What are your methods of plant training for maximum growth rate and yield? Anything like topping, pruning, bending, breaking, defoliating, I consider to all be forms of plant training. Share your process, experiences, and tips!
Example of topping several times, SCROG method of plant training (Screen of Green), and defoliating underneath the canopy.
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In plant limited grow states plant raining becomes important but requires more labor.
Figuring out the exact optimal time and amount to train is guess work and requires lots of trial and error. This is what genetic algorithms are good at.
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I think that when engaging in different types of training techniques its important to take into consideration what your final objective is. For example if you have low ceilings its imperative to keep your plant short so topping would be one means of doing such. However topping can also serve as a great tool for evening out your overall canopy when you have various different strains that have different stretching patterns. The primary rule I have found that has served me the best is to prune aggressively. In commercial applications when there is a deep canopy this is often a requirement as manuvering around plants can often become difficult when the canopy is very dense. More importantly this serves as a preventative measure for making sure that variables such as pest and disease stay at bay. I personally trellis in my first few weeks due to the lack of ceiling height but I also top my plants 3-4 times prior to sending them into flower as my objective is to build a symetrical plant that can support itself but also has between 6-8 kolas. Again It goes back to the idea that training should be done during specified times and more importantly it should be done to all plants in the cycle at once I have found success in redundancy and uniformity.
I’ve topped and tied down before. It’s quite amazing really how this plant will just gladly bend and comply. I’ve even found that you can tuck branches around other for more light dispersal and the plant gladly does it.
That pic is quite amazing.
This canopy looks great. Very nice and even. Great job!
You’re doing quite a few plants- what age are they when you flip to flower?
Thank you! These plants make the most with what they’ve got. When we are training our plants (Usually for 1 week, flip to flower, and train for 1 more week if strain is a stretcher) it is crucial to take branches from dense areas on the screen and tuck them somewhere less dense to even out the canopy. Correct training can give you amazing results for sure…
Hey in this case I was doing roughly about 20 Per light along with 5 weeks of veg prior to the flip.
Adding a couple weeks to veg time, and some training in first week of flower, I think you could reduce your plant count … maybe in half. Do you have time to veg an extra couple weeks?
I was just speaking to a grower today and she concurs that a little longer vegging can lead to bigger yields. Makes sense that a more mature plant will produce more fruit/flower. I think many people veg for a short time and then push flowering to sex them. Then very few go back to veg. Longer veg will give you stronger branches etc and you need that strength to carry those hopefully heavy buds!
In this instance this is a perpetual production based timeline of 15 weeks where each two rows (10) lights are harvested every two weeks our the yields are around 2.4 per light. Although we could push the plants longer I am pretty content on the yield vs the speed of this production timeline. More Importantly our ceiling height in this case is only 12 feet which is why its such a short timeline as I feel any longer may cause plants to be too close. As the tallest 24k we run was reaching as high as 70 in plants.
Those numbers are pretty good, and your setup makes for nice consistent harvest. If you were to train them; it would give your ladies more time to veg and develop while flattening the canopy out to where you want it (so they don’t get too tall). I’ve seen guys do this with 8-9ft ceilings too. Best of both worlds, beats your height restriction and increases yield. 3 per is definitely doable, we have guys doing 3.5+ per 1kw. Steel grid trellis is important to keep all dominating branches down though.
