Trouble reading today's article? Click
here: Issue #299 - Sunday, January 7, 2018
Dear Fellow
Grower,
In today's issue... - Are you the type of grower that's excited by advanced techniques? Are you thinking about trying some? Read this first!
- While I get ready
to start yet another grow with Barneys Farm, check out another monster slow-hitter strain from these seed geniuses!
- Check out some tantalizing trophy pics of some Amnesia by Nirvana. It looks so good I forgot...uh...wait, what was I talking about again?
Nebula Haze
& Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com) "Mistakes are always forgivable if one has the courage to admit them." ~Bruce Lee
Don't Make These (Advanced) Plant Training Mistakes! by Sirius Fourside |
What isn’t there to love about plant training? Training is fun, it gets you more involved with your plants, it helps maximize on your grow space and lights, and it burns a calorie or two in addition to dramatically increasing yields! |
But there is a dark side to training. It shows up when growers attempt to train their cannabis plants, but end up stunting their growth or generally doing them more harm than good. This
can come from accidents like breaking stems, but sometimes it’s a fault in the way the technique is being used.
Today, we’re going to show you how to avoid making mistakes during plant training that would slow down plant growth. Instead, you can be sure you’re using the right technique the right way at the right time! ScrOG Mistakes
ScrOG - short for ‘Screen of Green’ - is a method of growing cannabis where a screen is placed in between the plants and grow light. The plants are kept under the screen during the vegetative stage and guided through the screen during the
flowering stage to get neat rows of colas equally spaced from each other.
Most Common Mistakes
First Time Grower
ScrOG can be a tough method, even for growers who’ve been doing it for a while. It isn’t just a question of knowledge, ScrOG takes much more time and
physical work to keep the plants arranged the correct way than other methods. If you’re just looking into growing for the first time, I would leave the ScrOG technique for a few grows down the road.
Improper Use of ScrOG Net
Many growers (myself included) see the ScrOG net in action and are entranced. From the outside, it looks like you set up a
net and just let the plants do their thing. Unfortunately, doing ScrOG this way nullifies its benefits and will actually make for a tougher grow since there will be a useless net in the way. When using a ScrOG net, one of the most important aspects
is to keep your plants in an even canopy and below the ScrOG net until the 2nd week of flowering (minimum). Topping will give more colas and make them easier to train under the net; topping is pretty much mandatory for ScrOG to really do its stuff. Manifolding/Mainlining Mistakes
Manifolding (another name for the ‘Mainlining’ growing technique) is
like topping taken to the extreme. Manifolding involves topping your plant at three separate times for a total of 14 cuts. This is to accomplish something similar to ScrOG, but without a net; it makes for 8 colas that are spaced apart from each other in addition to being equidistant from the main stem.
Most Common Mistakes Wrong Medium
Manifolding is a great technique and I enjoy using it personally, but it doesn’t necessarily perform as well in all mediums. Although we learned the original technique from Nugbuckets who is an avid organic soil grower, many soil growers with varying levels of experience claim it adds too much time to the vegetative period. This is due to the fact
that manifolding requires a lot of recovery and growth time due to the all the topping.
Hydroponic setups experience much faster vegetative growth than soil, so this method is much more viable in such a medium. In particular, plants grown in DWC, hempy buckets or similar mediums seem to best demonstrate the power of manifolding, though coco coir will also work well.
First Time Grower
This is another technique that can saddle a new grower with much more responsibility than they prepared for. In addition to having to make quite a few cuts on your plant, LST is almost necessary at a vulnerable time for the plant. This means there isn’t much room for error though there is plenty of opportunity for a wrong snip or bend.
If you’ve never grown cannabis or feel apprehensive about having to top (cut your plant) so many times, try growing a plant and top it just once. If you’re feeling confident and/or experimental at that point, try topping the plant again or top a side branch for practice.
Topping Too Early
When
growing a cannabis plant and trying a new technique, the excitement is palpable! Unfortunately for us, plants - even fast-growing ones - don’t grow fast enough to quench our gardening thirst. This can lead to ‘over-care’ (aka ‘Too Much Love’) or starting techniques prematurely.
