1. Topping
2. Low Stress Training (LST)
3. Supercropping
4. Defoliation (Strategically Removing Leaves)
5. Lollipopping
6. Sea of Green (SoG)
7. Manifolding (aka Main-Lining)
8. Screen of Green (ScrOG)
9. FIMming
10. Monster Cropping

Bonus: Fluxing

Every Cannabis Grower Should Use Plant Training Techniques

As a cannabis grower, your goal is to get your plants to produce a lot of high-quality buds as efficiently as possible. A key tactic to increasing cannabis yields and bud quality is to “train” your cannabis plant when it’s young to grow wide and flat so that it produces a lot of fat top buds in the flowering stage.

The goal of all cannabis plant training techniques is to grow wide flat plants with many big top buds. Fill your grow space with top-shelf weed!

Cannabis Plant Training Benefits

• Bigger yields
• Denser buds
• Increased bud potency (higher THC)*

*In our side-by-side experiments, trained cannabis plants produce buds that have higher THC levels when tested at the lab.

Today’s cannabis plant training tutorial is all about showing you how to use free techniques to get more and better quality buds from your current setup.

Achieve better marijuana bud quality and increase THC levels with these free plant training techniques!

1.) Topping

Topping is the #1 most important, easiest, and most effective cannabis plant training technique. If you must choose only one technique, do this.

“Topping” means cutting off the growing tip (“top”) of the main stem to encourage the growth of two or more secondary stems. A grower typically “tops” the plant when it’s a few weeks old. The purpose of topping is to break the apical dominance of the cannabis plant (reduce the tendency to grow one main trunk) so it naturally grows with many branches. Topping a young cannabis plant helps encourage it to grow wide and bushy with many tops for buds to grow.

Topping means cutting off the top of a cannabis plant when it’s a few weeks old.

The result: plants naturally grow more bushy, even if you don’t do anything else.

Topped cannabis plants naturally grow wider and bushier.

The result is many tops on each marijuana plant, and each of those top stems becomes a main bud.

2.) Low Stress Training (LST)

Low Stress Training (often called “LST”) is a fancy way of saying “bending and tying down branches”. The goal of LST is to get the plant to grow in the shape you want, typically to create a more even and horizontal canopy so the plant produces many buds instead of just one. Training cannabis plants to grow flat and wide also helps deliver more light to more top buds, increasing overall yields and bud quality.

This is another technique, like topping, that can definitely be used by itself to increase yields without doing anything else.

Learn More: Low Stress Training Tutorial

Cannabis plant before low stress training.

A cannabis plant after low stress training. Branches were bent down and away from the middle of the plant, then secured with plant twisty tie.

At harvest, the cannabis plant has many big buds instead of only one. (Here’s the full grow journal)

3.) Supercropping

The main purpose of “supercropping” is to gain total control over the height of unruly cannabis plants by being able to bend even the stiffest of branches without breaking them. I’m not sure how it got its name (perhaps just because it helps make super harvests?) but the supercropping technique involves pinching and bending the stems until they break internally, but not externally. After the stem can be bent, the branches get secured where you want them to stay.

In addition to height control, supercropping causes the plant to form a knuckle at the bend point, which, as a bonus, may increase the flow of nutrients and hormones in some cases. This technique may also potentially increase the potency of buds by slightly stressing the cannabis plant in a “good” way. However, be careful to follow the tutorial to make sure you don’t accidentally break the skin and potentially kill the branch.

Learn More: How to Supercrop Plants to Control Height

Supercropping is a technique to safely bend branches at an extreme angle without “breaking the skin”. This gives you a lot more control over plant height.

4.) Defoliation (Strategically Removing Leaves)

“Defoliation” means removing fan leaves, and should be done in a strategic way to get the best results. The main goal is to remove big fan leaves that block light from reaching the bud sites early in the flowering stage. This helps the plants grow into a better structure, improves airflow, increases light penetration, and overall enhances bud development. However, this technique should be done with caution as over-defoliation can stress or stunt the plant, and works best if you follow our defoliation tutorial.

Learn more: Cannabis Flowering Stage Defoliation Tutorial

Defoliation means removing fan leaves in a strategic way during the early flowering stage. Strategic defoliation for cannabis plants is typically done on a specific schedule after flowering is initiated.

When done properly, strategic defoliation results in bigger, longer buds. In our cannabis defoliation experiment, defoliated plants also produced more THC!

