunk Auto grown under a Mars 480W LED grow light!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com) "Once you have mastered a technique, you hardly need look at a recipe again and can take off on your
own."
~Julia Child
No-Technique Plant Training by Nebula Haze |
For indoor growers, there are tons of “techniques” for plant training to increase cannabis
yields, including LST, topping / FIMing, manifolding, ScrOG, etc. These tactics have been developed and named by various growers over the years, and it can get really confusing! There's so many names being thrown around, and some of the techniques can be complicated or time-consuming.
So many techniques... it gets confusing!
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Let me simplify things a little bit. The idea behind almost any plant training technique is to make a
flat, wide table-top shape for your plant canopy with many colas (bud sites). There's about a million ways to accomplish this which is why there are so many different techniques, but they all have at least that one thing in common.
The main rule of training to increase yields is...
Create many evenly spaced colas of the same height
under the grow light This ensures that each of your main buds gets plenty of light and air, resulting in lots of long, fat buds and bigger yields for you. In fact, with plant training you can increase your yields by as much as
40% compared to not training your plants!
You don’t want too many colas because each one will become smaller as they lose their 'personal space'. You’ll get optimum yields by making sure every cola has some breathing room of around 2-3 inches (5-8 cm) between each cola. But other than that, try to fill the space under your light with as many colas as you can. Every “empty” spot under the grow
light without any buds growing is wasting some amount of light that could be going towards increasing your yields.
In the vegetative stage, you train your plants to have many colas in a wide, flat shape like a table
Optimally, you want your colas spaced like this by the time you start flowering... ...which is how you can achieve something like this! Making lots of long colas is important because that's where the biggest, longest and most dense buds form!
No-Technique Cannabis Plant Training
Now we're going to skip all the techniques, and I'm just going to break it down to the most basic principles you need to remember. But before we get started, a quick definition that's very important to plant training....
What’s a
cola? A “cola” is an informal term used by cannabis growers to describe a main stem or "growth tip" that has made it all the way to the top of the canopy.
In the vegetative stage these just look like regular stems with growth tips at the end, but since they’ve made it all the way to the top we label those stems as “main” stems or colas. In the flowering stage it’s these stems in particular
that grow into the biggest and longest buds, which is why growers try to make many of them.
Each growth tip/cola looks a little like a "star" from above in the vegetative stage. Can you spot the 8 main colas on this plant? Colas are sometimes called "mains" or "tops" because they're main stems, and because they've made it to the top of the plant. They can originate from anywhere on the plant that
has a growth tip.
Nurture lots of colas for a "sea" of bud sites in the flowering stage!
Idea 1: Pick prominent growth tips and nurture them into colas
Any growth tip can become a cola if given plenty of light and air.
Your goal is to nurture growth tips close to the base of your plant so many of them make it to the top canopy. You don’t need any special techniques to do that, because all you have to do to nurture a
growth tip into a full-fledged cola is...
Make sure the growth tips you want are exposed to direct light and air!
In fact, it can actually make a
surprising amount of difference just to bend and tuck your leaves out of the way so the growth tips are exposed directly to the light. You'll see that some growth tips tend to naturally grow bigger and be more prominent than the others, and you want to try to work with your plant instead of against it. If your plant seems to be "favoring"
a particular growth tip, then that's a really great candidate to nurture into a cola.
Some cannabis growers will actually cut off the top of their plant ("topping") when it's very young, to "split" the main stem into two main stems at the very bottom. This can help
make it easier to spread out the plant as it gets bigger. But this is only a matter of preference and you will get great results just bending over your main stem without having to cut the plant at all.
Idea 2: Choose colas that start lower on the plant, near the base of the main stem.
When possible try to pick colas that start lower on the plant, near the base of the main stem. The best stems usually go all the way down to the bottom of the plant. For whatever reason the plant seems to put more energy into these stems and they tend to grow bigger buds than ones that originate higher up on the plant.
Note: This is the main idea behind techniques like manifolding where every cola originates near same place on the main base. But you don’t necessarily need to create a manifold to get the increase in yields.
Notice how all the colas on this plant originate near the bottom of the plant. Not only does your plant tend to put more energy into these stems, it also gives you longer buds, further increasing your yields.
Idea 3: Bend Stems the Right Way
Whenever bending stems out of the way you want to try to bend only the flexible parts of the stem, which are usually located near the ends. Avoid bending any part that has already become stiff or woody, as these tend to snap.
Bending technique - try to bend only the flexible parts of stems, which are located near the
tips If for whatever you have to bend a stem that’s already become woody, you need to take a few extra precautions to prevent the skin of the stem from splitting.
How to prevent the skin from splitting: What you need to do is take the part of the stem you want to bend between your fingers. Squeeze it tight, and then slowly and gently wiggle it around, squishing the stem as hard as you can while you're wiggling. The stem will start to become more pliable as the inside gets kind of crushed. You're basically "crunching" up the inside of the stem without breaking the skin so it doesn't
offer as much resistance. Once the stem actually feels flexible, that's when you try to bend it. Don't try to bend it if it still feels stiff! Some people call this "supercropping" but basically it's just a way to bend a stiff stem.
To bend a really stiff stem: Pinch the stem tightly between your fingers(not nails), then squeeze firmly while wiggling the stem gently back and forth where you want it to bend. Continue until you feel/hear crunching from the inside of the stem (may take several seconds of wiggling) and the stem gets flexible. At that point slowly bend the stem at the new joint you've made, and secure in place.
Recovering from bending/supercropping gone wrong: If you do accidentally snap a stem and break the skin while trying to bend it over, never fear! Vegetative plants can recover
from a lot and if you quickly wrap up the injury with duct tape or electrical tape, like a "cast," your cannabis plant will actually be able to repair the broken stem. After a week or two it will form a "knuckle" at the place that was injured, and you'll be able to remove the tape. Good as new!
Even More Info About Plant Training! |
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Do LED or CFL grow lights get better yields?
If you're
growing with CFLs, then upgrading to LEDs is a no-brainer as long as you have the height to support them.
Although LEDs need to be kept at least 18" from your plant (CFLs can be kept just a few inches away), they get far better yields and use less electricity than CFL grow lights! In fact, for some growers LEDs may produce up to double
the yields for the same amount of electricity compared to CFLs.
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What's the difference between buds grown under LED grow lights compared to buds grown under an HPS grow light?
Although this is just one example, this is pretty typical of LED grow lights in that they tend to bring out colors. This Eldorado plant was bloomed under two light sources, an HPS on one side and an LED on the other. Nothing scientific, no partitions, so there was light overlap. At harvest the color difference was surprising (see below) and after curing 2 select pieces from each side
of the plant, the aromas are slightly different as well.
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Dear Ms. Nebula, I'm very grateful. I really appreciate what you are doing. At first I was getting useful and heap amount of information from http://www.growweedeasy.com/. I've noticed your name for so many times so I google
it read your biography and what you are doing to the cannabis culture. I'm from the middle east which is far away from SanFran. Thank you again for your effort. it all started in SanFran what a coincidence. keep it up senorita.
best wishes.
Aziz |
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Nebula Haze:
Medical cannabis is important to me personally, and I'm dedicated to showing others how easy it is to grow their own supply of
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bubbleponics).
"Growing cannabis is a relaxing hobby in and of itself, but it also saves you money and keeps you from having to deal with shady characters. Cannabis is much
easier to grow than people give it credit for, and growing in water doesn't increase the difficulty much, if any. But whether you want to grow in water, coco, or a different medium, we'll show you how easy it can be!"
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