WEED, The Official Thread

[highangle]

Looking for some trimming advice on my outdoor grow. Do any of you top your plants to promote more lower growth? Or just removal of the large fan leaves for more light to the bottom of the plant? What say you?

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Dude, manifolding or mainlining can triple your yields, and it looks like the perfect time to get after it!


https://www.growweedeasy.com/manifold
https://www.cocoforcannabis.com/main...nnabis-plants/

[forty]

Looking for some trimming advice on my outdoor grow. Do any of you top your plants to promote more lower growth? Or just removal of the large fan leaves for more light to the bottom of the plant? What say you?

like most things, it depends...

outdoor the sun is way brighter and has a lot more penetration so i dont stress ripping leaves for that reason alone, but i do rip lower growth that i dont want to fully develop and will rip fan leaves if any mold concerns or its an overly bushy strain

usually i dont top outdoor unless some sort of space issue, but i do stake down the branches and try to spread it out as much as possible and will bend branches aggressively

indoor im way more aggressive in controlling growth, but outdoor i let them run a lot more free and do their thing once spread and staked

also worth noting is i grow from clone and not seed, so the growth traits are different, from seed you may find more need for topping im just not familiar enough to know and do what works for me

[highangle]

Mainlining for 16-64 colas works good as shit outside. Gonna need some hog wire and lots of growing medium!

[gravitylover]

I've done that with tomatoes that were getting too tall. It works! I never would have thought to do it with weed. Thanks.

[singlecross]

Thanks for the inputs so far... I’m growing from clones and space is not a concern. I’m certainly no pro and just wasn’t sure about how aggressively to manicure an outdoor grow. I did trim a bunch of fan leaves last year and that worked well. Curious about topping this season. Guess I’ll experiment and see where it goes.

[highangle]

I've done that with tomatoes that were getting too tall. It works! I never would have thought to do it with weed. Thanks.

I use it to pull >1g/w indoors... Were I you with those plants, I'd top them to the 3rd node [clone those tops!], counting from the bottom, give them a day or so, and lop off nodes 1 & 2. This will be your main Y of the entire plant, and you'll wonder if it's going to be worth it, given how most of your little plants are gone! But it'll be so worth it!
Let your two mains grow 3 or 4 new nodes before you LST to spread them out, then top them to make 4 mains. And so on...

When you're done topping [about a week before equinox or induced flower], you should have nothing but stem going to Ys, then main colas, which should get 30-40" long and thick as a soda can if you're feeding a good yielder an adequete diet. Then mold will become your primary threat [unless you're in the desert], closely followed by RSIs from all that trimming ...

Manifolding works great indoors too, esp if you typically have to manage clones for a couple months before they can go into the flower tent.

[forty]

absolutely, "mainlining" (which is just lst and topping) can work great outdoors, but its utility is in its ability to control plant size and maximize colas in a small space with even canopy for light penetration

the benefit of growing outdoors is to have a large space and good light penetration, things mainlining doesnt capitalize on, which imo makes a lesser useful strategy for outdoors

outside i want to utilize the benefits, which for me is to grow tall healthy plants in soil and let them run wild, im not looking for 64 colas at knee height, im looking for 150 colas over my head haha

some of my old indoor, i would call this lst and heavy defoliation, but you could call it mainlining and schwazzing



you can see it was effective in its results, although should have lollipopped far more aggressively with lower growth before flower set in



outdoor i dont take nearly as much care and just let it go wild, which for me yields better than trying to control things by limiting growth, its also a hell of a lot easier and faster and i process most of my outdoor into chocolate so not stressed on cola quality in the same as if smoking flower, not to say some of my outdoor hasnt produced very good quality bud



in the end its a weed, its basic gardening, give it food, water, and sun and enjoy the fruits of your labor

[highangle]

The main point of manifolding [diff from mainlining] is to have nothing but bare stem between the growing media and where buds start to grow. Uncluttered nutrient pathways. Focused growth energy. Plants tying to balance bud mass with their tremendous root mass...



8 tops is minimal. I'd spread these out a bit and let them grow another day or two to make it easier to top each for the Round of 16...By the time it came to flower, 32 tops would have a couple or 3 nodes of new [indoors]. Regardless, no suckers or side shoots until the topping/forking is done, and keep all forks even, in terms of node number they're topped. By end of stretch, the colas will be 18" tall indoors and the tops will start short stacking their last 2-3". Some keep going an have to get bent over, and eventually thrown under a net...

Outdoors with much more growing media and root mass, you'll want to have your topping done a couple weeks before flowering, so you get colas twice as long, which you'll want to spread out and support with trellis or hog wire. You can start with tomato cages, but make sure they're big enough and don't get hot like a branding iron in the full sun. Late in flower, you won't be able to reach them, so make sure they're not going to grow into your 6" main stem...