5.) Lollipopping

The “lollipopping” technique involves removing the lower branches and leaves that receive little light and produce small buds. Essentially, you turn the plant into a lollipop with no leaves on the bottom. Removing the bottom leaves and bud sites that will never get light helps the plant focus its energy on the upper buds. As a result of lollipopping, the topmost buds typically grow bigger and denser.

Before and after lollipopping cannabis plants. The left plant was lollipopped, and the right plant has not been lolliopped yet.

This was done right as the grower initiated the flowering stage. Notice how all the leaves have been removed from the bottom of the plant and light now reaches the floor.

Lollipopped cannabis plants produce big buds that go deeper down into the plant. Notice how the bottom branches are bare.

Lollopopped plants tend to produce bigger and better top buds, with fewer small airy lower buds that typically are not that potent anyway.

Learn More: How to Lollipop Your Cannabis Plants

Useful Specialty Techniques

These techniques are useful in many situations, but unlike the tactics listed above (which are useful for every cannabis grower), these techniques may not be the best choice in every situation for every grower’s goals.

6.) Sea of Green (SoG)

“Sea of Green” (also known as “SoG”) is about creating a sea of buds with a bunch of little plants. Many small plants are grown together in close proximity, then forced to start flowering early. Since plants stay small, growing with the Sea of Green technique reduces the vegetative time, allowing for both quicker harvests and more harvests in a year. This technique works best for cannabis strains that have a dominant main cola, and for grow spaces where it is easy to reach all the plants including plants in the middle or back. Although Sea of Green is surprisingly efficient as far as the yields for the time and electricity used, it’s not suitable for growers with legal plant limits, and tends to take more work compared to growing fewer plants.

Learn More: How to Make a “Sea of Green” in Your Cannabis Garden

Grow many small cannabis plants for a “sea of green” and initiate the flowering stage when plants are still tiny (this size).

Each cannabis plant will grow one main bud and fill your space with weed.

7.) Manifolding (aka Main-Lining)

Originally called main-lining, this technique has come to be called “manifolding” because that is more descriptive, and also because “main-lining” has another meaning in the drug world. Manifolding involves topping the main stem multiple times when the plant is still small to create an even number of main colas that grow from a single manifold. This process creates a symmetrical and balanced plant where each main bud receives equal amounts of nutrients and light.

Note: Autoflowering strains cannot be manifolded because their vegetative stage is too short. Learn more about how to train auto-flowering cannabis strains.

The manifolding process is a neat way to learn about training cannabis plants and also ensures an excellent harvest of many big buds. In my opinion, every dedicated cannabis grower should try manifolding a photoperiod plant at least once, even if just for the experience. It’s not necessarily the most scalable or efficient plant training technique, but is definitely one of the most fun!

Manifolding is a training regimen that causes the entire plant to grow from one main “manifold”. Manifolds are fun and interesting to make!

Example of a manifolded cannabis plant at harvest.

8.) Screen of Green (ScrOG)

“Screen of Green” (often abbreviated “ScrOG” – no relation to Sea of Green technique despite the similar names) refers to using a screen or net to support and train the branches to grow flat and wide. The branches are woven through the screen as they grow, creating a flat and uniform canopy that maximizes light exposure and bud production. Creating a screen of green can be useful in some situations, but personally, I believe it’s often less work to use other techniques on this page to create wide flat plant canopies. Once a cannabis plant is woven through the screen, it’s stuck in place unless the screen also moves, which can be inconvenient. Also, if you use wire as part of the screen, it can be difficult to cut all the buds out at harvest.

Learn more: Screen of Green Tutorial

Create a screen (best to use string instead of wire to make it easy to cut away from plants at harvest).

Example of a cannabis plant growing in a screen.

(Less Useful) “Hit or Miss” Techniques

These cannabis training techniques are not consistent and should generally be avoided, or at least considered experimental.

9.) FIMming

“FIM” stands for “F*ck I Missed” 😂 Essentially, this technique is similar to topping, but instead of cutting through the main stem, a small portion of the top of the plant is left behind. FIMing was “discovered” when someone messed up while topping their plant. When done in just the right way, this can result in four or more secondary stems growing from the same node. The downside is it often doesn’t work as intended. While topping consistently splits one stem into two, FIMing can result in 1, 2, 3, or 4 final stems. If you want 4 main stems, it’s better to top the plant twice than FIM it.

FIMing means removing 80% of the top node and hoping it results in 4 main branches (inconsistent and not recommended).

