Main-Lining Cannabis – Grow Weed Easy

Nebula’s Cannabis Grow Journals & Experiments (Side-by-Side Tests)

Nebula Haze — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 20:12:10 +0000

by Nebula Haze

Over the years, I’ve run a few side-by-side experiments with growing cannabis plants. I am almost always surprised by something, and I thought you might be too. So I decided to keep a list of all my marijuana-growing experiments in one place. You can also check back here to see whatever is the current experiment. I also decided to include other past marijuana grow journals for you to check out while you’re here. Contact us and let us know what experiments you want to see!

Here are the cannabis experiments and grow journals starting from the most recent. Scroll down for a quick overview of each one!

Experiment Grow Journals

Regular Grow Journals (no experiment)

More past grow journals soon. I’m slowly going through all my old grows on Instagram and turning them into cannabis grow journals on the website. My hope is to one day contribute to the body of science surrounding cannabis cultivation.

Defoliation vs No Defoliation in the Flowering Stage

Does a 3-Day Dark Period Before Harvest Increase THC?

I’ll make a graphic soon, but here’s a quick summary of the results:

Before 3-day dark period: 18.4% THC average
After 3-day dark period: 19.7% THC average

Topped vs Natural with Auto-flowering Plants

LED Grow Light Showdown: Mars Hydro TSL-2000W vs Spider Farmer SF-2000

Super Soil (“Just Add Water” Soil) vs Coco Coir cannabis grow journal

315 LEC vs HLG 300 LEDs side-by-side grow journal

Viparspectra LEDs vs HPS

The post Nebula’s Cannabis Grow Journals & Experiments (Side-by-Side Tests) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Grow Weed Easy – Learn How to Grow Cannabis Tutorials

Nebula Haze — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:07:58 +0000

Grow Weed Easy – Learn How to Grow Cannabis

GrowWeedEasy.com teaches you how easy it is to grow weed. Growing weed can be easy when you know what to do, but most “how to grow marijuana” tutorials make it seem like you need a degree in horticulture.

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Even first-time growers produce great harvests when they follow our tutorials.

Who Made GrowWeedEasy.com?

Grow Weed Easy.com was started in 2010 by home growers Nebula Haze and Sirius Fourside. Together, they built a free online “encyclopedia of cannabis home grow” with 650+ expert home cannabis cultivation tutorials about every aspect of growing weed.

GrowWeedEasy.com is now the biggest and most comprehensive source of free home grow information in the world. We show you how easy it is to grow your own marijuana at home.

The GrowWeedEasy.com Ethos

Our Goal: You grow as much top-shelf weed as possible, with as little time and effort needed to grow your desired yields and cannabis bud quality.

Whether you’re a total beginner who wants to start growing cannabis indoors for the first time, or an experienced grower who wants to upgrade your skills to Pro level, this website was built for you.

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FOR SERIOUS GROWERS ONLY

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If you’re reading this right now, you want to grow great cannabis at home.

Cannabis plants isn’t a regular house plant, but learning how to grow isn’t as complicated growers make it seem. We’ve spent the last 16 years breaking down the home grow process so anyone can learn it.

The key to consistent harvest results is simple: follow a proven system developed for home growers.

You could waste an entire grow learning through trial and error…

Or take the shortcut and harvest a sea of fat, dense, beautiful buds that smell great. At home!

Follow our 5-week course and get walked through each part step-by-step. Build by experienced home growers and honed with hundreds of students since 2019, we ensure you achieve great results on your very next harvest.

Learn How To Grow Top-Shelf Weed at Home!

Start Your First Class TODAY!

You may be asking yourself these common growing questions:

“How do I grow marijuana indoors?”

Read this guide on how to grow marijuana indoors. Or check out this article to learn what materials you need to get started growing your own marijuana!

Luckily, it’s really easy to get a cannabis seed to sprout!

“How much money will it cost to get started?”

If you’re considering growing weed, it costs as little as $300 to get started growing or a bit more for a semi-automatic, high-yielding bubbleponics grow system. See examples of yields to expect, electricity use & startup costs for different setups. Read this article to see even more growing styles with different price ranges.

“Where can I get marijuana seeds?”

Check out our How to Buy Marijuana Seeds Online Guide (with delivery to every state of the USA) to safely get your hands on good genetics. Starting with good seeds lets you choose the looks, smell, and effects of your buds!

Learn where it’s safe to buy cannabis seeds online (2026 update).

What do good cannabis seeds look like?

Learn about the best marijuana beginner strains and how to research and find the right strain.

Cannabis buds are generally green, but can also be pink or purple with certain strains.

“How much will electricity cost each month?”

If you’re just growing a few marijuana plants for personal use, it will cost you $20-$100+/month for electricity, depending on what grow lights (electricity) and nutrients you use. On average, I’d say a hobby-size grower might pay about $50/month to grow, but it depends greatly on your setup and local electricity costs! How much will electricity cost each month?

“How can I increase my marijuana yields?”

We have quite a few techniques to choose from or combine! See some of our most popular pages:

Super Cropping – A simple technique to bigger yields
Simplest Guide to Growing Short & Bushy Marijuana Plants
LST (Low Stress Training) – Training your plants can easily double your harvest!
Or check out our page on the controversial defoliation technique

Even More Ways to Increase Cannabis Yields

Increase Light Intensity (plus choose right light for desired yields & possibly add CO2)
Manipulate How Plants Grow (a free way to yield more bud indoors)
Provide Right Nutrients (low Nitrogen in the flowering stage, and remember sometimes less is more!)
Control Growing Environment (let the growing environment work for you)
Harvest Plants Properly (most importantly, don’t harvest early!)
Lastly, it’s important to remember that the strain has a major effect on yields!

Two small cannabis plants can yield several ounces of premium weed!

“How can I grow weed privately?”

Read guide on growing weed indoors without anyone knowing. But remember the most important factors to stealth growing: “No tell, no smell, no sell.” Never tell anyone, not even your best friend, that you’re growing. Be on top of preventing smells, and never ever sell cannabis. Breaking one of those 3 principles is how 99% of growers get found out!

“What if my plants get sick?”

The most common issue a grower runs into is a pH imbalance. Barring that, your marijuana plants likely either have a nutrient deficiency, heat or light stress, or are being attacked by some sort of marijuana mold, pest or bug. Whether you call it weed, cannabis, sinsemilla, skunk, pot, marijuana, or something else, the plant known as Cannabis Sativa is a hardy weed in the wild and can actually be easy to grow indoors at home when you know what to do.

Growing Medical Marijuana

“Medical marijuana” has become a household name. The body of evidence for medical marijuana in the treatment of cancer and other illnesses is growing every day. And for those who need medical marijuana, growing weed indoors is the perfect way to ensure a safe, regular supply of buds, for cheap.

In fact, when you grow weed indoors for personal use, you often end up with way too much. If you catch the growing bug like I did, and if you start enjoying the process of tending your cannabis garden just for the sake of gardening, you’re going to have to find a way to press, cook, freeze, and concentrate all your extra buds. 🙂

As you probably know, both medical marijuana and recreational cannabis have been decriminalized or legalized in many places around the world and weed is becoming legal in more places every day! Yet there still aren’t many simple indoor “how to grow weed” guides for beginners (even for those who legally grow, such as medical marijuana users and those who live in places where marijuana is legalized for personal use).

If so, I know how you feel. It can be hard to weed out all the bad information on the internet and find well-researched, free tips or instructions on how to grow your own cannabis. That’s why Grow Weed Easy.com aims to be a simple online resource that explains from start to finish what you need to do when growing cannabis so you can learn how to grow cannabis with great yields and potent buds, even if you only have a small grow space like a closet or even a computer case.

We’ve grown cannabis out of closets and have gotten ounces of buds and you can too. Grow Weed Easy.com covers many popular cannabis cultivation topics, including:

A comparison between different cannabis grow lights including experience-based information about LED grow lights
A page that teaches you the basics of how to grow weed
Detailed how-to weed growing tutorials
How to start growing weed tomorrow (simplest cannabis growing guide!)
Grow 4 oz with a 100W LED <– An Easy Way to Start Growing!
Our famous grow guide that teaches you how to grow weed using bubbleponics (hydro).

Start Growing Weed Today!

Grow Weed Easy is run by a panel of experienced cannabis growers, including the founders Nebula Haze and Sirius Fourside, who originally teamed together to bring you GrowWeedEasy.com. Due to the demand for more marijuana growing information, we’ve also started an inbox magazine all about how to grow weed, with additional tutorials, tips, and tactics sent to you each week. Simply sign up to start getting free expert growing articles delivered to you! All the information available at GrowWeedEasy.com is completely free and we regularly update the site and make new additions.

Looking for a growing book?

If you are interested in doing a bit of reading or would like to know more about the science behind marijuana hydroponics or horticulture, I strongly recommend viewing our page of Marijuana Grow Book Reviews. Read reviews of marijuana grow books. We would love to hear about your experiences with growing cannabis. Whether you are a pro grower already or are just starting your first plant, we have learned so much from our readers both beginners and masters! If you have any suggestions, comments, concerns, or just want to ask some questions about your marijuana grow, please contact us!

Happy Growing!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside

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Home Grow Masterclass – FOR SERIOUS GROWERS ONLY

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Link Guide to Growing Cannabis Tutorials

Nebula Haze — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 03:08:57 +0000

by Nebula Haze

In addition to the search bar, this link guide helps you navigate through the Grow Weed Easy website. Learn about growing topics you won’t find anywhere else! This is a shortened list of all our cannabis growing tutorials, as the website has over 500 articles and tutorials!

Full List of EVERYTHING on GWE ← Over 500 Articles & Growing Tutorials!

Start Here – Beginner Grow Guides

Complete Beginner’s Guide
How do I start growing my own weed indoors? (get help choosing your setup)
How to Grow Weed in 10 Steps
Simplest Cannabis Grow Guide Ever!
How Long Does It Take to Grow Weed? (Marijuana Growth Timeline)
3 Steps from Beginner to Legendary Grower
Complete New Grower’s Shopping List

Cannabis Life Stages

Germination
Vegetative Stage (Getting Bigger)
Flowering Stage (Making Buds)
Harvest

Choosing…

Common New Grower Topics

Problems & Symptoms

Plant Training (Indoor Tricks for Bigger Yields)

Grow Mediums

Nutrients

Grow Lights

5 Best LED Grow Lights 2025 (Yields, Speed, & Bud Quality)
Compare Types of Cannabis Grow Lights
- Fluorescents (T5s) – Good for Seedlings Only (not powerful enough to produce potent buds or big yields)
- CFLs (Spiral Bulbs) – Not Recommended (LEDs are much better)
- LED Grow Lights – Recommended for Most Home Growers
- MH/HPS Grow Lights – Good Alternative to LEDs, But Run Much Hotter
- CMH / LEC Grow Lights – Good Alternative to LEDs, But Run Much Hotter
- Plasma / Magnetic Induction Grow Lights – Not Recommended (poor cannabis growth)
How Does Light Spectrum Affect Marijuana Plants?
How Far Away Do I Keep My Grow Lights?
You Can Actually Give Plants Too Much Light?!
Grow Light Upgrade Guide: Yields & Potency Explained
Cannabis Grow Lights: What’s the Best Size?

Best LED Grow Light Articles

5 Best LED Grow Lights 2025 (Yields, Speed, & Bud Quality)
LED Grow Lights: Too Much or Not Enough Light?
LED Grow Journal: Mars Hydro TSL-2000W vs Spider Farmer SF-2000
LEC vs LED Grow Lights: Side-by-Side Cannabis Grow Journal
Nebula’s Auto-Flowering Grow Journal (Topping vs Natural) – cannabis plants are grown under LED grow lights

Environment

Plant Care Tutorials

How to Improve…

Yields
Bud Quality
- 7 Environment Effects on Bud Quality
- The Secret to Excellent Bud Quality
THC Levels
CBD Levels
Smell/Taste
Density
Bud Color (How to Grow Pink or Purple Buds)
Glitter (Make Buds Sparkle with More Trichomes)
Bonus: What Determines Yields?

Buying Seeds

Recommended Strains

Best Autoflowering Cannabis Strains for Yields & Potency
List of Sugar-Dusted Strains (Heavy Trichome Genetics)
10 Cold-Resistant Cannabis Strains
14 Heat-Resistant Cannabis Strains
Which cannabis strains stay short? (Best strains for small spaces)

Auto-Flowering Strains

Edibles

Decarboxylation: How to Decarb Your Weed (crucial step for just about every edible recipe)
Best Weed Butter Recipe
- How to Make Great Brownies with Weed Butter
Canna Caps
How to Make Cannabis Gummies (Weed Gummy Bears)
How to Make Cannabis Tinctures
How to Make Hash Oil (aka Cannabis Extract Oil, Rick Simpson Oil, or RSO)

Extracts (No Solvents Used in Any Recipe)

Solventless Extraction Showdown – Bubble Hash vs. Dry-Ice Hash!
Dry Ice Hash (Made with Dry Ice)
How to Make Bubble Hash (Made with Ice Water)
How To Make Your Own Homemade Rosin (dabs)

And Lots More!

