All Things to do with Topping, FIMing, Mainlining, LST, Supercropping, Defoliating

I thought I’d start another thread that talks about all the different ways we can train plants to improve yields or tailor our girls for a particular grow style. This is the place to show off your skills. Lets see some pics.

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Here is a link to mainlining or manifold training and it’s advantages. This is the method in which I’ll be training my plants. I’m going to be using clones for the first grow which isn’t ideal, but still works. I will post pictures of my clones as I begin to train them. http://www.growweedeasy.com/mainlining-nugbuckets

@milessadowsky. I just saw the spotlight tour of your facility. Very impressive and beautiful. It looked like you’re growing using the SOG method, with nets used as the plants stretch and bud out. Can you explain your process and method from veg to bloom? Do you use any trimming or training methods?

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@milessadowsky 11d

Hey Gary! Thank you. I have two rooms operating at the moment. We are moving to greenhouses in the near future so we are running 36 1000 watt gavita e series. I grow in 2 gallon pots of pure coco drain to waste. I usually run 32 plants per 4x8 tray. I top once in veg and strip the plants to one node on the main branches the day of flip. This saves me a lot of under-pruning work in flower and virtually eliminates any larfy underbuds. I spend most of my hands on time with the plants defoliating on top of the canopy, plucking any leaves that are blocking lower nodes. Some people are scared of plucking leaves but in my experience defoliation is super important especially in scrogs. One room is 1000 sq ft with 24 lights and the other is 600 sq ft with 12 lights. Let me know if you have any other questions and excited to see what you have in the works.

Just posting this to this topic…

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Hey Guys. Gary I really like the way you are training your plants. Does the increased yield make up for the extra veg time?(assuming you are indoors) Also, about how much time does it take to mainline each plant? Thank you.
@garymorgan

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@nickB - Welcome to the Growers Network! I look forward to hearing more from you. I’m a fairly new grower, and about to come online as a legal grower in Alaska. I haven’t tried mainlining before, so this is a new experiment for me. I’ll be growing hydroponically using the Current Culture/ Undercurrent system as my license limits my cultivation to 500 sq. ft. The design of my building is to allow the plants to grow larger vertically. I don’t have a plant limit, but with the cultivation square footage limit it’s almost the same scenario (How to get the most out of a small area or limited number of plants). With the undercurrent system I can grow a set number of plants much larger than the norm, at an accelerated pace. My veg time would normally take 6-8 weeks from clones to produce a 30-36" plant. Mainlining will likely add two weeks. Since my Flowering time is 8-10 weeks depending on strain, I should be able to mainline veg on a parallel course with my flower room. It’s best to mainline from seed, so I’ll likely have to get a few week head start on seeds every cycle.

As I said though, I’m in the process of starting this whole cycle, so on paper it looks good. I’ll take pictures each step of the way with my mainlining and once I have enough to show I’ll share. I’m open to any suggestions and advice. I hope this answered your question? My first grow will begin with clones (not ideal for mainlining), but I’ll be using plants from seed after this cycle. Right now my clones are just about ready to get transferred to net pots from my cloning machine. I had 100% of the clones root, 48 out of 48. I’ll be vegging in 5 gallon bubble pots and mainline training from here on out.

One reason I want to try mainlining is that I think it will give me a more consistent yield. While multiple toppings would work fine, and probably produce close to the same yield, mainlining should improve yield slightly. More importantly to me, each branch off the main stem will produce identical size buds as the other branches. Everything should be uniform around the plant. Hopefully that means a consistent bud throughout, with little variance in testing results branch to branch.

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Thank you. Alaska wow the environment is a little different there than where i am in AZ. Everything you are saying seems great. I wish you the heaviest of harvests. And please do post pictures. I would love to see how those girls look before they go into flower. thanks again and Happy Growing.

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Bumping this one for the newer folks. Anyone want to share their methods?

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