10.) Monster Cropping

The “monster cropping” technique involves taking clones from a flowering plant and reverting them back to the vegetative stage (“re-vegging” the cannabis plant). A re-vegged clone often grows strangely, with multiple branches and bud sites, creating bushy and monster-like plants. Some growers think this can be an easy way to make the plant grow many buds, but in my experience, re-vegged plants grow slowly for a long time compared to seeds or regular clones. Almost any other technique on this page to make plants bushy gets faster and more consistent results.

Learn More: What is “Monster Cropping” a Cannabis Plant?

A “monster cropped” plant. Note: a cannabis grower will likely get better results with almost any other technique on this page.

Bonus: Fluxing

Similar to manifolding except more complicated and with more steps. This gets similar results as manifolding but takes more time so it’s best for growers who enjoy the process of training and experimenting with vegetative cannabis plants. Typically, you’ll get the same results for less effort by manifolding a cannabis plant instead.

Fluxing is essentially a more complex version of manifolding.

Fluxing gives similar results to other techniques on this page that take less time.

Learn More: What is “Fluxing” and How Do You Do It?

Start training your cannabis plants today using the techniques in today’s tutorial!

Grow many buds at the same time…

…and enjoy your bountiful harvest!

The post 10 Most Common Cannabis Training Terms: In Order of Usefulness appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Cannabis defoliation… have you heard of it?

Defoliation is the process of strategically removing leaves to make cannabis grow in a more desirable way.

This week, I defoliated 3 plants in preparation for the flowering stage

Why do I defoliate? A few reasons.

• Higher-quality buds – Strategic defoliation in the early flowering stage produces fewer but higher-quality buds. Cannabis buds only fatten up when they get access to both light and air, and the biggest buds are usually located at the top of the plant. Lower and hidden buds are often airy wisps at harvest. Removing unnecessary leaves and hidden bud sites helps the plant focus on the best-quality buds at the top. When done properly, buds at harvest tend to be bigger, tighter, and more dense.
• Reduce chances of mold or bud rot – Some plants get so bushy that their leaves lay all over each other and cause wet spots. That was happening here. These plants were super leafy! Left unchecked, too-leafy plants are more likely to get powdery mildew or bud rot.
• Lower humidity – Leaves constantly release water vapor into the air, which raises the humidity. If it’s humid where you live (my outdoor humidity can get over 70% RH at times), removing leaves helps keep the humidity from climbing to unreasonable levels. High humidity in the second half of the flowering stage should be avoided because it can cause loose buds and increase the chance of mold or bud rot.
• Ease of trimming – Plants are way easier to trim after harvest. It doesn’t seem like a huge deal…until it’s time to trim!

Where are buds going to form?

The growing stems that will become the main bud sites look like stars from above. In the growing world, these main stems are often referred to as tops, mains, or colas (“cola” is the Spanish word for tail, and big cannabis buds look a bit like tails). Check out our glossary for other common growing terms.

In this picture, I marked a few main stems with white stars so you know where the biggest buds will grow. Can you spot the rest?

Defoliate at the beginning of the flowering stage…

The 3 featured plants were changed to a 12/12 light schedule a few days before these pictures to initiate the flowering stage. I can already see white hairs/pistils appearing on the future bud sites. A great time to defoliate!

Note: If you see bunches of balls instead of hairs, you’ve got a male plant that will not produce buds.

White hairs (pistils) are the first sign of female buds forming

Before & After – I removed big leaves on long stems to help expose bud sites and increase air circulation through the plant

Ideally, you want a good bud site every few inches at the top of the plant. Try to give each bud a bit of breathing room so they can develop as big as possible, but otherwise create a sea of buds to maximize the grow light.

This stem was never going to reach the top canopy and get direct light. It was also being blocked by a thicker, better-positioned stem. I made the executive decision to remove it so the plant could focus on the best stems.

Good bud sites are located at the top of thicker stems that reach the upper canopy. Even better if connected to the main trunk. This tiny stem touching the edge of the tent was never going to make big buds, but would have stolen energy from the main bud sites.

Goodbye, little stem

I also focused on “lollipopping”, which means removing growth on the bottom of the plant that would otherwise be in permanent shadow. I only do this once at the beginning of the flowering stage.

Left plant was defoliated and lollipopped while the right plant was untouched

Side view – Before vs After

I’m going to leave the plants alone for at least a few weeks (many growers defoliate again about 3 weeks after the first session).

Some plants (especially certain sativa strains) don’t really get leafy and defoliation is unnecessary. Other plants need defoliation because they get so bushy the leaves are covered in wet spots and buds are completely concealed.