Safety & Preparation

Just for Fun

Weird or What? Cannabis Mutations & More!
Creatures on Cannabis (Cute Photo Gallery)
10 Gift Ideas for Cannabis Growers

Submit Pics

Want More?

Complete List of EVERYTHING on GWE ← Full List (Over 500 articles & growing!)

Thanks for visiting! We hope our website helps you find the growing tutorials you were looking for. We’ve written hundreds of growing marijuana articles and unfortunately we can’t fit them all on this page, so we encourage you to use the search bar on the right side (or top of the page for mobile users) to search for articles you don’t see here.

Happy growing!
Nebula & Sirius

Use this “Navigation” page to find the pot growing topic you’re interested in, or click here to see every single page on the website!

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Bigger Buds with Nebula’s Easy Manifold (Cannabis Main-Lining Tutorial)

Nebula Haze — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 22:39:14 +0000

by Nebula Haze

Table of Contents

Intro: What is “Main-Lining” Cannabis?

Ultra-Quick Guide to Building a Manifold

Supplies List
Main-Lining Diagram (Easy manifold for growing weed)
Important Concepts to Increase Success
Step-By-Step Instructions (with pics)

Tips & Hints for an Easy Manifold

Strain Choice
Growing Environment
Extra Plant Training Help

What is “Main-Lining” Cannabis?

The cannabis “main-lining” grow technique is the process of building a “manifold” on a cannabis seedling to form bigger buds and increase yields in the flowering stage. It was originally described by a talented marijuana grower named Nugbuckets who gave it the name main-lining. Nugbuckets generously gave us permission to share his easy manifolding weed growing technique on GrowWeedEasy.com.

A “manifold” means all branches come from a single point at the base of the plant. This happens when the plant’s one main stem is turned into two main stems at a young age (full instructions below).

This results is an orderly plant with multiple thick, long buds in the flowering stage. Today’s easy manifold tutorial will show you how to copy these results in your cannabis garden.

Here’s that cannabis plant at harvest with arm-sized buds.

You can barely see my hand under there.

Main-lining vs Manifolding – They are exactly the same thing, just two words for building a cannabis manifold. I call it manifolding, but many growers use the word “main-lining” since that is what Nugbuckets originally called this training technique. However, the term main-lining can mean something unsavory, so I personally choose to use the term “manifolding” when describing the technique of making a manifold.

Original example of marijuana manifolding / mainlining by Nugbuckets.

No matter what you call it, we experimented with his technique for growing cannabis indoors for several years. Over time, we slightly altered the original manifolding process by Nugbuckets. This modification increases yields and saves time (you get to harvest sooner), but at its core the idea is the same.

Example of Nebula’s Marijuana Manifold in Action by Bud (with 16 colas per plant)

A cannabis “manifold” is simply a plant where the main stem was split evenly in two when the plant was young by cutting off the top of the plant. The grower then does a few more cuts in a specific order as the young plant grows. There is nothing magical about this technique. It’s just a way to train the plant to grow, and it works well for simultaneously breaking apical dominance (tendency to grow just one main stem) while creating many big colas/bud sites without much effort.

To form the base of a “manifold,” the main stem of a young cannabis plant is split in two by cutting off the top of the plant and removing all side stems except two main ones.

When the plant is split this way, it completely destroys the “apical dominance” or the tendency of the plant to focus mostly on its one main stem. With your plant’s apical dominance broken, it tends to make many long and thick buds sites (colas), instead of just one big central bud.

After the base of the manifold has been created, the grower uses it to create several bud sites on each side. As the cannabis plant grows out, this structure results in several evenly sized main “colas” (or main stems where buds form). This is opposed to a naturally grown marijuana plant, which will usually produce just one main cola indoors.

Cannabis plants branch out heavily after being manifolded, making many main bud sites.

Indoors, the manifold technique can be used to increase your yields by giving you a “canopy” of fat buds. You will get the greatest increase in yields if you’ve had trouble in the past as far as filling your grow space with many buds. Below you can see the above plants with a cannabis manifold grown out – there are many huge buds under the grow lights instead of just one or two like with a standard cannabis plant.

When manifolded cannabis plants are allowed to get tall, they create very long thick colas

In the Nebula manifold method, we keep ALL the colas that will produce big buds. These plants still have several weeks until harvest to fatten up further.

Unlike with Nugbuckets’ original method, we keep all the big bud sites (“colas”) that reach the top of the plant. This results in bigger overall yields than just keeping the original 8 colas recommended by Nugbuckets. Another difference is that you do one less cut, which saved recovery time without lowering yields in our experiments.

The Nebula manifold method also saves you 1-2 weeks of training in the vegetative stage compared to the original technique, so you get to harvest sooner!

Because of the shorter training process, these plants made it to harvest just 4 months from seed, yielding about 11 ounces in total!

Does manifolding work on short plants? Since the Nebula manifold saves you an extra week or two in the vegetative stage, it is suitable for shorter/smaller plants than the original Nugbuckets main-lining method. If you follow the instructions in this tutorial, a cannabis plant can be effectively manifolded as long as it has room to grow at least 2 feet tall.

I trained this plant according to this tutorial and was able to harvest 6.2 ounces on a single 2 foot tall plant!

Manifolding needs to create long colas to be effective, and very short plants can’t do that. If the final plant is shorter than 2 feet, the manifold technique won’t be as good at increasing yields since you’re not playing on its strengths.

Along the same lines, a manifolded plant also needs to be grown under a powerful grow light like modern LEDs, MH/HPS bulbs or an LEC (also known as a CMH). More powerful lights means that the buds will get filled out all the way down, instead of just at the tops. Because of that, unfortunately manifolding doesn’t work well for growing short plants growing under fluorescent grow lights, but that’s what topping is made for!

This manifold tutorial gives you step-by-step instructions on the process of manifolding cannabis the Nebula way to get more buds and bigger yields. If you follow the steps and instructions exactly as written, it’s almost impossible to mess up. Think of it like a recipe, but it’s a recipe for plant training.

Why build a manifold when growing cannabis indoors?

Big Yields – The main reason I use main-lining to build a cannabis manifold is because this training technique results in big yields from any indoor grow setup. By building a manifold in the early vegetative stage, you can get an extra 40% or more yields compared to not training your plants. I’ve used several other types of cannabis plant training techniques, and main-lining cannabis is a consistent way to get great yields every time. It takes some of the best elements of all the other techniques, and combines them into one step-by-step process that’s hard to mess up if you follow the instructions. No more guesswork.
Simpler than Other Training Methods – Because you can follow each step word-for-word, without having to make any judgment calls of your own, it’s difficult to mess up. In this manifold tutorial, the basic idea of main-lining cannabis is to simply cut the plant a few times in a certain way, over the course of a few weeks. Then you just arrange the buds where you want using twisty tie. Each of the colas tends to grow about the same height as each other, which makes it straightforward to get a “sea of colas” that are each thick and dense, without a lot of popcorn or larfy buds. There’s nothing you have to do to make this technique work for you, or customize it to your setup.
Less Time Spent Training – Since you just top the plant a few times and place buds, it really doesn’t take much time to get marijuana plants to become a desirable shape with lots of colas indoors. Some training methods can create similar shapes and canopies, such as ScrOG (using a net), but training plants to weave through a net can take up to an hour a night during the intense process of filling the net in the late vegetative stage. Conversely, manifolding only takes a few minutes for the first few weeks of the vegetative stage, then basically no more training is needed besides holding up heavy colas late in the flowering stage.
Training is Over Early in the Plant’s Life – Since all the training happens in the first few weeks of the plant’s life, you’re pretty much done with training early on. Once I’ve finished my manifold, I know I’m past the “hard part” of training, and can spend the rest of my time focusing on caring for my plants, instead of getting frustrated about trying to control their shape and size.
Less Likely to Get Bud Rot or Mold – Manifolding cannabis builds a support structure for many colas that are thick and uniform, but not overly fat. This reduces the chance of getting bud rot or other types of mold. When a cannabis plant grows naturally with one main cola/bud under very powerful grow lights, the cola can get too thick and increase the risk of developing bud rot (when the inside of the buds simply start rotting away) or developing mold during the drying and curing process. While the manifolding method produces many big thick colas, the plant spreads the energy more evenly between them so none of the colas will get to the point where the grower simply can’t maintain them properly.
Less Time Spent Trimming – Cannabis buds need to be trimmed before they’re ready to smoke. With only long, dense colas and no airy small cannabis buds to trim, the process of trimming your buds after harvest goes by much faster than working on lots more smaller nugs. Your hands will thank you 🙂
Buds Dry More Evenly – Since all the buds are a similar width and density, drying is a lot more straightforward. All the buds tend to be done drying at the same time.
Impressive Bud Appearance – While big and small buds are essentially the same when it comes to potency, many growers prefer the appearance of large dense buds, which is what you’ll produce on a manifolded plant.

Manifolded cannabis buds tend to be beefy

What’s the Difference Between the “Old” Way and the “New” Way?

You can build a cannabis manifold the “old way” (the way Nugbuckets did it) and split everything completely evenly like this:

In the original technique, each main stem is the same number of “steps” from the base of the plant, which helps the plant deliver resources more easily. But in order to achieve this perfectly symmetrical shape a grower needs to cut and prune the plant 3 times, waiting a week or more in between each pruning session. That can add several weeks to the cannabis vegetative stage because each time you prune, you’re losing a lot of the growth built up by your plant.

Or… You can skip all that wasted time and build a marijuana manifold the way Nebula does it in this manifold tutorial! The Nebula manifold doesn’t look quite as even and symmetrical but will get you identical results in less time, with less wasted growth. This process is not fundamentally different in any way; it is basically the same principle but modified slightly for improved results.

In our experiments, the results are the same with a “modified” manifold, but you save time.

Even when the plant isn’t centered, the Nebula manifold technique works perfectly, it works great in most setups and with just about any plant.

Note: There are four times when it is not a good idea to manifold your cannabis:

When NOT to Manifold Your Cannabis

Auto-Flowering Strains – It’s difficult to manifold auto-flowering plants because they only give you a few weeks before they start making buds. Stick to standard/photoperiod cannabis strains for the best results with manifolding.
Weak Grow Lights – For this technique, you want an MH/HPS, LEC, or 150W+ LED grow light. Manifolding doesn’t work well for increasing yields on plants under small grow lights with poor penetration, like fluorescent lights or small LEDs. Plants grown under smaller lights won’t get good results with manifolding, and you may even hurt their yields with all the chopping and removal of leaves and growth. Smaller grow lights don’t have the penetration to take advantage of the manifolding structure. For smaller lights, standard topping is a much more suitable technique that produces similar results.
Short Grow Space – Manifolded plants need to be allowed to grow to at least two feet tall for the best results since manifolding makes long dense colas. If you don’t have that much height available for your plant to spread out in your grow space, you might consider other cannabis training methods instead, since these techniques are more suited to shorter grow spaces.
Unhealthy Plant – Never start main-lining a cannabis plant that isn’t already healthy and growing fast. For an unhealthy cannabis plant, the main-lining process will slow growth even more and may stunt the plant.

Nebula’s “modified” manifold technique saves an extra step (saving you 1-2 weeks of growth in the vegetative stage) compared to the manifold technique by Nugbuckets, and in our experiments the results are identical.

Here is a video of what main-lining and building a manifold can do for you.

This technique of building a manifold at the base of cannabis plants has been adopted by many marijuana growers in dozens of different grow setups, and it’s not always done the same way. The following steps do not describe the process exactly how Nugbuckets does it, but I’ve had identical results with main-lining cannabis this way and it saves time compared to his original steps. Many growers have asked me for a quick, concise manifolding tutorial, so here it is!

This is the super condensed version for main-lining cannabis indoors, exactly as I do it now (after some trial and error). The complete tutorial with pictures and notes is below!

Ultra Quick Guide to Building a Manifold

What You Need to Start Main-Lining Cannabis

Healthy, fast-growing cannabis seedling
Sharp scissors
Plant ties (and possibly Soft Wire Ties)
Plant yo-yos (or “yoyo supports”) – although you won’t need these to start, you’re probably going to need these to hold up all your tall, heavy colas when they start falling over from their own weight in the flowering stage!

Plant Ties – young plants
Plant ties are made of thin wire with a plastic coating on the outside. They tend to be more flimsy and don’t have a lot of strength. They are very gentle on young plants.

