Trouble reading today's article? Click
here: Issue
#220 - Sunday, July 10, 2016 Dear Fellow Grower,
In today's issue... - Get a quick rundown of popular training techniques!
- Save on electricity!
- This week's trophy pics show feature incredible outdoor
plants!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com) "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap, if we do not lose heart."
Complete Plant Training Guide by Nebula Haze |
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Hey everyone! We've been working quite a bit on our various plant training articles over the last few weeks and today we released this new article with a
quick overview of everything so you can easily get to the individual tutorials for each technique. I hope you like it! Reply to this email and let us know what you think! ~Nebula
Introduction: How to Train Indoor
Plants for Bigger Yields
Are you interesting in increasing your yields when growing indoors? If so, you're in the right place! Plant training is one of the easiest ways to increase your cannabis yields without having to upgrade your light or setup. It can be used to increase your yields up to 40% compared to not training, and it's free!
First off, what is plant training?
"Plant training" means physically manipulating the plant so it grows more bud sites, resulting in increased yields indoors Why not let plants grow naturally? Cannabis naturally grows in a "Christmas Tree" shape that is optimized for sunlight, not grow lights. Unlike the sun, cannabis grow lights do not rise and set every day,
providing light from the sides. Furthermore, indoor grow lights have almost no penetration when compared against the sun; the light from a 1000W HPS is usable for a a few feet while light from the sun is usable to plants after traveling 93 million miles!
With grow lights, the vast majority of the light produced is aimed straight down over the top of the plant, and in most setups the sides don't get
much light at all. Because of that, the Christmas Tree shape can be really inefficient indoors, causing your plant to get less light (and therefore produce less bud) than it could have.
The main idea of plant training is to create a group of colas to take the best advantage of indoor grow lights so less light is lost.
Make many cannabis colas instead of just one! Three main types of marijuana plant training
- Bending and securing parts of the plant while causing little-to-no physical damage to the plant
- Damaging or removing parts of the plant in a strategic way to get it to grow in a more desirable shape
- Manipulating timelines to get
faster or bigger yields
Usually growers will use more than one of these types of training because they can complement each other, but it's also possible to use just one and not any others. For example when growing auto-flowering strains you can't manipulate timelines and it's generally advised not to damage the plant since they have such a short life and that could result in stunting. So for auto-flowering plants, the main option is just bending and securing.
Next: a breakdown of each plant training technique so your garden has tons of colas! Bending & Securing Parts of the Plant
Bending and securing parts of your plant is usually referred to as "Low Stress Training" (LST).
General Low Stress Training (LST) - LST is the process of bending stems and securing them in
place. The general idea is to bend tall stems down and away from the middle of the plant as it grows so the plant takes on a more flat and wide shape. This should be started when the plant is still a seedling since its young stems will be flexible, while the stems of older plants become rigid and woody. Some growers use the term "LST" as an umbrella term to cover all types of plant training, while others use it to refer only to bending.
Plant Twisty Ties are commonly used to secure stems in place after bending them over, but lots of growers get creative (pipe cleaners, soft coated wire, etc). Just don't use anything "sharp" like chicken wire because it
cuts into the plant as it grows. This grower consistently bent the tallest stems down as the plants grew, resulting in a flat, table-top shape When the plant starts making buds, this flat, wide shape results in multiple colas that are all around the same distance from the
light
No-Technique Plant Training - This is cannabis plant training in its most basic form. If it's your first grow and you want to keep things simple, or if you don't have much time and want to do the bare minimum to get results, this is for you!
The main stem was bent over 90° when the plant was very young, so all the lower branches were able to grow up and become main
colas. Bending the main stem was the only training done to this plant, no fancy techniques!
Supercropping - this technique is a more "extreme" kind of bending, and is used for stems that are too tall but have become woody
and difficult to bend. With supercropping you "soften up" the stem first before bending it at an extreme angle. Supercropping can be incredibly helpful towards wrangling an out-of-control plant, and it has a few other benefits too because it can stress the plant in a "good" way.
Supercropping involves extreme bending, but without hurting the "skin" of your
plant
Screen of Green (ScrOG) is a technique where growers use a screen over their plants and weave stems through the screen as they grow. When the plant starts making buds it's already in a flat, table-top shape with lots of well-spaced bud sites under the grow
lights. The screen also provides support for heavy buds.
Example of Screen of Green (ScrOG)
Damaging or Removing Parts of the
Plant
These training techniques all involve pruning the plant in some way to improve growth and increase yields indoors.