It’s possible to stunt a plant if you take too many leaves. Leaves are what take in light and turn it into energy for the plant! There’s no need to defoliate a plant that’s not leafy like this one (except maybe a few leaves from the bottom).

Regardless of the plant, the main idea behind any cannabis plant training or defoliation technique is to expose many main bud sites to direct light and air.

Some defoliators take more or fewer leaves, and many growers take none at all. Cannabis plants are surprisingly flexible. The truth is, a big part of growing is personal preference because nearly all popular methods and defoliation schedules work well.

Let me walk you through an example of another plant that was defoliated so you can see how the plant responds.

This manifolded plant had just started flowering. It was lollipopped and every main stems defoliated. Notice how the main stems are at the top of the plant and exposed to direct light. That’s your main goal.

After that, I continued removing leaves that were lying on each other making wet spots or covering bud sites, but my main focus was giving basic plant care and a great environment

12 weeks later and buds are ready! Here is that plant at harvest

Every bud was fat and dense, with no airy or larfy buds. Easy to trim and great yields, too!

It’s possible to defoliate too much and stunt your plant, which can reduce yields, so be careful not to overdo it! If you want to maximize yields, only defoliate plants that are bushy.

Warning! Don’t defoliate if you are not using added nutrients. One setup that seems to do poorly with defoliation is a “no added nutrients” setup where the plants get all their nutrients from the soil. Each leaf stores nutrients for the plant, which means you’re forever taking those nutrients from the plant when you remove leaves. If you’re not replacing the nutrients in some way (such as with nutrient water or amendments), the plant may run into nutrient deficiencies later in the flowering stage.

Does defoliation increase yields overall?

Strategic defoliation causes plants to make fewer but bigger buds, yet it’s a point of contention in the growing world whether defoliation increases or reduces overall yields. Bud quality may be higher, but I’ve never found a direct test comparing yield weights.

I decided to get to the bottom of this mystery. My next grow will feature a controlled side-by-side experiment to test defoliation vs letting plants grow wild. I can’t wait!

In the meantime, here’s a picture of those plants I defoliated 4 weeks later, with about 4 weeks left to go until harvest. They’ve responded well!

Update: Nebula completed a side-by-side experiment to test defoliation vs. natural growth!
Check out the results here: Nebula’s Cannabis Defoliation Experiment – Side-by-side grow journal

For those who are interested in learning more about this setup:

• 2’x4’x6′ grow tent
• Mother Earth Coco + Perlite potting mix
• 5-gallon fabric pots
• Nutrients & Supplements: Flora trio + CaliMagic (learn more about this nutrient system)
• Check out my favorite LED grow lights for growing weed.

GrowWeedEasy.com has hundreds and hundreds of pages!

Check out some articles you may not have seen…

• Bugs, Mold, and Critters, Oh My! – Learn about common cannabis pests.
• Cool Growing Tools – Ever wonder if there’s some tool to help make things a little easier for growers? See a list of some of my favorite (mostly small and cheap) growing tools 🙂
• Nebula’s Manifold – Cannabis “Main-Lining” – Mainlining was invented by a superb grower named Nugbuckets. Manifolding is Nebula’s take on the technique and it works great!
• Cannabis Defoliation: How to Increase Yields by Removing Leaves – It’s common knowledge to defoliate now, but when we first did this article it caused an extremely famous grower to come after us!
• Super Cropping Marijuana: Simple Secret to Bigger Yields – It’s great for increasing yields, but even better for emergency plant training. Super cropping, what can’t you do?

The post Watch 3 cannabis plants get defoliated – Before & After appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Ready to harvest more than 1 pound of top-shelf cannabis right from inside your home? Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Turning that dream into a reality is fully within your grasp, and I’m going to show you exactly how to produce a pound of top-shelf weed indoors. Harvesting a pound (that’s an eye-popping 16 ounces) of your own top-shelf cannabis is about more than just the weight. It’s also about independence from buying, the delight of sharing your crop with others, and the freedom to have so much weed you never run out, with enough left over to make your own goodies like edibles, extracts, and tinctures.

Our first 1-pound indoor cannabis harvest based on this tutorial (600W HPS grow light).

And our first 1-lb harvest after switching to an LED grow light (600W LED grow light).

One key to growing a pound of good weed indoors is you have to give your plants the right growing environment. A large tent sized at 4’x4’x6.5′ (1.2mx1.2mx2m) is a manageable size that provides an ideal place to consistently produce your 1-lb cannabis grow.