Soft Wire Ties – to anchor stronger stems
Soft wire ties are made of a thicker wire, with a very soft coating. These are much stronger than regular plant ties, but they will not give way to a strong stem yet will still never cut into the plant. These can be used in situations where strength is needed to hold down a thick unruly cola that wants to grow in the wrong direction. They can also be used as sturdy anchors, with the plant ties above used as “string.”

Plant Yo-Yos – when colas start fattening so much they fall over
In the flowering stage, it’s common for your buds to start falling over from their own weight. Plant yo-yos can be hung conveniently from the top of your grow tent or grow space, and the special hooks at the bottom are ideal to hold onto thick colas without causing any damage to your buds.

Main-Lining Cannabis Indoors
Nebula’s Step-By-Step Tutorial for a Wide-Based Indoor Cannabis Plant

Quick Reference Picture – Main-Lining Cannabis Diagram

1.) Create “Base”

Let young plant grow 6 nodes
Top to 3rd node and clean all extra growth except top 2 growth tips and their fan leaves
Now you have 2 main colas – these form the “base” of your cannabis manifold

2.) Create 8 main colas

Let each side grow 4 nodes
Top to 3rd node on each side
Instead of cleaning all other growth like in the last step, just remove all the growth from the 2nd node on each side, leaving growth from node 1 & 3 on each side
Now you have 8 colas!

Note: You can top each of the 8 colas one more time for a total of 16 colas per plant. However, only do this if you’re going to grow big cannabis plants in a 5-gallon container or larger. For a small-to-regular sized cannabis plant, 8 colas is the perfect amount to give you the biggest buds and yields without spreading out the plant’s energy too much.

3.) Vegetative Stage

In addition to regular plant care, specifically check plants at least twice a week to make sure everything is growing flat like a table. Older stems start getting hard and woody and are more difficult to train, so if you check plants at least twice a week you’ll be able to bend stems while they’re still young and flexible. Getting used to checking on your plants regularly is a great habit that will serve you well in your cannabis growing adventures!
Try to fill every “space” under the grow light with colas that are a few inches away from each other, and all the same height. If at any point you can see a cola is growing taller than the others, gently bend it down and away from other colas.
Use twisty tie to secure stems so everything stays in place, otherwise your stems will turn back up overnight!
Keeping up with this process throughout the vegetative stage gives you a flat, even canopy with many evenly spaced bud sites.

4.) Flowering Stage

Switch to the flowering stage when the plant has reached half the final desired height.
Continue to arrange colas to fill up your space under the light for first 2-3 weeks after the flip to 12/12.
If any colas are growing much taller than the others, make sure to bend them down and away during the first few weeks, securing them just like before. This is especially important for colas growing directly under the grow light since they are most likely to grow too close to the light and get burned!
That’s pretty much it!

Now you just wait for big fat colas to form under your grow lights!

What if you want to make more than 8 main colas? You can top each side one more time in the manifold-building stage to create 16 colas per cannabis plant, like Bud did here:

16 cola manifold per your tutorial. Day 40 flower. Back 2 Durban Poison. Middle 2 Jack Herer. Front one Bruce Banner. It is trained so cola’s start 6″ off soil. Plant 42″ across. No support. Indoor growers can really take advantage of manifolding. ~Bud

Important & Helpful Definitions

Node – A node is a place where a fan leaf attaches to the stem. With seedlings, it’s almost always a pair of leaves, though with clones you may see just one leaf at the node. In this manifold tutorial we’re only dealing with seedlings, so when talking about the “3rd node” for example, it means the 3rd pair of leaves from the base. A fan leaf has serrated edges, so don’t count the first two round cotyledon leaves when counting nodes.

Growth tip – a part of the plant that is growing new stems and leaves. When a growth tip is exposed to light and air, it will start growing. If the growth tip grows tall enough to reach the top of the plant, it’s often called a “cola” or “top”

Cola – sometimes called a “top” a cola is basically a stem with VIP status. Essentially, a cola is a main stem with a growth tip that has reached the top of the plant. The reason they get a special name is because in the flowering stage, it’s the colas that grow the biggest buds. The goal of main-lining is to end up with many evenly spaced colas on your plant, so you get to harvest many big buds!

Topping – To “top” a cannabis plant means to cut off a growth tip. You can cut near the end of a stem, or further down. In this article, you top plants right above certain nodes.

How to Build a Cannabis Manifold – Step-By-Step Tutorial

1.) Create “Base” – Wait until the plant grows 5-6 nodes, top down to the 3rd, then clean all extra growth

Wait until your plant has grown 5-6 nodes, looks healthy, and is growing vigorously.

Why wait? If you start main-lining too early, you can stunt growth and your plant might take longer to recover through the whole process. A plant that has 6 nodes recovers incredibly quickly from topping, while a plant with less nodes than that can be stunted for weeks from a single topping.

Although it’s optimal to start the manifolding cannabis process when the plant has 5-6 nodes, it’s possible to start a little later. However, the later you start the more time you’ll have wasted in the vegetative stage (and wasted time means wasted money), so you don’t want to start late if you can!

Top down to the 3rd node and clean extra growth below it. Basically, you’re just cutting off the tip of the plant, right above the 3rd pair of real (serrated) leaves.

After cutting to the 3rd node, clean off all the vegetation below it. At this point, you only have 2 main stems. You now have created the “base” of your manifold!

This plant was topped to the 3rd node, and all the extra growth was cut away. The two growth tips on the 3rd node and the adjoining leaves are the only thing that was left.

2.) Create 8 Colas

Wait Until Each Side Has Grown 4 Nodes
Top to 3rd Node on Each Side
Remove All Growth From the 2nd Node, Leaving Just Nodes 1 & 3

In this step, we’re going to wait until the new tops/colas have recovered and look like they’re growing fast. Once each side has grown 4 sets of leaves, you’re ready to go to the next step.

Wait until your marijuana plant has grown 4 nodes (pairs of leaves) on each side.

In this step, we’re going to wait until the new tops/colas have recovered and look like they’re growing fast. Then we’ll top all the new colas to the 3rd node again. This time instead of cleaning the whole stem below, we will only remove the growth from the 2nd node. This leaves you with the 1st and 3rd node on each side so after this step, you will have 8 main colas.

I think most indoor growers will be happy with 8 colas and the offshoots that grow from them, but if you do want more colas, keep the 2nd node in this step, or continue to top plants and repeat the steps again. For most growers, you want to follow the tutorial exactly, so let’s walk through this together.

Top to the 3rd node on each side (remove tip above 3rd pair of leaves). Be careful to avoid damaging the growth tips while topping the plant!

There are now 3 nodes on each “branch.” Instead of cleaning everything like the first time, you want to remove the 2nd node on each side, leaving just the 1st and 3rd nodes. You’re almost done!

Now you have just the 1st and 3rd nodes left. This leaves 4 total nodes on the plant, or 8 total growth tips/tops/colas!

Why keep node 1 and 3 on each side? The odd-numbered nodes all face the same way, and it’s easier if your 8 colas are all faced in the same direction. That being said, it doesn’t really make much difference which nodes you leave as long as you have 8 growth tips at the end, since you will be training your plant anyway. But if you keep nodes 1 and 3 in this step as the tutorial says, your manifold will look prettier and be just a little easier to train 🙂

3.) Vegetative Stage Care

As your manifolded cannabis plant is growing in the vegetative stage, watch to make sure your canopy is staying flat, like a table. Check on plants at least twice a week; it’s really easy to train cannabis plants if you’re checking on them regularly (takes just seconds) but it can be frustrating to try to train plants after their stems have already become hard and woody.

Whenever you’re checking your plants, if any stems appear taller than the others, gently bend them down and away from the center of the plant. Use a bit of twisty tie to secure stems in place so everything stays the same height. Keeping up with this process throughout the vegetative stage gives you a flat, even canopy with many bud sites.

Some of these stems have grown taller than others.

Bend taller stems down and away from the center of the plant, securing stems down so they’re all about the same height as each other.

Notice how all the stems have been bent down so they’re about the same height and spread out.

The goal is to arrange most colas around the edges of the plant, with a few colas in the middle so it makes a flat table.

Every time you bend your cannabis plants down, they will turn back up within a day or two, like this.

Not long before the switch to flowering!

Note: To avoid a hydro plant tipping in the net pot like in the above pics (which doesn’t really affect anything as far as growing but doesn’t look pretty), make sure the base of your manifold goes parallel with the length of your tub, instead of perpendicular like the above plant.

4.) Switch to the flowering stage

Once your manifolded cannabis plant has reached half the final desired height, it’s time to initiate the flowering/budding stage. You do this by switching the lights to a 12/12 schedule (12 hours light, 12 hours dark each day). Your plant may double in height during the first 3-4 weeks of the flowering stage (known as the flowering stretch) so it’s important to flip to flower while you still have plenty of room left.

Right before the switch to flowering, give your plant a minimal last cleanup by taking off the big fan leaves, especially in the middle and bottom of the plant. You also want to tuck or remove any really large fan leaves blocking bud sites. Be careful not to damage any growth tips at the base of each leaf.

How many leaves to take off? When in doubt, take fewer leaves than you think you should since you can always come back later!

Give your cannabis plant one last minimal cleanup before the switch to flowering; especially remove large fan leaves.

The manifold you created will power the growth of each of your colas through the first few weeks of flowering.

By the time it’s 3 weeks after the switch to 12/12, plenty of new buds should be forming.

3 weeks after switching to 12/12

If the plant is getting bushy, defoliate the plant again around week 3 by removing the bigger fan leaves, and all the lower stuff that’s in major shadow. In general, if you’re unsure defoliate lightly during the flowering stage since you can always take more away but you can’t put leaves back. The plant will stop making new leaves altogether around week 5-6 after the switch to 12/12.

Your cannabis plant is probably bushy and buds have started forming 3-4 weeks after switching to 12/12. At this point, you may want to do another defoliation session by removing most of the biggest fan leaves. Learn more about cannabis defoliation in the flowering stage.

These are those cannabis plants after a light defoliation session. I removed big fan leaves, bottom leaves, and any leaves that were covering bud sites (to expose the newly growing buds to direct light).

Learn more about using defoliation for bigger yields

Any buds in shadow won’t fatten up properly, so make sure to keep the lower part of the plant clean so all energy is focused on the top main buds. Remove everything near the bottom of the plant that will never make it to the top canopy, including leaves and “suckers” (small stems and growth tips).

Remove leaves and small stems below the line in this diagram.

Plants will slow down in vegetative growth around week 3 or 4 into the flowering stage, and by week 6 they will have stopped growing new leaves altogether, and just be focusing on fattening buds. You need to make sure to leave enough healthy leaves to last until harvest time!

Example of a different manifolded plant

3 weeks after switch to 12/12 – Before Defoliation

3 weeks after switch to 12/12 – After Defoliation

39 days into flowering (2.5 weeks later)

As the cannabis flowering stage progresses, you may still prune away any small growth underneath that doesn’t get light, as well as big fan leaves that block bud sites and can’t be tucked away. Although defoliation (removing leaves) helps with better light penetration on bushy plants in the flowering stage, it’s important to remember that you can always take more but you can’t put leaves back. After 5-6 weeks of 12/12 your plant won’t really grow any more leaves at all! Be careful of going overboard.

Notice how the bottom of the plant has been cleared of leaves, and most big fan leaves have been removed.

Just before harvest.

How much of the manifolded cannabis plant do you keep clean?

All big fan leaves should be removed, but how long you leave each cola depends on the side of your grow light. Bigger grow lights can support longer colas. You want to remove the parts of the plant that will never get access to light, but leave the parts that can take advantage of all the light that does make it down into the plant.

The above plant is under a 250W HPS, which can’t “reach” as far down into the plant as a bigger light. The colas are only about 12″ long because everything below that point was removed because it was in shadow.

The two plants below are under a 600W grow light, which can penetrate two feet into the plant. That is why much more was left on each cola. The parts of the plant that were in shadow were all removed but the remaining buds are still almost 2 feet long. Because the 600W light reaches that far into the plant, these buds will fatten up all the way down.

Basically, clean off parts of the plant that won’t ever get light. Leave the parts of the plant that get direct light.

No more major defoliation after 6 weeks into 12/12. Plant growth slows down around week 4-6 and most strains stop making leaves altogether after week 6-7. You need to make sure to keep enough healthy leaves to last until harvest.

With your well-maintained cannabis plant under a nice grow light, you will be rewarded with long, dense thick colas with huge nuggets of buds! You also get some very chunky buds wherever side stems are exposed to light and air.

Harvest (this is just one of the plants from above!)

