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Low Stress Training vs High Stress Training Cannabis

Low Stress Training vs High Stress Training Cannabis

Using low stress training and high stress training to increase cannabis yields

Stress training is a very effective way to get more out of your plants.

For most growers stress training is a way to increase yields. However if you’re growing indoors and have limited space you could see yourself using stress training to prevent your plants to outgrowing your space too.

What is stress training?

Stress training involves putting your plants through specific forms of stress, so that they produce a specific response. For example, if your plants naturally grow tall, you can train them to grow outward instead of upward.

When it comes to yields, some plants may divert most of their energy to one central flower, while smaller bracts are ignored over time. With stress training you can force your plants to divert energy more evenly for more flower sites and inevitably more yields.

There are two different forms of stress training for plants, low stress training and high stress training. It goes without saying that these two methods will produce different results, but you can achieve the same goals with both.

Low stress training

While it may take more time to see results compared to high stress training, low stress training is still a highly effective (and the most common) way to take control of your plants.

A common form of LST would be de-leafing. By removing smaller leaves on the plant that aren’t directly attached to a flower site, your plant will take that energy and focus it elsewhere, and without leaves to take it, it goes right into your flowers. Less leaves also means that light will be able to hit more of your plant.

Another LST method is tying plants down. Using ties or wire designed specifically for plants, you can tie down branches that keep growing upward so they train themselves to grow outward instead.

As you can see with both of these LST techniques, you aren’t damaging the plant or modifying in any extreme way. The results of these techniques will take longer to appear, but will work just as effectively as other high stress training methods.

High stress training

High stress training, while more impactful, is also more risky. Certain plants can only take so much stress and knowing what your plant can handle is essential before you go and start cutting the top off, which is one common high stress training method.

Topping your plant is when you cut off the the top of the main stem of your plant. While it sounds extreme it is highly effective at creating new nodes and flower sites. Topping can be done from the time you transplant a clone up until the first couple week of flower.

Super cropping is another high stress training technique that utilizes stem mutilation to decrease the height of the plant and stimulate growth. The goal of super cropping is to break down the inner fibers of the branch so that the stalk becomes pliable and can be trained into another position, all without harming the outside of the stem in the process.

Compared to low stress training, high stress training is more risk for more reward so to speak.

Is stress training cannabis essential?

The short answer is no. If plants were designed to be broken, shortened, tied down, we wouldn’t have to do it. Any plant will grow just fine without any sort of training.

However for experienced growers that want more out of their plants, using any sort of training technique will help keep your plant under control, increase yields, save space and more benefits when done correctly.

What is Topping? How to Top Cannabis

What is Topping? How to Top Cannabis

what is cannabis topping?

High quality yields are the goal of every grower. Topping your plants can be an easy way to increase your plant’s development for great results.

The process of topping is just about as simple as the name implies; cutting off the top of your plant. Sounds crazy right?

It makes sense when you think about though. Certain plants have a growth pattern that makes them grow taller, with a focus on a central flower.

While other smaller flowers may develop underneath the main flower, they won’t be as vigorous or strong due to the energy focusing on the top of the plant.

While this isn’t the case with all varieties of flowering plants, when you’re growing a plant with tall vegetative growth and a centralized growth pattern, you can benefit from topping.

What is Cannabis Topping?

Topping your plants might sound as simple as chopping off the top portion of your plant, it is a little more in depth than that. If left to grow on its own, a cannabis plant will grow vertically, focusing its energy on one main stalk.

The result is one long dominant cola with smaller stalks surrounding it. These smaller stalks will produce small, larfy buds that won’t be that good and the overall size and yield of the plant will be small.

Topping makes a cannabis plant bushier—by cutting off the main stalk, the plant will redirect its energies to the smaller side branches, which will grow out. If you let a cannabis plant grow naturally, it will usually grow one main stem, but if you top the plant when it’s young, you can cause it to grow multiple colas in basically the same amount of time!

During the vegetative stage of your plants’ growth cycle, cutting off a specific portion of the top of your plant can focus more growth hormones to the lower half to a more lush and even canopy.

After being cut, your plant will use more energy to regrow its central flower, and a portion of that is distributed throughout the rest of the plant.

How to Top Cannabis

For your first time topping cannabis, a good rule of thumb is to cut the plant above the 5th node of your plant, between the 6th and 7th node ideally. Doing so will give you enough branches on the bottom for your plants to bush out properly.

If you top lower than the 6th, you are going to be cutting away a significant portion of the upper growth on a plant.

If you want to continue toppings on the same plant, be sure to cut each branch above the second or third node to allow the plant to grow out properly. These toppings are more subjective, and will depend on how much you want the plant to bush out and how big you want the final plant to be.

When you top the plants, you are completely removing the upper growth. No new growth will develop from the growth tip that has been cut. This allows the lower lateral growth to assume the dominance.

Since there are two growth tips at each node, you effectively double the number of dominant growth tips every time that you top the plant.

Why You Should Top Your Cannabis

The benefits of topping are self-evident. If you compare a plant that is topped to one that is left to grow normally, the topped cannabis will always have bigger yields, more colas, and more flowering nodes than the plant left alone.

Topping cannabis helps focus more energy where your plant needs it most, and topping allows more light to hit portions of your plant that may have been blocked by their tops originally. As a form of Low Stress Training (LST), topping cannabis is one way to take more control over your plant’s production without seriously risking the plant’s health.

Unless you do it completely wrong, topping is an effective training method to produce bigger yields. Who doesn’t want that?