Here are some examples of grow lights that would be suitable for this size grow tent:

• Spider Farmer SF4000 LED grow light – (uses 450W) – Yields just under 1 pound
• Mars Hydro FC-E4800 LED grow light (uses 480W) – Yields over 1 pound per harvest
• 600W HPS (Uses 600W) – Yields up to 21 ounces or 1.3 lbs
• HLG Blackbird 600W LED (600W, dimmable) – Yields up to 24 oz or 1.5 lbs. Recommended choice – this LED light was designed specifically to achieve high yields in a 4×4 grow tent.
• 1000W DE HPS (Uses 1000W) – Yields up to 35 oz or 2.2 lbs, VERY hot, you will need cooling.

Example Plants Grown in This Size Tent

Cannabis plants grown in a 4’x4′ grow tent under a 600W HPS.

Six plants under a 600W LED grow light in 4’x4’x6.5′ (these are only on day 38 of flowering).

Two Hydroponic Plants under a 600W HPS in 4’x4’x7′ grow tent – Yielded 23.09 oz at harvest!

Those are just a few examples. Many of you have written in asking for more tutorials about growing large amounts of weed in the home environment. We have heard you loud and clear! Here’s the proven strategy we’re covering in today’s cannabis tutorial that will teach you how to yield 1 lb or more of top-shelf cannabis in a single large grow tent:

Overall Strategy

1.) Start with a high-yielding cannabis strain – Learn how to find the right strain.

2.) Get your supplies – Here’s an example of a complete shopping list for a 4’x4′ grow tent that gets great results with cannabis.

3.) “Top” plants at a young age – Cut off the top of the main stem when seedlings are a few weeks old.

4.) Train plants to grow flat and wide (like a table) in the vegetative stage.

• Simple Way: Either use plant twist tie to hold down branches…
• Using a Net: Invest in a Scrog net and install it to be half the final desired height of your plants. Any time a stem grows above the net, tuck it back underneath until you’ve filled the entire net

5.) Initiate the flowering stage, then…

• Defoliate – Follow a strategic defoliation schedule
• Not too hot, not too humid – Maintain a good environment while buds are forming.
• Keep plants healthy – Avoid bugs and nutrient deficiencies.
• If using a net,  add a second net and arrange buds to fill the entire net as they grow.

6.) Harvest at the right time.

7.) Dry and jar buds properly.

This is just a super basic outline. Check below for more details and step-by-step instructions!

How to Grow 1 Pound of Weed: Step-by-Step Instructions

1.) Start with a high-yielding cannabis strain

Learn how to find the right strain (regardless of what your goals are).

Some strains naturally yield much more than others. Choose high-yielding strains to maximize your harvest weight.

Autoflowering Strains vs Photoperiod Strains: Which is better for cannabis yields?

Although many auto-flowering strains are high-yielding, and produce fast harvests under 3 months, you don’t have as much control over plant growth patterns and size as you do with photoperiod strains. That’s because autoflowering strains start making buds after about 4 weeks, even if your plants aren’t as big as you need them to be yet. Cannabis plants about double in size after they start flowering, and if your autoflowering plants are too small at that point, they’ll stay small until harvest no matter what you do. Especially for beginners, it can be difficult to consistently harvest 1 lb per harvest with auto-flowering strains because even a small problem at the beginning of the grow can stunt your plant size.

On the other hand, photoperiod cannabis plants are much more forgiving if you make mistakes early on. You have all the time in the world to get your plants to the exact right size and shape before you initiate the flowering stage. As long as you set your plants up right before they start flowering, and keep them healthy, you’re pretty much guaranteed a 1+ lb harvest following all these steps, which is why photoperiod strains are recommended if you’re not sure what to pick.

Autoflowering strains 

Pros

• Faster – Ready to harvest in under 3 months. Can’t beat the time to harvest! If speed is most important, then auto-flowering genetics are the way to go.
• No special light schedules – You don’t have to worry about light schedules, light leaks, or anything like that. Just give the plants 18+ hours of direct light a day and that’s all you really need to think about when it comes to light. Check on your plants any time.

Cons

• Early mistakes can dramatically hurt yields – Can’t make mistakes in the seedling stage. Autofloweirng plants start flowering after about a month even if they’ve been sick and are still small. That means early mistakes like overwatering your seedlings will stunt autoflowering plants for life, so only choose autoflowering strains if you’ve got a great handle on taking care of plants for the first 4 weeks of life.
• Less consistent yields – More difficult to always get 1 lb per harvest, due to the shorter life period as well as the fact that it’s easier for plants to end up smaller than you want.
• Fewer strain choices – Autoflowering strains are “boutique” specialty genetics and you typically have fewer options when it comes to autos.