Training Tutorial: Get Extra Help Building a Manifold

Cannabis Main-Lining: Tips & Hints

Strain Choice is Important

Matching Cannabis Strains

If you plan to grow more than one strain at a time, it’s a good idea to spend a little extra time thinking about matching genetics that “play well” with each other and that will benefit from having a manifold. When main-lining, it helps to choose strains that are well-matched. Main-lining doesn’t change the nature of the strain and it can be a pain in the butt if you mix a strain that stays short with a strain that tends to grow tall. If you have a strain that tends to stay short, main-lining will help spread out the plant, but it won’t cause the plant to grow the long colas if the strain doesn’t tend to make long colas. Main-lined cannabis plants will grow with the same patterns as normal, just with a manifold. Main-lining won’t force a plant to stay short or grow tall. Their height is determined by you choosing well-matched strains and keeping up with training/bending your cannabis plants.

Works Best with Medium-to-Tall Strains

When growing cannabis indoors, the best benefits from main-lining come from growing strains that are considered “medium” or “tall” in height. These plants will have a bigger “flowering stretch” and may double or even triple in height after the switch to the flowering stage. This stretch is what creates the long colas of a main-lined plant. With a short plant that doesn’t have much of a flowering stretch, you aren’t going to get those long colas, and may not going to get the most from main-lining, especially compared to the time put in during the vegetative stage building the manifold. For shorter strains, or when growing short plants, other types of plant training like Topping might be better at increasing yields and will take less time in the vegetative stage.

Not the Best Choice for Auto-Flowering Strains of Cannabis

It is difficult to form a full manifold if you try to main-line auto-flowering strains. They do not have much time to recover from any plant training technique that involves cutting the plant. If you want to try out main-lining, it is highly recommended to do so with a photoperiod strain (it is unlikely you’ll ever run into an auto-flowering strain unless you order an autoflowering seed from a seedbank – learn more about autos here – https://www.growweedeasy.com/autoflowering-vs-photoperiod).

Start from Seed if Possible

The main-lining cannabis process is much simpler with plants grown from seed since they usually have symmetrical nodes, unlike clones. If you decide to start main-lining clones, just be aware of the overall structure of the manifold you’re trying to create. Don’t follow these step-by-step instructions for clones since this tutorial was designed for main-lining cannabis grown from seed, but use your judgment to try to create a plant with as similar a structure as possible.

Growing Environment

Use Penetrating Grow Lights

Indoor cannabis main-lining seems to get the best results under powerful lights that have deep penetration. With main-lining, you grow long thick colas, and you need a powerful light to fill those colas up with bud. Because lights like CFLs & fluorescent grow lights don’t have much penetration, they aren’t recommended for main-lining. Main-lining performs best with MH/HPS grow lights, CMH/LEC grow lights, or LED grow lights of 150W size or greater. These lights have deep enough penetration to fill the long colas with bud, so they work well with manifolding. With small LEDs, CFLs, or fluorescent grow lights, standard training like topping will be more effective than manifolding at increasing yields and will take less vegetative time.

Cannabis Plant Training Tutorial – LST and Topping Technique!

Topping Technique

When topping, leave a little part of the old stem above the topping point. This helps reinforce the manifold and prevent any main stems from splitting as they are thickened through the manifold process.

I know this may be hard for those who want to make everything completely even and neat. But leaving a little extra stem will help prevent your “elbows” from splitting.

After the colas are well formed and you have a thick stem and manifold, you’ll be able to see the little mini stems (they won’t have grown at all, while the colas would have thickened coniderably). If they bug you, you can cut them off then. I just leave them on until the end.

Combine Main-Lining with LST

Main-lining works very well when mixed with LST (low stress training – gentle bending) to hold down plants in the spaces you want. Just remember that after you tie down a part of the plant, it will immediately start turning up and towards the light.

Split Stems

If cannabis plants ever get an open wound or split any part of their stems, make sure to reinforce the injury (if needed) and immediately wrap with electrical tape, duct tape, or even scotch tape. The leaves on the damaged stem may wilt, but if you secure the injury fast enough, life will come back to the leaves. When using this technique, always make sure you check on the injury regularly to make sure the tape isn’t choking the stem.

How to Secure Cannabis Plants While Main-Lining

You will need to use a few different tools to secure down your plants at various phases of the manifolding process. These are the tools that have worked best for us. You can use whatever you’d like, but I do warn you not to use anything sharp (like string or thread) as it can start cutting into your plants once they start getting bigger and fighting back. The tools listed below will never run into that problem since they were explicitly made for training plants.

Securing your new colas/tops down

Where to Tie… You can tie your new tops down to anything handy – the sides of your container, net pots, etc. Just make sure that you’re tying your colas to something that moves with the plant. You don’t want to tie to a nearby object, use weights on the ground, etc.

When you move the plant for whatever reason, you want the ties to move with the plant. This prevents accidental cola breakage. Growers almost always end up needing to move their plants for one reason or another during a grow, and it’s just a good practice to make sure the plant and container are self-contained and can be moved without disturbing the LST you are doing.

Avoid Using String

It will work well at first, but it can start digging into the “skin” of your plant as it gets bigger unless you cut them off first. When building a manifold, the stems and stalks will end up getting big, and you want something that will

What Are the Best Ties to Use?

I like using a mix of “plant ties” and “soft wire ties” which are both made for gardening and are more gentle on the plant than string. I recommend using both. The plant ties are good for young plants, and soft wire ties are better for larger plants with strong stems.

Now that you’ve got an idea of what tools you can use to secure your plants in the shape you want, let me walk you through everything.

This plant was secured with plant ties, which were hooked to the edges of the container.

In the beginning, I use plant ties. The plant ties are very gentle on young stems & they can be easily molded into any shape, allowing you to create hooks to gently move young cannabis stems where you want them. Once you build your manifold, you won’t need these first ties, and they’ll naturally fall off.

When the plant is responding to training by growing up at the tips, that’s a sign that the main-lining is going well.

The growth tips of a healthy plant grow upwards and towards the light.

At this point, you may start noticing that the base of your two main colas are starting to “beef up” as the plant sends ALL its resources to just those two stems.

The plant is strengthening the connections between the main stem and the new colas, which causes bulging at the base of the colas.

More info on…

Plant Ties – young plants

Plant ties are made of thin wire with a plastic coating on the outside. This material usually comes in a long spool so you can cut off as much as you need at a time. The container usually has a built-in cutter so you can quickly get a piece without any other equipment. They tend to be more flimsy than some of the other methods to secure plants – they don’t have a lot of strength. But this is part of what makes them so great – they are very gentle on young plants.

Soft Wire Ties – to anchor stronger stems

When plant ties aren’t strong enough, you can use soft wire ties to hook around colas or anchors, and use plant ties as the “string”. Soft wire ties are made of a thicker wire, with a very soft coating. These are much stronger than the palnt ties, but they will give way to a strong stem and will never cut into the plant. These can be used in situations where strength is needed to hold down a thick unruly cola which wants to grow in the wrong direction. They can also be used as sturdy anchors, with the plant ties above used as “string.”

Plant Yo-Yos – when colas start fattening so much they fall over

These can be hung conveniently from the top of your grow tent, and the special hooks at the bottom are ideal to hold onto thick colas without causing any damage to your buds. When colas start getting too big to hold themselves up, plant yoyos will help you greatly. With this technique, the plant will produce these long dense colas that start falling over under their own weight and are hard to secure with other methods. Plant yo-yos are perfect for gently stringing up colas where you want without damaging buds. In order to use plant yo-yos, you need something to attach to at the top of the grow space (easy with a grow tent, but may need some creativity in other grow spaces).

Ready to start training your plant?

After topping your plant, you use LST (low stress training) to hold the new colas down to make a relatively straight line. LST basically means gently bending your plants to do what you want. Bending the new colas down will keep the manifold short without much effort, and helps with the whole process of getting the plant to produce a great manifold.

Basically, you’re just bending the colas down and away from the center of the plant, and then securing them so they grow in that position.

You got this!

Jump to…

Nugbuckets’ Main-Lining Tutorial

More Cannabis Plant Training Techniques

Growing Problems & Symptoms

10-Step Quick Start Guide to Growing Cannabis

—

This cannabis main-lining tutorial is a work in progress! I (Nebula) did not create “main-lining” and am not the first grower to try main-lining cannabis. Several marijuana growers asked me to put together a main-lining tutorial based on what I’ve learned so far in my setup, so I am sharing my experiences and personal technique for making a cannabis manifold. I hope this information helps other growers!

Main-Lining – Building a Cannabis Manifold
Create a Marijuana Plant with 8+ Big Colas Using a Simple Topping Technique

The technique of “main-lining” or manifolding cannabis was first described and named by a talented grower known as Nugbuckets. Main-Lining (building a manifold) for growing cannabis is a relatively new technique on the grow scene. At least, it’s only recently that cannabis growers have been talking about it by the name “main-lining” or “manifolding.” Chances are growers have been using similar techniques for decades, but only now has it come to be described by this name.

The idea of main-lining using Nugbuckets’ original technique is to build a “manifold” at the base of your cannabis plant to efficiently deliver resources to all colas. During Nugbuckets’ process of building a manifold, the grower chooses to create a plant with usually 8 or 16 colas (8 is most common, 16 for ScrOG setups, and 32 is rarely an efficient use of plant resources). Here’s an example of a Nugbuckets manifold:

In Nebula’s cannabis manifold tutorial above, she does things just a little bit differently to save time in the vegetative stage, yet while being able to still accomplish the same results as far as increasing bud size and yields!

The post Bigger Buds with Nebula’s Easy Manifold (Cannabis Main-Lining Tutorial) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

600W Hydroponic Grow Journal – 23.09 oz Harvest!

Nebula Haze — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 16:13:42 +0000

by Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside

Quick Grow Snapshot

Strains: Blackjack & Wonder Woman
Grow medium: Hydroponics / top-fed DWC (deep water culture)
Grow Light: 600W HID
- Metal Halide (MH) bulb in vegetative stage
- High Pressure Sodium (HPS) bulb in flowering stage
Nutrients or Additives: General Hydroponics Flora Trio & Hydroguard (formally Aquashield)

View the complete grow setup here

June 16: Seeds sprouted
August 22: Switched to 12-12 flowering light schedule
November 19: Harvest!

Vegetative Stage: 67 days (2 months, 6 days)
Flowering Stage: 89 days (2 months, 28 days)

Total Time – Seed to Harvest:
156 days (5 months, 3 days)

Final Yield
23.09 oz

View full grow journal below!

Vegetative Stage

We started with 2 feminized BlackJack and 2 feminized Wonder Woman seeds.

Because these seeds were feminized, we knew that all the seeds would grow into bud-producing female plants, so we didn’t have to worry about sexing these seeds as they grow older. Learn about buying cannabis seeds online (including feminized seeds), right here.

Here’s a quick diagram to show how growing in a top-fed DWC hydropnic system works:

Learn more about growing cannabis with bubbleponics

Seeds were sprouted June 16 via the paper towel method and were transferred to rockwool cubes and placed in DWC system on June 17. All 4 seedlings were initially placed in one tub together for easy care. Later all chosen plants can be moved to their own tub.

June 17 – Sprouted seeds placed in system

We initially started plants on 24 hour light schedule (24 hours of light a day), but kept the new seedlings several feet under the powerful Metal Halide bulb (which was also turned down to 60% power). The reservoir was filled with plain pH’ed tap water until the plants grew their second set of “real” (serrated) cannabis leaves.

Becasue of the top-fed aspect to our DWC system, we didn’t need to worry about watering the seedlings. We simply needed to sit back and wait for the sprouts to appear above ground, and for the roots to follow the top-drip down into the water reservoir below.

Here they are a few days later on June 29. By this point, we had turned the Metal Halide light onto 100% power, and had moved the light a little closer. This is also when we began adding nutrients to the water, at about 1/4 strength compared to the directions provided by General Hydroponics for a recirculating hydroponic system.

June 29 – Given their first nutrients!

One of the net pots is removed, so you can see the water reservoir below.

You can see that the top right BlackJack seedling is struggling behind the other three seedlings. Luckily, we planted 2 seeds from each strain so that we would be able to throw away the two least-healthy seedlings. Some seedlings just come out of the gate faster than the others, and we look for the ones that seem to be growing fast & healthy, and which have healthy roots.

July 11

We selected the most healthy and vigorous seedling from each strain to become the main plants for our grow.

July 13 – Chose best plant from each strain

We moved our 2 winners into their own separate tubs.

July 15 – Moved to separate tubs

July 18 – Started plant training (main-lining)

Learn all about the main-lining technique here:
https://www.growweedeasy.com/main-lining-technique-nugbuckets

We began main-lining them, which involves using cutting and training techniques to create a manifold at the roots with 8 main colas.

This was our first time main-lining a cannabis plant!

We began by topping down to the 3rd node (set of leaves), then cleaning off all other vegetation that wasn’t on the 3rd node.

At this point, the young vegetating plants were over a month old. Normally it is considered best to start main-lining plants when they have about 6 nodes in total.