[riser4]

A buddy tops the outdoor ones so he can keep them below the height of his fence. He's done alright in terms of yield even with VT's ridiculously low allowed number of plants. He has a similar problem to me, neighborhood teenagers. However, unlike me, none of them live in his house.

[TBS]

I just start pinching off buds starting with third whorl. Then each new doubled site gets pinched, and by the time I switch to bloom I have 20-25 good cola sites. Then use a Scrog net to manage height of each bud

But I grow indoors.

[highangle]

The standard for high indoor yield is a gram/watt of salable nugs for HID light, 3g/w for LED. We all know pretty close what we pull. Training and pruning to maximize the available lumens is what separates the pros from the bros who do OK, but know they could do better.

https://www.growweedeasy.com/manifold

[riser4]

Sea of Green. Just saying.

[TBS]

The standard for high indoor yield is a gram/watt of salable nugs for HID light, 3g/w for LED. We all know pretty close what we pull. Training and pruning to maximize micromoles of Photosynthetically Active Radiation is what separates the pros from the bros who do OK, but know they could do better.

https://www.growweedeasy.com/manifold

FIFY
Lumens is for humans
PAR is for plants - they give no fucks about light outside the range of 400-700nm. Plants also generally give no fucks about photons at 550-625nm (green part of spectrum)
</lighting nerdery>

The other thing is that commercial indoor growers do very little pruning/trimming/topping. Most are running 24-36 plants under a 4x8 light and vegging for only two-three weeks before flipping to bloom. More bloom cycles > bigger plants.

As Riser sez, screen of green FTW indoors.

[highangle]

FIFY
Lumens is for humans
PAR is for plants - they give no fucks about light outside the range of 400-700nm. Plants also generally give no fucks about photons at 550-625nm (green part of spectrum)
</lighting nerdery>

The other thing is that commercial indoor growers do very little pruning/trimming/topping. Most are running 24-36 plants under a 4x8 light and vegging for only two-three weeks before flipping to bloom. More bloom cycles > bigger plants.

As Riser sez, screen of green FTW indoors.

Don't fucking lecture me on PAR lumens or what "commercial growers" do for their fucking businesses. I'm trying to show you assclowns how to increase your yields, and all I see are, "What I do is..." - so fucking what? You don't pull a kilo/light with legal plant numbers, so stfu and maybe learn how.

[Bobby Stainless]

This is fun.

[ötzi]

You'd think the weed might make people less cranky.

[NW_SKIER]

Clearly he isn't smoking any.

[riser4]

I secretly replaced his edibles with piss gummies. So now we know who pissed in his breakfast.

[highangle]

Sea of Green. Just saying.

I'm aware of internet forum consensus. Have any of the bros here ever explained why commercial growers [those ancient masters!] don't really use SOG that much [aside from the fact that many get taxed per plant stem]? Hint: labor and materials input per SOG plant rival those of 4' tall plants... It's a fucking PITA to even water 24-48 stems, much less defoliate, pot them up, or even inspect them all. Spaghetti lines clog, and it's tricky to get them to flow equally. "Flood/Drain" you say? Show me a commercial operation using F/D SOG in commercial production. There should be plenty, right?

How about NFT? With NFT and CO2 a commercial grower can grow monster plants and buds in the same time [or less] than I can grow more or less normal plants. Why don't all commercial growers use NFT? Because if you sneeze too loud, or there's a meteor shower, or power spike, you just lost your whole crop. NFT is so sensitive to the slightest misstep that even those with the balls to try it as a business venture usually find some other way to grow their weeds. It requires a fucking ISO 9000 cleanroom environment to keep pests and diseases from stealing all the nugs...

Proper topping and training will double yields over random topping, or letting the plant do its own thing. Mainlining/manifolding is how to do it. That's all I'm trying to say.

[highangle]

You'd think the weed might make people less cranky.

Seen it too much: Someone will post something high-effort and informative on a weed site, with impressive pics and details. Before Page 2 there'll be a handful of low post count studs with no creds witnessing about what they prefer to do in their little CFL cardboard box grows, and how white their ash burns, and various other shit about how fucking cool they are and how they're such awesome croppers... I like to ding those little fuckers right off the bat.

[riser4]

Don't fucking lecture me on PAR lumens or what "commercial growers" do for their fucking businesses. I'm trying to show you assclowns how to increase your yields, and all I see are, "What I do is..." - so fucking what? You don't pull a kilo/light with legal plant numbers, so stfu and maybe learn how.

