Issue #12 - Sunday, July 8, 2012
Dear Fellow Grower,
In today's issue you'll discover...
- How to grow manageable, high-yield marijuana plants indoors - Part 2 of a 2-Part Series (today I'm focusing on advanced growth control techniques)
- Nebula's 3 picks for POTENT top-shelf strains that are easy to grow yet produce buds with huge bag appeal in Check it Out
- The answer to a question about what to do if your seedling starts growing sideways
- A review of straightforward grow book that explains how to grow marijuana hydroponically indoors in the Marijuana Growing Book Review section
We hope you enjoy this issue of Grow Weed Easy!
Happy Growing!
Nebula Haze and Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com)
"Believe me, the drug of freedom is universally potent."
~Natan Sharansky
How to Grow Short and Bushy Marijuana Plants
(Advanced: Growth Control Part 2)
By Nebula Haze
I hope you enjoyed our last issue, which covered the beginner to intermediate marijuana growth control techniques.
Today we'll be getting into the more advanced techniques, which will allow you to finally grow your marijuana plants in whatever shape you want...
However, these techniques are NOT recommended for total beginners or those not familiar with how the marijuana plant normally grows.
Please only experiment with new techniques when you have nothing to lose! We don't want to be responsible for anyone losing their precious crop!
That being said, these techniques will allow you to dramatically improve your yields... with the exact same equipment you have now. This is because I'm going to show you how to grow plants that lie flat and horizontal, for total light coverage which equals bigger buds
Growth Techniques We'll Cover Today
Defoliation: Remove Leaves to Control Growth
Low Stress Training (LST): Change Cannabis Grow Pattern With Bending and Supercropping
Topping and FIMing: Cannabis Control Techniques that Involve Cutting
Control Your Cannabis Growth with Defoliation (Removing Leaves)
Read even more in-depth marijuana defoliation tutorial here
WARNING: Only defoliate marijuana plants that are vibrant and healthy. Never defoliate an unhealthy or sickly plant!
Defoliation has two purposes, one for the vegetative stage, and one for the flowering stage.
Vegetative Stage: When you remove leaves from your cannabis plant, you are taking away energy it put into vegetative growth.
This will cause your cannabis to slow down growing, especially if you remove a lot of leaves.
In the vegetative stage it is used to control the growth and structure of your plant. Bascially leaves removed from any "branch" during the vegetative stage causes that branch to grow more slowly.
When combined with other marijuana growth control techniques in the vegetative stage, you can grow plants that don't have the signature 'Christmas Tree' shape that's so annoying to cover properly with indoor grow lights. Instead you get more of a flat "bed" of growth that's evenly covered by your grow lights.
Removing leaves can be a bad thing if you want your plant to be growing upward as fast as possible because it will definitely slow down the growth of the plant for a little while.
However, most small-scale growers would rather have a well-managed short plant than a tall, unruly plant even if it ends up needing a bit of extra time during the vegetative stage to recover from the defoliation.
Pulling leaves also seems to cause the plant to grow much wide and bushy in general.
Flowering Stage: Many growers (myself included) feel that buds seem to grow much fatter if they are directly exposed to light. We believe that defoliation during the flowering stage actually dramatically increases your yield.
For example, if I have a bud that is covered by leaves, it doesn't seem to grow, even if it has leaves that are getting light.
And marijuana plants aren't the only plants that are affected by the phenomenon of increased yields from defoliation. It's well-document that other plants, including cowpeas, experience significant yield increases when their leaves are defoliated during the flowering stage (up to 50% of the leaves!)... (source)
Nebula Haze's Theories About Defoliation:
In my mind (totally a guess here that is not based on science) it seems like buds that are covered by leaves would not be accessible to bees and other pollinating creatues.
As a marijuana plant (or any kind of plant), it makes sense that all effort would want to be focused on growing buds which can be pollinated, which means focusing on buds exposed to light and air.
Therefore, by exposing all the buds to light and air through defoliation, you're signalling that all buds are positioned for possible pollination, so the plant focuses on growing all the buds.
I also theorize that in the wild, the cannabis plant is equipped to lose many of its leaves, whether they're eaten by bug or animals or somehow are lost some other way.