When we main-lined our plant, they had more nodes, and were a bit older than they needed to be. While this didn’t affect our results with main-lining, it did unnecessarily add a few extra weeks onto our vegetative stage time.

While we were pleased with our results (as you will see), we believe we should have begun main-lining earlier, and we believe doing so would have cut off a couple extra weeks from our veg time.

July 24 – immediate after second cut

The next step to main-lining is to main-lining is to again top the plants. Now that the plant has been topped twice, she has 4 main colas.

A day later, here’s a view from above the Wonder Woman (click for closeup)

July 26 – Removed other growth tips, leaving just 4 mains

At this point we only have 4 growth tips on the plant. We want 8, so we will repeat this process one more time.

During this point, we had a heat wave. And we believe that the plants seemed to be growing a bit more slowly than usual.

August 1 – Topped again for 8 mains

After the two plants had grown a bit bushy again, with a few more growth tips, we topped both plants again for total of 8 mains. This is basically the end of our main-lining and plant training.

Before

After

Here they are!

Now that we have main-lined the plants to produce 8 main colas, we must give them a little bit more time to gain some size before we signal them to start budding by changing the timers to a 12-12 flowering light schedule.

By allowing plants to get a bit bigger in the vegetative stage, we prepare the perfect structure to produce a lot of buds and get the most from the grow light in the flowering stage.

The only “training” we are doing at this point is tying down any branches down and away from the center of the plant. This helps the plant spread out in a desirable shape with a flat canopy.

Other than that, we are just giving the plants nutrient water and allowing them to naturally grow into a beautiful main-lined shape.

August 13 – Plants are starting to get bushy again

Flowering Stage

August 22 – Switched to the Flowering Stage

Flowering time! This is when plants start making buds!

We changed the timer to be on a 12-12 “flowering” schedule to initiate flowering. The process of giving a photoperiod cannabis plant 12 hours of light and 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness each day caused the cannabis plants to “get the message” that winter was coming and it was time to start flowering..

Growers artificially create a 12-12 light environment for cannabis plants grown indoors to signal the plant to start flowering (making buds).

We switched to the 12-12 flowering light schedule on August 22, so plants were vegged for just under 9 weeks.

While it is generally recommended to switch to an HPS bulb during the flowering stage, we kept the Metal Halide in for a little bit extra time as the blue light from the Metal Halide tends to reduce “stretching.” The yellow light from an HPS is great for flowering/budding, but does tend to cause the plant to grow taller or “stretch” more.

Whenever a cannabis plant is switched to flowering, it will tend to grow a lot of height all at once, known as the “flowering stretch.” By keeping the Metal Halide bulb in for a bit longer, we hoped to reduce the stretch a bit, since we were very happy with the structure of the plant.

August 25 – A view of the two plants

August 28 – The grow tent is starting to get filled up

August 29 – We switched to an HPS bulb to help promote flowering

You will notice that the HPS bulb produces a much more yellow light spectrum. This yellowish/pink light spectrum helps promote budding in cannabis plants. At this point, we still have not seen signs of flowers/buds (which show up as wispy white hairs on the joints of the stems for female plants).

September 7 – Flowering stretch! Look how much they’ve grown in just 9 days

As you will soon see, pretty much all the extra growth that was added during the flowering stretch will turn into long thick colas covered in buds.

Here are those first buds beginning to form

The manifolds we created in the vegetative stage have grown strong and thick, providing a steady supply of nutrients to the plants from the roots:

September 11 – Buds are popping up everywhere

September 19

September 20 – The Wonder Woman is fattening up faster than the BlackJack

BlackJack Bud

Wonder Woman Bud

September 28

September 30 – Comparison of the colas

The BlackJack colas are growing long, thin and spear-shaped, absolutely covered in trichomes

Throughout the flowering stage, the BlackJack has proven to be extremely sensitive to nutrients, and has shown signs of nutrient burn (burnt leaf tips) even at 1/4 strength levels of the General Hydroponic nutrients.

It’s important to note that the heat may be partially a cause of this. Plants drink a lot more water when the temperature is higher, and this may contribute to nutrient overload (nutrient burn) when it’s hot. This is why DWC growers may notice that plants seem to prefer lower levels of nutrients in the summer when they’re drinking a lot of water.

The Wonder Woman colas are growing extremely thick and rounded

In contrast to the BlackJack, the Wonder Woman seems to continue demanding more and more nutrients throughout the flowering stage. We struggled with her showing yellowing leaves (not getting enough nutrients) even while the BlackJack was showing signs of nute burn at the same nutrient strength.

We upped the nutrient strength for the Wonder Woman to nearly twice as much nutrients as the BlackJack from this point on.

I also must admit I was a bit disappointed at how the BlackJack plant was growing at first in the flowering stage (she was a dream in veg during the plant training). But at this point in the flowering stage, she didn’t impress me at all.

All the buds were thin and spear-shaped, while the Wonder Woman was growing these huge top-heavy buds. However, the BlackJack colas were incredibly long and continued to steadily fatten up throughout the flowering stage.

Despite the lack of bud growth so far, the smell from the BlackJack is already amazing, very spicy like a Haze strain, though this smell will get pretty overwhelming in the grow tent by the time harvest approaches. The Wonder Woman produced fat indica looking buds with a throw-back skunky smell that didn’t appear until later in flowering, and not as intense of a smell as the BlackJack.

Things were going great, then…

Another problem…

About 6 weeks after changing to the 12-12 flowering light schedule, we ran into another problem, only this problem actually made us happy 🙂

The plant colas were getting extremely heavy, and stems felt ridiculously weak in comparison. By week 6, the colas were falling all over each other and we were worried about mold (from fat buds touching each other), and also about making sure we were maximizing light to the leaves and colas.

October 9 – Buds start falling over

Plant Support Spools: We got a very helpful tool made exactly for this scenario, known as “plant support spools” from our local hydro store (examples: Sun Spool, Support Spool, Yoyo plant hanger, etc) in order to hold up the colas.

These worked fabulously, and allowed us to hang each cola directly from the top of the grow tent, opening up the plant to both reduce the chance of mold while allowing a great deal more leaf surface area to capture energy from the grow lights above.

Take a look!

October 11 – Tied plants up with plant support spools

Close-up of a support spool below
(hooks the heavy cola directly to the ceiling of the grow tent with string)

October 18 – Buds are continuing the develop

A BlackJack cola

A Wonder Woman cola

October 24 – Everything is still fattening up nicely

A view of the grow tent, with a blue lighter in the middle for size comparison

From this point, the buds are continuing to fatten, but we are most concerned with the color of the “trichomes” (glittery stuff that covers the buds).

Here is what the trichomes look at this point – still mostly clear
(which means it’s too early to harvest)

When looking at these trichomes under a microscope, we can see them turn from clear to milky-white as the cannabis grows in potency.

When the THC begins to degrade, the milky-white trichomes will begin to turn a golden color (often referred to as “amber”). For a more “stony” effect from the buds (and less of the racing thoughts or paranoia which is slightly more common with early-harvested buds), we opt to harvest our buds after at least a few trichomes have begun to turn amber.

Learn more about when to harvest: https://www.growweedeasy.com/harvest

November 17 – Getting close to harvest…

The BlackJack is listed as having a 9-11 week flowering time, while the Wonder Woman is 8-10 weeks. These times are generally considered to start when the plant first starts showing signs of flowers/buds, which usually happens about 2 weeks after switching to a 12-12 flowering light schedule for female cannabis plants. In my experience, and from what I’ve heard from other growers, both these strains tend to do better when left a bit longer than the breeder’s estimate.

Yet no matter what is stated by the breeder of a strain, I highly recommend using a magnifer to look at the trichomes of a cannabis plant. Each plant is a bit different, and the trichomes are the best way to know the exact right time to harvest.

Learn how to determine exactly when to harvest your cannabis so your buds have the greatest potency and medical effects:
https://www.growweedeasy.com/harvest

On November 17, we saw what we were looking for plants finally appeared ready to harvest!

Here’s a look at the trichomes…

We took these videos using the Carson zOrb hooked up to a laptop

BlackJack Trichomes

Wonder Woman Trichomes

At this point, we began flushing the plants (feeding them pure pH’ed water until harvest):

Before we harvested the plant, we were hoping to pull a pound from the tent this grow, and we were feeling very hopeful as the buds were long, dense, and covered in resin.

November 19 – Harvest!

Buds were harvested on November 19, trimmed (and it was a very easy trim job due to the fact that pretty much all the buds came from huge colas with no larfy smaller buds, due to the main-lining we’d completed in the vegetative stage).

A big cola from the Wonder Woman plant

The BlackJack buds weren’t as thick, but still long, dense and covered in trichomes

The buds were hung upside down to dry in our grow tent

Buds dried for about 6 days until smaller stems started snapping, and buds were cut off the branches everything was jarred up. We made medical cannabis oil capsules out of the trim.

Final dry yield was 23.09 ounces for 2 plants

We weighed everything out on our digital scale after buds were dried and trimmed, before placing in jars. We were expecting about a pound (16 oz), so we were both pleasantly surprised by the final yields!

Learn how to grow your own cannabis plants exactly like this below!

Is It Time to Grow Your Own?

Here’s a list of everything used in this grow journal:
(get more info about this setup from the grower right here)

Cannabis Strains From This Journal

Wonder Woman – Creates many, MANY top-heavy bud sites. High yield. Very potent.
BlackJack – Covered in trichomes (great for extracts or hash). Pungent spicy smell similar to a Haze. Highly requested medical strain.

Where can I buy seeds safely?

Growing Environment

Grow Tent:
GrowLab GL120 ( 3’11” x 3’11” x 6’7″)

The grow tent is set up near a window in so we could exhaust the heat from the lights.

Grow Lights & Exhaust

Ballast (for 600W bulbs):
GGL 600W Dimmable ballast

Bulbs:

MH bulb: SunMaster 600 Watt Cool Deluxe
HPS bulb: Digimax Digital Lamp 600 Watt

Hood/Reflector: Sun Systems Blazer 6” Reflector

Exhaust Fan:
Can-Fan Max 6” with speed control

6″ Ducting

Learn how to hook everything up (grow lights & exhaust)

Growing Medium

Hydroponics: Deep water culture (DWC) hydroponic system with top-feed, also known as “Bubbleponics”

Learn how to grow this way: Top-Fed DWC “Bubbleponics” tutorial

Nutrients: General Hydroponics Flora Trio

Additives: Aquashield

pH Tester: General Hydroponics pH Test kit

Tip: Quickly Change Your Reservoir with a Water Transfer Pump!

It makes me so sad to see people struggling to change the water in their hydroponics reservoir. A water transfer pump will make your life so much easier. The inexpensive Sierra Tools water transfer pump does the job better than any other water transfer pump we’ve tried in its price range. This will allow you to easily remove reservoir water and add new water to your reservoir without disturbing the plants. Note: You need 2 x D batteries for this pump to work. We use rechargeable Eneloop batteries.

Smell Control

We used a couple quarts of Ona Gel to control odors for this small medical grow. We weren’t worried about the smell of the air coming out of our exhaust, just of the smell in our living areas (when guests come over). Many growers use a carbon filter as part of their exhaust system, which is much more effective (when set up properly) and will remove just about all scent from the air both in the grow room and outside where the air is being vented out.

Learn how to control odors in the grow room

Harvest, Trimming, Drying & Curing

Magnifier – Jeweler’s Loupe or a Digital Magnifier (we use the Carson zOrb hooked up to a laptop)

Shears for trimming: Fiskars Microtip Snips

Several Quart Mason Jars for Curing

Rubber Gloves (otherwise your hands will be covered in resin)

Learn how to professionally dry and cure your buds every time

Other Gardening Tools

Gently Tie Down plants:
Any gardening ties will do – We use Study Twists & Soft Wire Tie

Hold Up Heavy Buds:
Plant support spools (Sun Spool, Support Spool, Yoyo plant hanger, etc)

Small Fan For Inside the Tent:
The exhaust fan does the heavy lifting as far as air exchange, but a small desk fan inside the tent can help keep air moving below and within the plant canopy.

Humidity & Temperature Monitor:
This Ambient Weather WS-07 Wireless Thermo-Hygrometer lets you check the readings from another room (don’t forget to get 6 AAA batteries

Read frequently asked questions below!

How big is your tent? How do you keep the temperature down?

I am currently using the GrowLab GL120, which is 3’11” x 3’11” x 6’7″ (a tiny bit smaller than 4’x 4′ x 7′). I don’t fill the complete tent so I could probably get away with something that was 3′ x 3′ x 6′, but I like having the extra space to work with the plants.

I use ducting and an exhaust fan to pull hot air out of tent and through a nearby window. The exhaust fan I use is the Can-Fan Max 6” with speed control. It has 3 speeds and is about as loud as a regular powerful room fan when it is set on high. It works pretty well even though I have no AC. Even in the midst of summer, I was able to keep temps under control as long as the lights were kept off during the hottest 6 hours of the day. Now that summer is over, I don’t have any problem with heat.