When topping a plant for manifolding...actually, when topping a plant at all, make sure to let it grow 6 nodes
before cutting anything off. You can certainly do it earlier, but topping after your plant has grown six nodes means it will be stronger and won’t need as long to recover. Forgetting the ‘Low’ In ‘Low-Stress Training’
Cannabis plants are pretty hearty, but a young plant can easily be decimated by the strength of a human without even trying! When using LST on a cannabis plant, the difference in strength it takes to bend a stem versus
breaking it is minuscule; in some cases, the breaking point is indistinguishable based on resistance alone.
This means you have to be super careful when utilizing LST on any cannabis plant, especially when they’re still young since their stems can break much easier. If you’re feeling nervous when doing LST on a young plant
and feel it might break soon, try splitting the LST session into multiple days. This way your plants will have a chance to recover and have a smaller chance of breaking on the next bend. Defoliation Mistakes
Defoliation is the act of purposefully removing fan leaves from a cannabis plant to expose more nodes/bud sites to a higher amount of light. Defoliation takes back space and light taken by fan leaves, and instead makes both things available for plant matter that can actually grow bud (among other benefits). Most Common Mistakes Wrong Medium
Defoliation - amongst other things - is meant to help growers capitalize on two
things in short supply: grow space and light. When it comes to growing indoors, this is a constant battle since indoor space is usually limited and grow lights give off a finite amount of light. And although a 1000W light can give MUCH more light than a plant needs, the area to which that light can reach is very limited...unlike the sun!
Defoliation is meant to help solve problems that many
outdoor growers never face in the first place. If you have the room and privacy to grow in a backyard, you likely aren’t worried about how to cut down on the amount of space your plant uses. And since the sun has amazing penetration and power, there isn’t much need to try to open up the plant; it’ll grow tons of buds regardless. In short, defoliation isn’t of much use to outdoor growers.
First Time Grower
I hate to do this again, but it’s just as true with defoliation as it is with manifolding or ScrOG. If you try this on your first grow, you’re lowering the chances of success and thus you being happy with your first attempt. It's always a good idea to tackle a grow once on easy-mode, and then try your hand at some more advanced techniques.
Plucking the Wrong Leaves
Defoliation is meant to open up the plant so more light can get in. This is accomplished by removing fan leaves and fan leaves only! Pulling sugar leaves, or growth tips can mean less bud, lost bud and/or slower growth for that part of the plant. This is a picture of a fan leaf: Remember that this is the only type of leaf you want to remove when attempting defoliation. Also, keep in mind that the removal of leaves shouldn’t be random. Before
you pluck one, try moving it to see if it lets light through to a growth tip or generally a part of the plant that will use it.
Pulling Leaves Too Early
Younger plants, especially those grown in hydroponics under a metal halide, tend to take on a shorter and bushier look than if they were grown otherwise. When you see
what looks like a little shrub packed with cannabis leaves, your instinct may be to pull some, but you’ll need to make sure to factor in the age and health of the plant before moving forward.
Even if the plant looks bushy, make sure that removing leaves will actually benefit another part of the plant. Also keep in mind that your plant should be in full-on vegetative mode, meaning that it’s growing at a pace that makes recovery easy. If you pull leaves from a plant that’s sickly, small, has only a few
leaves, or is just plain bad at recovering, you’ll be waiting for days or even weeks before your plant bounces back from the procedure.
Are there pitfalls you’ve run into when trying to employ training techniques? Have you found something that has saved you time and effort and can possibly do the same for your fellow growers? Let us know!
Critical Kush: Slow-hitting Potency & Easy to Grow |
Some strains are super potent and can be felt immediately, but Critical Kush is different...
Critical Kush is a battering ram!
It just happens to be a slow-acting batter ram!
If you you're interested in cannabis that is high in potency and easy to grow, but takes
slightly more patience to appreciate...
Critical Kush will BLOW YOU WAY! |
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Nebula Haze:
I'll be honest with you, when I first started growing, I struggled. Now, it is my mission to
make it easier for new growers to get started as well as help advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We are updating and adding articles every single week and our goal is to eventually build a comprehensive growing resource so anyone and everyone can grow if they want to! If we all share the knowledge there's more buds in the world for everyone :) |
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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 can be 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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