<-- End of Nebula's Theories -->
In my experience, when buds are exposed to direct light and open air, it will start bulking up right away, within just a few days.
This phenomenon seems to explain the 'popcorn' buds that tend to pop up at the bottom of the cannabis plantwhere there is no light getting to the buds, even though the leaves around them may be getting plenty of light.
Therefore, during the flowering stage I like to strategically remove leaves that I feel are covering up any buds, or are covering up a lot of other leaves.
I also always use defoliation in either stage when I notice my plant is 'stretching' or growing taller than I'd like, or if a particular "branch" is growing too fast.
Whenever the plant seems to be growing too tall, I will go through and remove several of the fan leaves to both try to get more total light to the bud sites, and to get the plant to stop growing upwards so fast.
Right after changing the lights to 12-12, the cannabis seems to have a stretch period, and defoliating will reduce the height gained.
After a defoliation session, I notice that the cannabis plant will stop any upward growth for several days to even a few weeks, depending on how many leaves I took. Buds continue to fatten at an accelerated rate, even though the plant isn't growing taller.
Defoliated plants are easier to manage, stay healthier (fewer pests and less mold) and the buds keep getting bigger.
There is definitely some controversy about this cannabis control technique.
Some growers do not want to lose a week of growth, or may want to grow tall plants.
However, I strongly recommend experimenting with defoliation yourself to see the results if you are trying to grow short, bushy, controlled cannabis plants.
I recommend starting small on healthy, fast-growing plants, by picking just a few leaves that are covering bud sites, and see what you think!
Low Stress Training (LST): Control Cannabis Grow Patterns with Bending (and/or Super cropping)
This technique is considered a "low stress" way to control your marijuana plants. Unlike the more aggressive methods listed below, low stress training such as bending, tying down, and supercropping do not involve cutting your plant.
Instead, the ideas is to actually 'bend' and otherwise gently manipulate the plant to control growth so it grows how you want.
For most growers, the goal is for flat, horizontal rows of buds, instead of the natural "Christmas Tree" shape.
The main way to control this is to bend over any colas or "branches" that are taller than the rest and keeping them in place tying them to something or using weights.
I highly recommend getting a spool of twisty tie (soft, bendable wire) to tie your plants down with. This can be tied to weights, to the pots your plants are in, your hydroponics bucket, or most anything. It's wire, so it can be easily hooked around branches without having to tie anything and get your hands in the plant.
Some also gently bend flexible branches until they snap slightly or crush the bent part between their fingers to cause slight damage to the bent point. This technique is known as super cropping.
Read full super cropping guide here
Manipulating your plant with bending or super cropping causes the entire plant to naturally grow more bushy, while you're also controlling the parts of the plant that aren't growing the way you want.
Basically you're training the plant to grow into the shape you desire, like a marijuana bonsai tree. You train the plant slowly and take care not to hurt you plant. You don't want to snap any of the branches, and never try to bend stiff branches or they'll just break off.
By using this method alone, you can grow a plant that conforms to any shape that you want.
If I am growing two strains of marijuana, and one tends to be taller than the other, I'll bend over the taller one as much as 90 degrees so that it is the same height as the shorter plant.
I also bend the tallest branches down, crush the 'joint' between my fingers, and tie the branch down to the pot she's growing with (or to fishing weights on the floor, or anything else you can use as an anchor).
Most growers want to avoid the Xmas Tree shape because it's hard to get light coverage and instead encourage a plant to grow with more of a flat plane of buds.
This allows a more even distribution of light and the the whole stem of the bend plant will get equal access to the light. Eventually all the buds on a bent branch will start growing upward toward the light. After initially bending your plant, growth will be slowed for few days as the plant recovers.
In addition, one of the natural reactions to being extremely bent over is the marijuana plant will stop trying to grow upward as much.
As a result, all the lower branches will start getting more bushy.
Bending, supercropping, and other low-stress training are great ways to maximize your marijuana yields whne you have a small amount of vertical room.
Topping and FIMing: Cannabis Control Techniques Which Involve Cutting Your Plant
As far as methods that involve actually cutting the plant, you have two main options. One is to 'top' the plant and one is to 'FIM' the plant.
I personally recommend FIMing over topping...
FIMing is less traumatic to the plant (barely slows down growth), stimulates the plant to grow 4 main nodes in one cut (instead of just 2 like with topping), and seems to cause the plant to grow bushier than topping.