For complete details, here is a complete explanation of all the parts included in this setup.

Is DWC hydroponics a good choice for a new grower?

DWC is very rewarding once you get a handle of it. It really makes you feel like a mad scientist when you’re mixing up the reservoir.

Some people start with hydroponics and do very well. Other people prefer to start with something that seems more familiar like a hand-watered grow. While grower Sirius started directly with top-fed DWC as his first type of grow, Nebula started growing cannabis in pots of coco coir using CFLs.

If you do decide to try growing cannabis in DWC, definitely don’t beat yourself up if you run into problems your first DWC grow. The cool thing about DWC is if you keep an eye on the plant, you can usually recover from most problems if you react quickly.

I recommend keeping it simple for your first DWC grow. I believe a lot of growers try to add a whole bunch of different nutrients and supplements all at once to make things better, but it can sometimes cause unexpected reactions. I’d stick to a single nutrient line without too many bells & whistles.

For DWC, I like the General Hydroponics Flora nutrient trio (just follow their included schedule for “recirculating hydro systems,” at reduced strength) and Botanicare Aquashield for root health. Those were the only nutrients/supplements we used for this whole grow. I wouldn’t add anything else unless you notice a problem (except maybe Cal-Mag if you know you have soft water or are using distilled/RO/filtered water).

DWC has great advantages(faster vegetative growth being the biggest one compared to soil), but a lot of growers find it tough to get dialed in. You must commit to maintaining your reservoir, which takes at least 20 minutes a week. It’s also important to watch over the plants closely (we check in daily) because if things go bad in DWC, they go bad fast. On the flip side, you also have total control to fix problems almost instantly too, since you can always completely change the reservoir and the roots have a completely new environment.

We have been growing in DWC for a few years, but on a smaller scale (LEDs, CFLs). This is our 3rd full run in this tent with a 600W HID. Last yield was less than a pound, so we are pretty happy with this harvest.

We added a few weeks into our vegetative stage due to a heat wave. We were growing two long-flowering strains and we harvested when the trichomes were pretty much all cloudy with a few ambers here and there.

We went a big longer than the breeder’s recommendations (which estimated 9-11 weeks for these strains). In my experience, if you wait to harvest until all the trichomes turn cloudy with a few amber, it often takes a few weeks longer than the breeder’s rec. Many growers harvest earlier and are happy with the results, but a few ambers is our preference.

No matter what the breeder says, I recommend that growers always go by the trichomes. Every plant is different. I believe most plants have at least a 2 week harvest window when they are good to harvest, and it’s up to each grower to determine what works best, especially for small medical grows like this one.

Learn when to harvest your cannabis:
https://www.growweedeasy.com/harvest

How do you clean your reservoir? I’m using the 10 gallon totes like yours and they are a pain to clean or change the water!

As far as changing the reservoir, we use a cheap water transfer pump to easily pump water in and out of the reservoir. This cheap battery operated Sierra Tools water transfer pump does the job better than any other water transfer pump we’ve tried its price range. This will allow you to easily remove reservoir water and add new water to your reservoir without disturbing the plants. You need 2 x D batteries for this pump to work, just for your information.

Between harvests, I generally clean the reservoir with bleach water or just regular hot soapy water. I throw away the net pots and buy new ones. I also replace all the tubing (I bought a big spool of tubing a while back) instead of trying to clean them out. Lastly, I check all the airstones, pumps and individual parts to make sure everything still works properly and get the system going for a couple days before I germinate any new seeds.

I can’t believe you got plants that big with those little pots!

Those little pots are called ‘net pots’. They are used to hold the seedling plant roots until they grow down into the water reservoir below. The roots are actually sitting in the grey 10 gallon bins which are full of nutrient water. It’s known as a DWC (deep water culture) hydroponics setup.

What are the other empty pots for? Dead plants or future grows? Also, are you growing in clay balls or what is the medium?

This setup allows you to start 6 plants at a time. I use them to plant more than one seed at a time and pick the best one to grow. I also use the other holes to access the reservoir, for example to check levels, add/drain water, etc. Those clay balls are known as hydroton, but they actually don’t make hydroton anymore. I just have a huge bag of it from years ago. There’s replacements out there that are just as good.

What’s the advantage of hydroton vs coir or soil?

Each growth method has their own advantages and disadvatages.

Organic Super Soil – A hand-watered grow like a plant in a pot of organic super soil could arguably be one of the easiest ways to grow, since you basically just need to water the plants. A big advantage of making your own organic super soil is that these growers often don’t need to worry about nutrients or pH throughout their grow. They make the soil right for a plant like cannabis (usually involving a period of composting or letting the soil cook, to achieve the right levels of microbes which basically break down nutrients from the soil and feed them to the roots), then just water the plant, and let her do her thing. A lot of organic soil growers claim that their buds have a better taste than buds grown other ways, and that organic growing is more natural. Unfortunately, this is subjective, so the benefits are mostly up to the growers taste. The biggest time-sink in this type of grow would likely be the process of mixing up and cooking the soil.
Regular Soil – In a regular soil grow (like if you just buy soil from the store), growers don’t have to worry about mixing their own soil or composting, but they do have to worry about factors like providing nutrients to the plant (as it will naturally use up all the nutrients in the soil). They also have to worry about monitoring the pH of the roots, because they don’t have the teaming army of microbes to do it for them. Remember, if the pH at the roots is too high or too low, the plant doesn’t have access to the nutrients and will show deficiencies even if the nutrients are there in the soil. This method takes a little more work while the plant is growing since you have to feed some amount of nutrients and monitor pH, but is much easier and quicker to get started than mixing and composting your own soil which makes it attractive for a lot of new growers. Also, many people have already grown at least some kind of plant in soil before, so it’s a lot more intuitive for some people than hydroponics.
Hydroponics – Hydroponic means that the plants are getting their nutrients directly from the water as opposed to the soil. That means you can grow a plant in a soilless medium like coco coir, and it is still considered hydroponic because there are no nutrients in coco coir (coco coir is just an inert medium to hold the roots). When you’re getting into hydroponic setups like coco coir or DWC, you are entirely responsible for 100% of the nutrients the plant gets. You are also entirely responsible for maintaining the pH. Basically you are doing the “job” that the microbes were doing in the organic super soil setup. Hydroponics can be intimidating because most people do not have experience providing nutrients and managing pH this way. However, just like mixing your own super soil, you can easily follow an exact recipe that has been proven by other growers and get great results on your first time. One of the biggest advantages of hydroponics over soil is that the plants grow much faster vegetatively, and also tend to get higher yields. This is partially because you are basically “chewing up the food” before you give it to the plants. You make it easier for the plant to get the exact nutrients needed, and the plant will grow faster/produce more. Some growers believe that hydroponic bud does not taste as good as organically grown buds. I do not find this to be the case (many people ask if I grow organic when they taste my DWC-grown buds, and I don’t use organic nutrients). I believe the biggest factor is causing an unpleasant “nutrient taste” is from feeding too high levels of nutrients during the late flowering stage, and also from poor drying/curing practices. This is an ongoing debate and I definitely don’t claim to know the answer.
Sirius: Personally, I find hydroponic cannabis to be far more potent on a regular basis. This is reflected by the fact that many medical dispesaries tend to sell organic cannabis at a lower cost, even for the same strains. If we’re speaking purely about things that can actually be measured, hydroponic growing outperforms organic growing in every way except ease after the initial setup. That being said, the debate is still ongoing!

I know that was a lot of info, but I hope it helps you and other growers make the choice.

To summarize:

Organic super soil – quite a bit of prep work before you grow, ultra easy-to-maintain during the grow, possibly more flavorful buds.
Regular soil – easy to get started, slightly more work during the grow.
Coco coir & other soilless mediums – easy to get started, perhaps a little more work than regular soil during the grow – faster growth.
DWC (or other hydroponic setups where the roots are fully immersed in water) – Most effort to maintain, fastest growth, biggest yields.

What nute strength were you giving them? (ppm/were you following the Generaly Hydropnoics schdule for Flora trio amounts)

We started by giving them the recirculating nutrient schedule from General Hydroponics at about 1/4 to 1/2 strength.

The Blackjack wanted much less nutrients than the Wonder Woman, and I gave her plain water sometimes while the Wonder Woman took the 1/2 strength dose and wanted more. It was hot this summer, and they were drinking a lot, so they needed lower concentrations than what would likely be appropriate for the cooler months.

What are you going to try next?

The next grow will be the same setup with a few adjustments:

Strains: Most likely Sour Diesel & Headband
We are considering adding a Silicon supplement in addition to the GH trio & Aquashield
Topping the plant earlier to begin main-lining – exactly when the plant hits 6 nodes

Jump to….

I want to make a grow setup just like this!

How to grow with bubbleponics (top-fed DWC)

How to set up your MH/HPS grow lights

Where can I safely buy medical cannabis strains?

The post 600W Hydroponic Grow Journal – 23.09 oz Harvest! appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Main-Lining: Clone Tutorial

Nebula Haze — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 22:40:22 +0000

by Nugbuckets – Compiled and edited by Nebula Haze in August 2013

"Main-Lining"

The act of training a marijuana plant to form a "hub" off a single node, creating a "manifold" for equal energy distribution from the roots to each cola.

The result is an even canopy and bigger yields with little extra effort.

Main-lining was originally developed for growing marijuana plants from seed, but has been adapted to be used with marijuana clones.

Note: This article teaches how to use the "main-lining" technique on marijuana clones. This technique is slightly different when starting from seed.

Read the complete article on Main-Lining here:
(including starting from seed)

https://www.growweedeasy.com/mainlining

Notes by Nugbuckets: Main-Lining Marijuana Clones

I have found with clones that building a proper manifold adds an average of 10-21 days onto the total vegetative cycle. I average about 14 days to main-line clones.

The more you Main-Line, the more you will learn exactly when the plant is ready to be pruned and bonded. A grower must watch the plant very closely for her to tell you when she is ready to be pushed.

Newbie growers don't really have this down yet, and it translates into added veg time. Also, clones take longer than growing from seed. Period.

I highly recommend starting out with a marijuana plant from seed. They are genetically programmed to build a strong root mass out of the gate, (which is critical when it comes to how quickly the young plant will recover from main-lining / pruning / bonding)

During early vegatative growth, a clone is a bit more tempermental than a seedling.

Note: This article teaches how to use main-lining on marijuana clones. The technique is slightly different when starting from seed. Read the complete article on Main-Lining here (including starting from seed): https://www.growweedeasy.com/mainlining

When main-lining clones, your goal is to create a central "hub" or manifold for your plant to distribute energy to each of the colas.

Your Goal When Main-Lining Clones

Main-lining with clones is not as neat as main-lining plants grown from seed. When using clones, your final main-lined trunk will look something like this.

Main-lined hub of marijuana clone
(this is what you're creating in this tutorial)

Main-Lined hub of another marijuana clone
(this clone was grown bigger, with 16 colas, so the hub is more "spread out")

Step 1: Start With a Healthy Clone

Any clone will work, but symmetry is key.

You will get the best results using clones which were taken very early off the mother plant, when she is still growing in a symmetrical pattern.

These clones are still growing symmetrically, and are perfect candidates for main-lining. These clones will likely need to be topped in order to be main-lined.

If clones are taken from an older mother plant, they are more likely to display an non-symetrical growing pattern (the sets of leaves don't grow exactly opposite from each other).

This makes it harder to main-line, because the central part of main-lining is allowing all colas to originate from a single node.

In the picture below, notice how the clone is not symmetrical. The growth is slightly lopsided, and the branches do not start at the exact same place on the trunk. This is a common growth pattern among clones taken from older mothers. Click the pic for a close-up!

(Click for closup)

This is typical behavior for clones, and you will have to compensate for this difference as explained in the steps below.

With clones, you have to look at it this way: when there is in an asymmetrical trunk, the top branch or "leader" will always be dominant over any of the node growth below it.

So when main-lining clones, it is mostly a matter of swaying the dominance away from the main cola until one of the chosen lower leaders catches up to it in vigor and stem diameter.

Fixing the asymmetry is done with a pretty radical pinch/bend/bond of the main.

Look at all bonding, pinching, and pruning as a form of suppression, and use that to your advantage.

How old and how tall should clones be when you start the main-lining process?

It depends on how fast your clones are growing. I started on this clone at day 10, when she was about 7.5 inches tall (picture of plant above with ruler).

It can be easy to get caught up with the details, but the most important thing to remember is that you are trying to fix an assymetrical axial branching pattern. You want to make things symmetrical again to equalize energy distribution.