Thank you for the link. It was interesting and I learned a few things. Unfortunately it was rather wordy. I'm still of the mind that I want more bloom cycles vs more nug per cycle, precisely because of the low limit on legal plant numbers. So if I can up my quantity through improved techniques while still keeping a short cycle, then that's cool. There's as many ways to grow as there are growers. And it's all theory for me now anyway while I still have a certain teenager living at home. Legal rec in my state hopefully on Oct 1.

[riser4]

I'm aware of internet forum consensus. Have any of the bros here ever explained why commercial growers [those ancient masters!] don't really use SOG that much [aside from the fact that many get taxed per plant stem]? Hint: labor and materials input per SOG plant rival those of 4' tall plants... It's a fucking PITA to even water 24-48 stems, much less defoliate, pot them up, or even inspect them all. Spaghetti lines clog, and it's tricky to get them to flow equally. "Flood/Drain" you say? Show me a commercial operation using F/D SOG in commercial production. There should be plenty, right?

How about NFT? With NFT and CO2 a commercial grower can grow monster plants and buds in the same time [or less] than I can grow more or less normal plants. Why don't all commercial growers use NFT? Because if you sneeze too loud, or there's a meteor shower, or power spike, you just lost your whole crop. NFT is so sensitive to the slightest misstep that even those with the balls to try it as a business venture usually find some other way to grow their weeds. It requires a fucking ISO 9000 cleanroom environment to keep pests and diseases from stealing all the nugs...

Proper topping and training will double yields over random topping, or letting the plant do its own thing. Mainlining/manifolding is how to do it. That's all I'm trying to say.

You're smart enough to know that some things that work for home growers aren't practical for commercial and vice versa. Thanks for the link and chill out. You reacted as if I was saying something I wasn't.

[highangle]

Thank you for the link. It was interesting and I learned a few things. Unfortunately it was rather wordy. I'm still of the mind that I want more bloom cycles vs more nug per cycle, precisely because of the low limit on legal plant numbers. So if I can up my quantity through improved techniques while still keeping a short cycle, then that's cool. There's as many ways to grow as there are growers. And it's all theory for me now anyway while I still have a certain teenager living at home. Legal rec in my state hopefully on Oct 1.

With manifolding, you're growing 16-32x 18" SOG colas per plant, and don't have to maintain mother plants.

If you're like most home growers that want to keep things on a roll, you're either taking cuts on day 10 of flower, starting seeds when you figure they'll be tall enough to flower when the current run ends, or clipping mother plants. Any way, you'll likely have to top to keep your veg tent from turning into Insane Clone Posse while you're waiting six weeks for a flower tent to come free.

Perfect time to mainline your next run.

[highangle]

absolutely, "mainlining" (which is just lst and topping) can work great outdoors, but its utility is in its ability to control plant size and maximize colas in a small space with even canopy for light penetration

the benefit of growing outdoors is to have a large space and good light penetration, things mainlining doesnt capitalize on, which imo makes a lesser useful strategy for outdoors

Look at that pic and tell me manifold doesn't maximize space and light penetration to every branch and bud.

[forty]

lol, you sure seem hell bent on being the expert here but sure i can explain what i meant above

manifold is cool, i didnt say its not a good strategy, i said it doesnt take advantage of some of the benefits of growing outdoor which might be beneficial for a beginner

its meant to create an even canopy, something not as necessary with natural sunlight
its meant to control height and growth, something not as necessary with outdoor space and growing in soil or larger mediums

it isnt that its BAD, when done well it produces great results, and with proper planning of timing and strains it should create more yield i agree
its that for a beginner grower its overly complicated and introduces more risk than necessary
its not uncommon for beginners to poorly top and train their plants and end up killing them, which yields nothing

so with a beginner growing outside my opinion is introducing advanced techniques is not as beneficial and instead focusing on what outdoor does provide that makes a grow easier would be a better strategy

the cost of any training technique is time, and looking at those clones and the date on the calendar without knowing location and not being familiar with strain i would guess that to manifold and then allow grow back would put them into flower far later than desired for harvest date

thus getting growth going now and getting them as big as possible may actually yield better than a more aggressive approach

if you disagree with that ok, but my experience has been its better to have a healthy plant thats not perfectly trained than it is to try to maximize yield and fuck it all up, you can always do better next time

for the record i think my best yield indoor was from a 8wk strain a ran to 9 with roughly 10oz from 135w in a 4x4 space with another 2-3oz fluff buds into hash, certainly not pro but i was proud of that run
ive been struggling with my new 200w light as its putting off more heat than expected and i dont have enough exhaust flow to keep up, lots of lessons to learn and now im improving another notch

nothing is absolute with growing, people swore by flushing for years and many still do, but ask a botanist or farmer and they will laugh in your face, give all internet gospel a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to cannabis