In both cases, you remove some of the growth on the end of the main cola, which causes the plant to stop focusing on one cola (like a Christmas tree) and instead to create many bud-laden colas (grow more bushy).
If you choose to use either of these methods, you want to do it when the plant is young, usually when it has around 3-5 total nodes formed.
Your plant will need some time spent recovering in the vegetative stage after topping / FIMing, though generally this just causes the plant to 'fill out' more instead of growing taller, which is desirable.
You do not want to use any cutting method on your plant if it is in flowering, especially never do it deep into flowering. This is a prevantative technique, not a cure for bad preparation.
Trying these methods during the flowering stage will stress the marijuana plant when it should be focusing on making buds, and misses the whole idea of topping or FIMing (to control how the plant grows so that you get even light coverage).
By the time your plants are in the flowering stage, much of the growth structure has already been created.
If your plant is already too tall, my suggestion to try using a combination of bending your plant, supercropping, and defoliation to control its height. If you're still in the vegetative (non-budding) stage, try to change it to flowering as soon as possible by changing the lights to 12-12.
Topping Your Marijuana Plant
It's best to top a plant when it is very young, and only has 3-5 nodes (sets of leaves) in total.
"Topping" the plant means cutting off the newest node on your marijuana plant's main cola, directly above the leaves of the second node.
 After topping or FIMing, the connections
to each node become enlarged at the
base, this is because the plant is spreading
energy more evenly across the whole plant |
In other words, cut through the stem right above it's second set of leaves from the top.
This will cause your plant to transfer its energy to two new main colas, as indicated by the two yellow dots in the diagram above.
These 2 new colas for a V which can easily be bent to spread wide. You can top these two new colas a few weeks later and have 4 total colas.
The other huge benefit to topping is how the plant tends to grow bushier afterwards, spreading its energy much more evenly around to the whole plant.
Often lower branches rise up to become very much like colas.
The remaining nodes will all show signs of being strengthened, as pictured to the right.
As a result of topping your plants early, you never end up with a plant that grows in the shape of a "Christmas Tree," a growth structure that most indoor growers hate because it's so tough to get good light coverage on a plant like that with indoor grow lights.
FIMing (Pinching) Your Marijuana Plant
After FIMing, there should still remain a
"mowed" top, as pictured above |
FIM stands for "F*ck I Missed" referring to the fact that it's like topping your plant, only you're taking off about 20% less, leaving a "mowed top" as pictured at right.
This is also often refered to as "pinching" the top of the plant.
To FIM the plant, you simply pinch off the newest growth, or cut just the tips of the newest growth off, making sure to leave a bit behind.
This is much less traumatic to the plant and will cause your plant to grow 4 main nodes. FIMing causes the plant to grow very bushy, and the other nodes will becomes strengthened just like when topping.
I personally recommend FIMing over topping, it is less traumatic to the plant (barely slows down growth), causes 4 main nodes in one cut, and seems to cause the plant to grow bushier than topping.
After FIMing, the pinched top will look
a bit weird growing in |
The only time I ever top the plant is when I want to really slow down the growth of the plant (when it's getting out of control tall, or you're trying to slow her down compared to other plants). Even then, I feel that defoliation is the most effective way to slow down height gain.
Be warned, when FIMing your plant, the leaves you pinch off will look a bit weird when they grow in.
You now know some of the most effective advanced marijuana growth techniques...
Stay tuned for next week where I will be giving you all a complete picture guide for marijuana problems and nutrient deficencies.
About Nebula Haze
In response to the need for more tutorials aimed at new growers, Nebula co-founded GrowWeedEasy.com in 2010 with fellow grower Sirius Fourside.
Since then, Nebula has published dozens of growing articles in print and online, stars in several online video lessons, and continues to dedicate herself to serving the needs of the medical marijuana growing community.
"My mission is to show other medical marijuana patients how easy and fun it can be to grow pounds of killer weed out of your closet."
Join Nebula Haze on Twitter Join GrowWeedEasy.com on Facebook
Check It Out!
Want to grow short, BUSHY marijuana plants?
Start with one of the proven strains below!