The age of the clone doesn't matter nearly as much as starting with a healthy clone that has a few sets of leaves. Then the idea is to manipulate the plant so two main branches come off the main trunk. These branches should be as close together and symmetrical as possible, and you can use pinching and other gentle manipulation to try to even things out if you notice that one sides seems to be dominant over the other.

Here are the steps you need to follow.

Step 2: Top Clone (If Needed – Details Below)

Some nodes naturally grow with two main colas, like this clone right here. If that's the case, you can skip this step.

Skip this step if your clone looks like this
(already has two main colas/new growth tips)

If you are starting with a clone that has grown out several nodes, like the one pictured below, you will need to choose which node you want to become your main hub.

Just choose any node with two healthy branches/new growth tips on either side which are relatively close together.

Then cut off everything above that growth (top the clone to your chosen node).

Leave the fan leaves directly underneath your new node. You will be cutting these off later, but she needs to keep leaves for extra energy right now.

Step 3: Correct Asymmetry in Your Clone with a Pinch/Bend (If Needed)

Because clones often do not grow with good symmetry, you will need to fix any non-symmetry so you have a hub that distributes energy evenly to all the colas.

If your clone is already growing with perfect symmetry, skip this step.

Take a look at the picture below of a clone which does not have perfect symmetry in the two main colas.

Before
(not symmetrical)

Notice how on the clone's meristem, the left side is higher up and bigger. This means that this side is currently dominant. This dominance must be suppressed to equalize the hub and get the benefits of main-lining.

I use a light pinch and bend to equalize the two sides. Look at the first bend in the picture below; you may be able to see my fingernail marks from the pinch/bend.

Try not to tear or damage the cambium layer (the layer of inner bark) or allow the stem to split. Learn more about proper bending in this article about supercropping.

After
(pinch/bend to correct non-symmetry)

Any injury you create to a plant will take a bit of time to heal.

The more you break or tear your plant, the longer it will take to heal and get back into the swing of things, but even if you make a mistake, you'll usually be okay as long as you tape up your plants (and split them as needed for big injuries) and give them some time to recover.

You may also notice that that I left all the vegetation above the hub for now. A young clone like this needs all the energy she can get to continue building a substantial and healthy root system.

Remember: Clones often have weaker root systems compared to similarly sized plants grown from seeds. Therefore when main-lining clones, you must take extra care to reduce stress and give that root system time to develop.

Sneak peak: This is what the clone looks like after it's grown out after this step. Notice how the two branches are growing more evenly. That is the main point of the pinch/bend.

In a few days, we will top or prune clone again for 4 total colas, and then clean up some of this extra vegetation once we can see she is growing vigorously.

Step 4: Tie Down Your Mains (Keeping Bends At The Same Level on Both Sides)

If your plant was damaged during any of the previous steps, or if you're worried she needs time to recover, you may want to wait a few days until your clone is growing out its two main colas.

This is a matter of expertise. As a beginner, it's better to err on the side of waiting too long. If you have a lot of experience training/bending clones, then you may be more aggressive.

If you're unsure, wait until you see that your clone is growing healthfully. At that point it's time to top or prune again.

I gave this clone a few days to grow out her two main colas before I started this step.

Just to give you an idea, this is what my clone looked like right before I tied her down.

Before

Notice how I left all her extra vegetation. I will be removing this extra growth later, but I leave it on for now to help power the growing root mass.

Important: Tie Down Colas to Form 90 Degree Angle With Trunk & Keep Bends At The Same Level on Both Sides

You will want to use some slight bending/training/bondage to spread out your colas so they leave the main trunk at a 90 degree angle.

Make sure the bends are at the same level. This is very important! This picture of a different clone better shows off what I mean by trying to keep the bends at the same level:

You can use a variety of methods, including gardening wire, coat hangers, almost anything to tie down your plants.

Just avoid using anything too thin or sharp, like string, as it can cut into your plants. This type of training, where you tie down and manipulate the plant, is called LST (low stress training).

Here's a close-up of one of the types of ties I use to hold the plants down. It's just bendy gardening wire. You can also see the two growth tips at the end which will become two new colas.

Step 5: After Clone Has Recovered, Top or Prune To Produce 4 Colas (remove all growth tips except for 4 mains)

The point of this step is to remove all the growth tips except for 4 chosen mains.

I generally will do this 2-5 days after whatever training I've done until now. Sometimes your clone may need a little bit longer if she's growing slowly, if she had an injury, or if she didn't respond well to the training you've done so far.

The most important thing is to make sure that the plant is still growing happy and healthy before topping or pruning for 4.

Basically you want to make sure there are two main growing tips left at the end of each of your two main colas. You can either top the clone, or just choose two growth tips that are close together and remove all the other growth.

Topping produces more symmetrical growth, but adds extra time. I will usually chose 4 mains and use a pinch/bend to correct asymmetry because I am on a fast schedule. Any way you produce 4 symmetrical mains will work.

Don't prune unnecessary fan leaves yet! Just remove the growth tips besides your 4 mains. Make sure that each of your 4 main colas has a nice big fan leaf underneath to power the growth of those colas.

Remove all growing tips except 2 symmetrical growth tips on each side. Remove extra fan leaves and vegetation below the main splits. This picture will show you the 4 mains, and where the main splits are located.

Tie down your 4 new mains.

Your clone should now look like this

Notice how I've taken all 4 colas and tried to spread them out.

In the best case scenario, you want to train this "hub" of your plant to have lots of right angles, while being as flat as possible, so all the colas will end up having lots of room between them to grow fat and get lots of light.

Here's a closeup of the wire ties I used to hold the 4 new main colas down. I bent thick copper wire into a hook and just hooked it gently around the 4 colas of the plant. You can use just about anything to tie the cola down as long as it's thick enough and doesn't cut into the plant. (For example, don't use string).

You can see lots of new growth tips already on each main. In a few days, you will choose 2 of these to become 2 new colas, when you prune for 8.

Step 6: After Clone Has Recovered, Top or Prune Again For 8 Colas

I generally wait about 2 days after the last step. You may need to wait a little longer if it seems like your plant is struggling. If she's growing fast and healthy for a day or two, then you know she's ready to be topped or pruned again.

Here's what my clone looked like after being topped/pruned for 8:

In the picture above, you can see I trimmed each of the main colas so it only has two remaining growth tips. Sometimes it's easier to top, and sometimes you have two tips that you can manipulate into two new colas. The most important thng is to have 8 growth tips remaining, 2 on each of your previous 4 colas.

In this case, there were two suitable colas at the end of each main branch, and so I just needed to prune the growth below the two mains. When you can avoid topping the plant, it will save you a lot of time in the vegetative stage. However, when topping the plant, you tend to get more even growth without the need for a pinch/bend. It's up to you to decide exactly how you want to do it.

It's normal for plant growth to slow down a bit after being pruned or topped for 8 colas.

Step 7: Prune for 16, 32 Or More (If Desired)

If you would like to top or prune again for a total of 16 colas (or one more time after that for 32), then just make sure you give the plant enough time to pick her stride back up before each additional pruning.

This quick guide may help you decide:

You're Pretty Much Done! Now You Just Watch The Plant And Use LST and Supercropping to Keep Her Short If Any Colas Start Getting Too Tall.

All of your effort is worth it because you have built the perfect structure to power your plant's growth from now on. After this point, you pretty much just get to enjoy the fruits of your labor…

Here's this same clone 8 days later, so you can see what she looks like after she starts hitting her stride again. At this point, this clone is 23 days from rooting.

8 Days Later – Clone is now 23 Days From Root

People often ask how tall? She's just under 10" in height.

Here's that same clone again 5 days later. I still haven't done anything but let her grow out. The main-lining is doing all the work for me to produce the desired growing pattern.

Want more examples?

I'll main-line a different clone, and run her under the sun so you can watch her growth from beginning to end. Let's go!

Lets follow the life of this Ace clone through her early main-lining, then watch as she is bonded and pruned.

The first pic shows a young clone plant that has been pruned to hold two asymmetrical nodes. She was then allowed to stretch for a week or so. I've learned that giving clones some extra time to stretch out makes a big difference in how fast she recovers from main-lining.

First I cut away all the growth tips below the main nodes. You'll notice that I am less gentle with this clone than I was with the first one. I removed more vegetation at an earlier age.

At this point I have a lot of experience main-lining clones and I know she can handle it because she was given extra time to stretch initially. Only remove this much vegetation if you know she's got a strong healthy root system. If not, it's better to leave extra fan leaves on for now.

Now the bonding begins… Our girl is the one in the middle. Notice the bends are all at the same level. This is very important!

She is then pruned for 4 mains, allowed to grow for a week or so

Then the marijuana clone is pruned for 8 mains….. allowed to grow a bit, then all the mains are bonded to the pot

She is re-potted into a 5 gal. bucket.

Then the clone is pruned for 16.

Here's what her main hub/manifold looks like at this point:

A few days later…

At this point there's very little I have to do. Once the 16 colas are more grown out, I may need to bend/tie down parts of the plant to spread them out. Other than that, I pretty much let the plant do her thing.

The main-lining you've done so far will do the rest of the work for you as far as canopy management! Now you just tend to the plants and wait until harvest!

Topping vs Pruning: Cloning Question Answered By Nugbuckets

Question: What really peaked my interest with main-lining was the total plant growth through 1 node.

Now I can see plants from seed would work great, but with clones, do you still find that there is a difference in growth between the 2 sides?

I've got a couple of 2nd gen clones I'd like to mainline. #1 looks like a good candidate for this project, #2 has some nodal gap, will this one work??

#1 – top clone of plant grown from seed – less than a month since cutting

I circled the node I was planning on building the hub off of

#2 – Top clone of a different plant grown from seed – less than a month since cutting – this girl has already been topped just to slow down her speedy growth.

Can I use the circled node even with this big space between nodes?

I topped above the node above the circled one, would I be better off using the current top node or the one I originally circled above?

Answer by Nugbuckets

They all look good. You've definitely got the right idea.

With a clone, try to top near the tip where you have two nodes close together, then let those grow out a bit.

Those will become your two mains.

That way you dictate the stretch, or lack thereof, in the hub.

Continue to full article on main-lining:

https://www.growweedeasy.com/mainlining

The post Main-Lining: Clone Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Complete Guide to Cannabis Plant Training

Nebula Haze — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:03:11 +0000

by Nebula Haze

Table of Contents

Introduction to Plant Training: Indoor Training Tactics for Bigger Yields!

Three Main Types of Plant Training

1.) Bending & Securing Parts of the Plant

Low Stress Training (LST)
No-Technique Plant Training
Supercropping
Screen of Green (ScrOG)

2.) Damaging or Removing Parts of the Plant (in a Strategic Way)

Topping & FIMing
Manifolding
Defoliation

3.) Manipulating Timelines to Get Faster Yields

12-12 From Seed
Sea of Green

Why Does Plant Training Increase Yields?

Introduction: How to Train Indoor Plants for Bigger Yields

Are you interested in increasing your yields when growing indoors? If so, you’re in the right place! Plant training is one of the easiest ways to increase your cannabis yields without having to upgrade your light or setup. It can be used to increase your yields up to 40% compared to not training, and it’s free!

First off, what is plant training?

“Plant training” means physically manipulating the plant so it grows more bud sites, resulting in increased yields indoors

Why not let cannabis plants grow naturally? Cannabis naturally grows in a “Christmas Tree” shape that is optimized for sunlight, not grow lights. Unlike the sun, cannabis grow lights do not rise and set every day, providing light from the sides. Furthermore, indoor grow lights have almost no penetration when compared against the sun; the light from a 300W LED grow light is usable for a few feet while light from the sun is usable to plants after traveling 93 million miles!

Even outdoors, lower buds tend to grow smaller than the top ones (cannabis is a wind-pollinated plant and favors buds that are higher up). But the lack of growth in lower buds becomes more pronounced indoors. With grow lights, the vast majority of the light produced is aimed straight down over the top of the plant, and in most setups the sides don’t get much light at all. Because of these reasons, the Christmas Tree shape can be really inefficient indoors, causing your plant to have just one big, top bud and many smaller ones that don’t weigh nearly as much.

The main idea of cannabis plant training is to create several top colas to take the best advantage of indoor grow lights so less light is lost and yields are higher overall.

Make many cannabis colas instead of just one!

Three main types of marijuana plant training

Bending and securing parts of the plant while causing little-to-no physical damage to the plant
Damaging or removing parts of the plant in a strategic way to get it to grow in a more desirable shape
Manipulating timelines to get faster or bigger yields

Usually, growers will use more than one of these types of training because they can complement each other, but it’s also possible to use just one and not any others. For example, when growing auto-flowering strains you can’t manipulate timelines and it’s generally advised not to damage the plant since they have such a short life and that could result in stunting. So for auto-flowering plants, the main option is just bending and securing.

Next: a breakdown of each plant training technique so your garden has tons of colas!