Topping & FIMing are ways of damaging the plant at a very young age to lead to plants growing mare bud sites.
In this next picture, notice how the plant sort of "splits" at one point near the base of the plant. That split is where the plant was topped or FIMed and the apical dominance was broken. As a result, the plant turned many stems into main colas instead of only growing big buds on one main stem Topping - The idea is to completely remove the top of the plant's main stem as a seedling. This breaks its apical dominance, or tendency to grow one main cola, and immediately divides the plant into two main stems. As a result of being topped at a young age, the plant will naturally grow multiple colas even if you don't do anything else. FIMing - A very closely related technique to topping. The idea of FIMing is to damage or "shave" the top of the plant instead of removing it completely. This can accomplish many of the same goals as topping, but has less of a chance of stressing the plant. The downside is it's more likely to fail at actually breaking apical dominance (plant may still tend to grow one main
cola).
Manifolding - This describes a sequence of topping the plant two times in a specific way so that it forms a wide "manifold" at the base of the plant. This is an easy way to achieve a lot of training without much time on your part. A benefit of training the plant with manifolding is buds tend to grow bigger, longer and
more uniform than they would with some other training methods. The downside is topping your plant twice can add a week or two onto your grow.
Defoliation - Defoliation means removing leaves on your plant, usually only the biggest fan leaves. This might be done in the vegetative stage for various reasons, but the main "technique" is using defoliation in a certain way during the first month of
the flowering stage in order to encourage buds to grow bigger. With this technique, the cannabis plant is defoliated right before the switch to the flowering stage, then another time or two during the first few weeks while the plant is in the midst of the explosion of growth known as the flowering stretch.
Defoliation involves removing fan leaves in a strategic way in the first part of the flowering stage This strategic defoliation exposes all the newly forming buds to light and air right when they're at their most crucial stage of development. Because of how cannabis (a wind-pollinated plant) buds reacts
to light and air, this dramatically increase the size and density of the buds as long as you take off the right amount of leaves at the right time (overdoing this or doing it too late in the flowering stage can do more harm than good!). It's also very important to note that defoliation should only be done to indoor-grown plants, and even then only plants that are healthy!
Notice how few fan leaves this plant has? That's because it was strategically defoliated during the first few weeks after the switch to 12/12. In response, the buds grew long, fat and dense.
Manipulate
Timelines
These aren't necessarily "training" techniques per say, but they are techniques that growers use to increase yields for free, and the main principle is the same - more buds directly under the grow light!
12-12 From Seed is the technique of trying to make seedlings start flowering (making buds) as soon as possible by giving them a "12-12" light schedule from seed. The idea is to get a harvest as quick as possible.
12-12 from Seed results in a quick harvest, but tends to cause stunted plants
Sea of Green is a related technique to 12-12 From Seed. The idea with Sea of Green is to grow many small plants instead of a few big plants. This allows a grower to make a sea of buds without having to do any plant training and can result in big yields that take less time. The main idea is to let seedlings
grow for only 4-5 weeks before immediately switching them to the flowering stage. Since each plant doesn't have to get very big the time it takes before flowering is reduced by several weeks. Many growers will also "top" their seedlings by removing the tips of seedlings when they have about 4-6 pairs of leaves.
For SoG, initiate the flowering stage when plants are this size
or bigger
What Will My Electricity Bill Look Like? |
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How much electricity does it take to grow cannabis from seed to harvest, and how much will you actually be paying for electricity each month?
When growing indoors, the cost of electricity is important but it can be confusing to try predicting how much it's going to
end up costing you!
Luckily it's relatively straightforward to figure everything out once you have the formula!
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Had to write to tell you how much I enjoyed your website. The best I have ever seen, packed full of very helpful info for every topic.
Thank you so much. This site is bookmarked for my continued use and enjoyment.
Debbie
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Second image shows the leaves of an African Buzz plant at only one month! I've been getting daily new growth on its massive sativa leaves.
First time grower. I think I'm doing it right.
Love the page, the most helpful page I have ever been on. And continue to go back to learn with every new problem to come wit a
first grow.
Keep up the good work!
Best
regards,
Clay
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Who Runs This
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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
cannabis at home.
It is my mission to educate and build growing resources to help both new and advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We update GrowWeedEasy.com at least weekly (often even more often!) to make sure that our website provides you with all the information you need to succeed at growing! |
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Learn which seed sources are personally recommended by Nebula Haze |
Sirius Fourside:
Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium (deep water culture,
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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