Each strain has been personally tested and recommended by Nebula Haze to grow the kind of short, controlled plants that every indoor grower dreams about.
Plus the buds produced are DANK and POTENT!
Quick Tip
Plant leaves look sick?
Hey, it happens to every grower.
I just got received this note from a reader on GrowWeedEasy.com:
"I've been to dozens of websites for advice when I decided to start growing and your site is BY FAR superior to any other site out there. The explanations are so simple and the format is very user friendly. Keep up the good work!"
Question: Plant growing sideways! What do I do?
I have been using the Stealth Hydro system and following your " bubbleponics grow guide." Things seem to be going well. The stalk feels strong and healthy, however it has fallen over. I have a very small oscillating fan that is on low, which was causing it to very lightly rustle in the wind. Is this something I should be concerned about related to the health of the plant? Is there a solution you know of? Thank you so much.
Answer: It sounds like your plant may be "stretching" upward, as if towards the sun in the wild.
Did your stem get kinda long before growing the first set of leaves? If so, you may need to move the lights a bit closer (to increase the light intensity so it stops 'stretching'). Nothing to worry about though.
Reply: Wow, thanks for the quick reply! Yes it did get long before the first set of leaves. I will try moving the lights closer asap. Thanks again!
Marijuana Growing Book Review
by Logan Edwards
 They should change the name of this book to "Grow Great Hydroponic Marijuana Indoors For Dummies" and everyone would know exactly what it's about.
This book is not a comprehensive grow bible, yet it is definitely a complete and straightforward beginner's manual for those growing hydroponic weed indoors.
If you feel like you have gaps in your knowledge of the basic process of growing, or if you want a simple, easy-to-understand guide to gently walk you through your first few grows, this book will serve you well.
While this is a great guide for hydroponic grows (including coco coir and other soilless mediums) with high intensity lights, the author Logan Edwards does not offer much information for those who want to grow marijuana in soil or use alternative grow lights like CFLs or LEDs.
Topics include setting up your grow room, equipment, light schedules, grow room security, the life stages of marijuana, and the harvesting/curing process.
One of the things people love and hate about this book is Logan Edwards chopped out most of the "behind-the-scenes" science of growing, so you're left with just what you need to know to successfully grow your crops.
This simplification is perfect if you find other grow guides too complicated and want something simple, though the knowledge-hungry may want to learn more about what's going on down at the cellular level.
Pros:
- Illustrations on how to germinate seeds, take clones, harvest and properly cure your weed
- Easy to understand and step-by-step; no scientific charts or huge words
- Everything you need to know about growing weed via hydroponics
- Explains what equipment is needed including grow lights and nutrients
- How to plan and set up your grow room
- Complete explanation of all phases of growing
Cons:
- Doesn't explain some of the cheaper growing options like growing marijuana with CFL grow lights
- Doesn't cover soil or outdoor growing
- Doesn't go very deep into the "science of growing marijuana" which can leave you hanging if you run into a problem (check out our picture problems guide if you run into any problems).
In addition to the hard copy version, if you have a Kindle, Android phone, or iPhone and want to have this grow guide with you at all times, there's a kindle version available too.
Order hard copy or get instant access to this grow bible on your Kindle
Read More GrowWeedEasy.com Grow Book Reviews
Let us know your thoughts on today's issue.
Post your comments here.
Remember - sharing is caring...
Forward this email to a friend!
 Copyright © 2012 GrowWeedEasy.com
NOTE: If URLs do not appear as live links in your e-mail program,please cut and paste the full URL into the location or address field of yourbrowser.
Disclaimer: Grow Weed Easy only recommends products that we've either personally checked out ourselves, or that come from people we know and trust. For doing so, we may receive a commission.
Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized Financial, Legal, or any other kind of Advice. The contributors to this magazine grow legally under their local laws. If you cannot legally grow where you live, we DO NOT recommend that you start growing marijuana, as you can be arrested, put in prison, or worse!
Any decision to grow marijuana should only be made after consulting with an experienced lawyer or other legal adviser. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment or legal situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized Financial or Legal Advice. Any investments and steps recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your lawyer or other legal or investment adviser.
Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized Health Care Advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed health care professionals. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized Health Care Advice. Any Health Care recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your Doctor and licensed Health Care Advisor.
| 