Bending & Securing Parts of the Plant

Bending and securing parts of your plant is usually referred to as “Low Stress Training” (LST).

General Low Stress Training (LST) – LST is the process of bending stems and securing them in place. The general idea is to bend tall stems down and away from the middle of the plant as it grows so the plant takes on a more flat and wide shape. This should be started when the plant is still a seedling since its young stems will be flexible, while the stems of older plants become rigid and woody. Some growers use the term “LST” as an umbrella term to cover all types of plant training, while others use it to refer only to bending.

Plant Twisty Ties are commonly used to secure stems in place after bending them over, but lots of growers get creative (pipe cleaners, soft coated wire, etc). Just don’t use anything “sharp” like chicken wire because it cuts into the plant as it grows.

This grower consistently bent the tallest stems down as the plants grew, resulting in a flat, table-top shape

When the plant starts making buds, this flat, wide shape results in multiple colas that are all around the same distance from the light

Read the complete article on Low Stress Training.

No-Technique Plant Training – This is cannabis plant training in its most basic form. If it’s your first grow and you want to keep things simple, or if you don’t have much time and want to do the bare minimum to get results, this is for you!

The main stem was bent over 90° when the plant was very young, so all the lower branches were able to grow up and become main colas. Bending the main stem was the only training done to this plant, no fancy techniques!

Read the complete article on No-Technique Plant Training.

Supercropping – this technique is a more “extreme” kind of bending, and is used for stems that are too tall but have become woody and difficult to bend. With supercropping you “soften up” the stem first before bending it at an extreme angle. Supercropping can be incredibly helpful towards wrangling an out-of-control plant, and it has a few other benefits too because it can stress the plant in a “good” way.

Supercropping involves extreme bending, but without hurting the “skin” of your plant

Read the complete article on Supercropping.

Screen of Green (ScrOG) is a technique where growers use a screen over their plants and weave stems through the screen as they grow. When the plant starts making buds it’s already in a flat, table-top shape with lots of well-spaced bud sites under the grow lights. The screen also provides support for heavy buds.

Example of Screen of Green (ScrOG)

Read the complete article on Screen of Green.

Damaging or Removing Parts of the Plant

These training techniques all involve pruning the plant in some way to improve growth and increase yields indoors.
Topping & FIMing are ways of damaging the plant at a very young age to lead to plants growing m0re bud sites.

In this next picture, notice how the plant sort of “splits” at one point near the base of the plant. That split is where the plant was topped or FIMed and the apical dominance was broken. As a result, the plant turned many stems into main colas instead of only growing big buds on one main stem

Read the complete article on Topping & FIMing

Topping – The idea is to completely remove the top of the plant’s main stem as a seedling. This breaks its apical dominance, or tendency to grow one main cola, and immediately splits the plant into two main stems. As a result of being topped at a young age, the plant will naturally grow multiple colas even if you don’t do anything else.

FIMing – A very closely related technique to topping. The idea of FIMing is to damage or “shave” the top of the plant instead of removing it completely. This can accomplish many of the same goals as topping, but has less of a chance of stressing the plant. The downside is it’s more likely to fail at actually breaking apical dominance (plant may still tend to grow one main cola).

Learn more about topping vs FIMing.

Manifolding – This describes a sequence of topping the plant two times in a specific way so that it forms a wide “manifold” at the base of the plant. This is an easy way to achieve a lot of training without much time on your part. A benefit of training the plant with manifolding is buds tend to grow bigger, longer and more uniform than they would with some other training methods. The downside is topping your plant twice can add a week or two onto your grow.

Read the complete article on manifolding.

Defoliation – Defoliation means removing leaves on your plant, usually only the biggest fan leaves. This might be done in the vegetative stage for various reasons, but the main “technique” is using defoliation in a certain way during the first month of the flowering stage in order to encourage buds to grow bigger. With this technique, the cannabis plant is defoliated right before the switch to the flowering stage, then another time or two during the first few weeks while the plant is in the midst of the explosion of growth known as the flowering stretch.

Defoliation involves removing fan leaves in a strategic way in the first part of the flowering stage

This strategic defoliation exposes all the newly forming buds to light and air right when they’re at their most crucial stage of development. Because of how cannabis (a wind-pollinated plant) buds reacts to light and air, this dramatically increase the size and density of the buds as long as you take off the right amount of leaves at the right time (overdoing this or doing it too late in the flowering stage can do more harm than good!). It’s also very important to note that defoliation should only be done to indoor-grown plants, and even then only plants that are healthy!

Notice how few fan leaves this plant has? That’s because it was strategically defoliated during the first few weeks after the switch to 12/12. In response, the buds grew long, fat and dense.

Read the complete article on defoliation

Manipulate Timelines

These aren’t necessarily “training” techniques per se, but they are techniques that growers use to increase yields for free, and the main principle is the same – more buds directly under the grow light!

12-12 From Seed is the technique of trying to make seedlings start flowering (making buds) as soon as possible by giving them a “12-12” light schedule from seed. The idea is to get a harvest as quick as possible.

12-12 from Seed results in a quick harvest, but tends to cause stunted plants

Read the complete article on 12-12 From Seed.

Sea of Green is a related technique to 12-12 From Seed. The idea with Sea of Green is to grow many small plants instead of a few big plants. This allows a grower to make a sea of buds without having to do any plant training and can result in big yields that take less time. The main idea is to let seedlings grow for only 4-5 weeks before immediately switching them to the flowering stage. Since each plant doesn’t have to get very big, the time needed before flowering is reduced by several weeks. Many growers will also “top” their seedlings by removing the tips of seedlings when they have about 4-6 pairs of leaves.

For SoG, initiate the flowering stage when plants are this size or bigger

Sea of Green in Action

Read full article about Sea of Green

Why Should Growers Train Cannabis Plants to Grow Flat?

How Does Plant Training Increase Yields?

Indoor cannabis growers train their plants to grow with lots of thick bud sites because that shape produces the best yields under the limited power of grow lights.

As a grower, you can control a lot of the final size and shape of your plant by using proper cannabis training and growing techniques while the plant is young, such as topping, FIMing, LST, main-lining, supercropping, defoliation, SoG, ScrOG and more, as described in this page. This page explains everything else you can do to get your cannabis to grow the way you want, whether it’s small or big, so you get the best yields possible.

However, no matter how well you train your plants during the vegetative stage, some growth patterns (and many of aspects of your buds like appearance, smell and potency) are going to be determined by your plant’s genes, especially in the flowering stage. If you don’t have access to cannabis seeds or clones where you live, you can control the genetics by growing a strain from a trustworthy breeder and ordering seeds online.

Light is Like “Food” for Cannabis Plants

Many indoor and outdoor cannabis growers prefer to keep their plants relatively short, growing bushy and wide instead of tall and thin. Keeping small plants helps make sure each plant gets plenty of light – light is like “food” for your plants, and providing the right amount of light will give cannabis plants the energy to grow.

The spring/summer sun is all the light an outdoor cannabis plant needs to survive (as long as it’s getting direct light for the majority of the day). It can help with stealth to keep plants shorter than nearby fences or camouflage plants, and training is effective at that, but training isn’t really that effective at increasing yields outdoors.

Outdoors, the natural shape of a cannabis plant is already very well suited to using the light from the sun as it moves in the sky. The best way to get bigger yields outdoors is to grow a bigger cannabis plant with more bud sites. Ultimately, the most important thing you can do for outdoor cannabis plants is put them in an open space that gets as much direct sunlight as possible.

Notice how the plants that get the most direct sunlight grow the biggest

Why do indoor cannabis growers want short or wide plants?

For indoor growers, plants tend to yield more if a lot of the plant is kept just the right distance from the grow lights. This means trying to maintain a flat cannabis canopy under the grow lights and almost always using growth training methods like topping, FIMing, main-lining, ScrOG, etc. These training methods help make sure all the buds get as much light as possible, so you get bigger yields from the same grow lights.

Why do cannabis plants need to be close to the grow lights? It is because indoor grow lights are heavily affected by the inverse square law of light. Unlike indoor grow lights, the sun is so far away that the inverse square law of light doesn’t make a difference – your plant will get about the same amount of light whether it’s on the ground or 10 feet in the air.

Since indoor grow lights are so close and are so much weaker than the sun, the distance between the light and the plant has a huge effect on how much light the plant will receive.

Keeping grow lights closer will deliver more light to the plants!

But… keeping them too close can severely hurt your plant!

This is a huge part of why it’s important to understand how far away your lights need to be, depending on what type of light you have.

Learn how far away to keep your cannabis grow lights

Powerful Grow Lights – Some grow lights are very bright and powerful (like MH/HPS grow lights or bigger LEDs). More powerful grow lights can cover a wider area with more plants, but the more powerful the light, generally the further it needs to be kept from your plants. Keeping grow lights too close causes light burn, which bleaches your upper leaves and buds, and can possibly cause seeds to form (plants may “herm” as a result of stress which causes seedy buds). Light burn can also possibly affect the potency of the buds.

Vegetative and early flowering plants are harder to light burn, but it’s much easier to do it in the second half of the flowering stage when the plant is no longer making any new leaves, especially with higher wattage lights.

Less Powerful Grow Lights – Grow lights like CFLs and fluorescent lights have a “sweet spot” that is only a few inches away. The further you get, the less light your plants get. These types of lights can grow cannabis plants, and may be a good choice for some growers, but with less powerful lights, it becomes even more important that you learn how to train your plants to grow short and wide with many colas. Little weed plants are the best way to take advantage of CFL grow lights! Luckily the methods on this page like topping, FIMing, SoG, ScrOG, main-lining and more will give you the tools you need to get the most from your grow lights. By using plant training techniques, it becomes possible to harvest ounces of bud even from relatively small grow lights.

Complete Article on How Far Away to Keep Your Grow Lights

In the diagram below, you can see that the natural plant (left – completely untrained) has less parts of the plant in the area with the best light level. As a result, this plant only has one main cola, and the rest of the colas are much smaller because they are further from the grow lights.

Leaves in the “Sweet Spot” of Your Indoor Grow Light Make the Most Energy, Producing Faster Growth and Bigger Buds

Why settle with just one big cola when you could have many big colas?

The trained plant (right – which has been topped and trained with LST) has many colas that are directly in the sweet spot. In fact, almost the whole plant is getting bathed in just the right amount of light from the grow lights. This means the plant has many big colas and none of them are getting burned by the lights.

Generally, the top of the grow light sweet spot is where the biggest buds form. Cannabis plants love a lot of light, much more than your average house plant. As long as you stay away from the “too bright” zone for your particular indoor grow light (which can cause light burn, even if air is cool), you want to get as many colas in the top of the sweet spot as possible.

Colas in the Top of the Sweet Spot Grow Biggest, So Maximize Yields by Training Cannabis Plants To Grow Many Colas On the Same Level!

It doesn’t matter what type of grow light you use. Each type of grow light has a sweet spot, and whenever grow lights are positioned above the plants, there are likely benefits to training your cannabis plants to grow short and wide. By having more of your plant at the best distance from your grow light, your cannabis leaves and buds will be exposed to more light and give your plant more energy to grow.

When your grow lights are positioned above your cannabis plants….

Plants with a flat canopy will produce more energy than tall & thin plants. As an indoor cannabis grower, you don’t have to just accept the way cannabis grows naturally. You actually have a lot of control over how your cannabis plants grow. So train your plants to efficiently fill up your grow space, giving you the best yields possible with your grow lights.

Don’t Grow This Plant!

Grow a Trained Plant With A Cluster of Colas!

This article on plant training shares several ways to train your plant to achieve this shape!

Learn how to get set up for the most effective plant training!

Now that you have mastered the art of cannabis plant training, what do you want to learn how to improve next?

Bonus: What Determines Yields?

Learn How to Create the Perfect Growing Environment (plus the following sub-articles)

Jump to…

10-Step Quick Start Grow Guide

Should I get a regular or autoflowering strain if I want short plants?

Supercropping: the simple secret

Picture gallery of common marijuana growing problems

FOR SERIOUS GROWERS ONLY

You’ve told me you’re looking for a complete guide to growing marijuana that covers everything, from beginner to ultra-advanced.

And growing short and bushy plants is just one technique to getting seriously killer harvests. If you want to learn ALL the secrets…

Learn from the best!

Invest in the most advanced Grow Bible Available:
Growing Elite Marijuana + 7 bonuses (including one-of-a-kind comprehensive strain guide)

Total care explained step-by-step… indoors… outdoors…

Monster cropping… advanced growth control… bud production secrets… and much, much more…

Over 700 pages of pictures, tutorials and advanced insider tips!

Get Instant Access to It All Right Here:
GrowWeedEasy.com/growing-elite-marijuana

I thought I already knew it all, but after I went through this grow bible, I discovered that there were still new ways to increase my yields and grow more potent buds!

-Nebula

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