Photoperiod strains <– Recommended for this cannabis high-yield tutorial

Pros

• Early mistakes are forgiven – Even if you make mistakes early on, you have time to let your plants recover and get them the optimum size and shape to guarantee a 1-lb harvest.
• Consistent 1 lb harvests – With photoperiod strains, even a total beginner can produce a pound of weed in their first harvest as long as they just make sure to follow all these instructions.
• Bigger selection – Most strains are photoperiod strains, which means you have a much larger selection to choose from.
• Excellent bud quality – Although you can get some incredible autoflowering strains these days that have bud quality equal to photoperiod strains, on average photoperiod buds not only look and smell nicer, but also have higher THC levels.

Cons

• Takes longer – Average grow time with photoperiod strains is 4-5 months from germination to harvest day. This is about 1-2 months longer than most autoflowering strains.
• Special light schedules – In order to get photoperiod cannabis plants to make buds (start “flowering”), growers give plants 12 hours of complete darkness a day to simulate that winter is coming. This is easy to do in a grow tent by putting your grow lights on a timer. However, the downside is you can’t check on or care for your plants during their 12-hour “lights off” period every day so you don’t accidentally interrupt their beauty sleep.

I recommend growers follow this tutorial with photoperiod strains just to increase the chance you get a full pound or more. However, auto-flowering strains can work if you’re desperate to harvest within 3 months and are willing to make sure to take extra good care of your plants while they’re still young.

Examples of excellent high-yielding photoperiod strains (these are all feminized seeds, which means every plant with be a bud-making female plant)

• Blue Dream by Seed Supreme – Enormous yields every time. A true commercial producer and one of the higher-yielding strains I’ve grown. Buds are sweet-smelling with relaxing yet “social” weed effects that have given in the status of “party favorite”.
• Platinum Cookies by Seed Supreme – Excellent yields and the bud quality is out of this world. The purple-tinted buds tested at 25-27% THC when we grew it and the effects were a crowd favorite. This strain tends to get tall, but responds well to bending and supercropping to keep it short and flat. It has a 12-week flowering stage, which is a few weeks longer than average, but the yield and bud quality are worth 2 extra weeks in my opinion.
• Kushberry Moonrocks by MSNL – Great yields, pretty purple color on buds, averages around 28% THC, only a 10-week flowering stage. Effects are relaxing but POTENT. Definitely a strain meant to be enjoyed at home.

2.) Get your big-yield supplies

Here’s an example of a complete shopping list for a 4’x4′ grow tent that gets great results with cannabis using the HLG Blackbird 600W LED.

Here are other examples of grow lights that would be suitable for this size grow tent, using otherwise the same setup as above:

• Spider Farmer SF4000 LED grow light – (uses 450W) – Yields just under 1 pound
• Mars Hydro FC-E4800 LED grow light (uses 480W) – Yields over 1 pound per harvest
• 600W HPS (Uses 600W) – Yields up to 21 ounces or 1.3 lbs
• HLG Blackbird 600W LED (600W, dimmable) – Yields up to 24 oz or 1.5 lbs. Recommended choice – this LED light was designed specifically to achieve high yields in a 4×4 grow tent.
• 1000W DE HPS (Uses 1000W) – Yields up to 35 oz or 2.2 lbs, VERY hot, you will need cooling.

Any of these grow lights will grow thriving cannabis plants in a 4’x4′ grow tent.

Other hints for getting the highest yields in your setup:

• Grow with coco (or hydro) – Coco and hydro tend to produce better yields than growing in soil on average. The grow medium that tends to produce the lowest yields is super soil (“just add water” soil). However, yields aren’t the only important thing when it comes to growing, and you can achieve 1 pound in this setup even with super soil if you make sure to maximize everything else.
• Use synthetic nutrients – Along the same line, cannabis plants tend to produce the highest yields when using synthetic or mineral-based nutrients. Adding organic nutrients can definitely increase yields vs not using any nutrients, but they are not as easily available to the plant as man-made nutrients. Some great cannabis nutrient systems are mostly organic with just a few key synthetic ingredients to get the best of both worlds, like Fox Farm trio for hydro. But fully synthetic nutrients like General Hydroponics Flora trio get the best yields of any nutrient system we’ve tried in side-by-side grow experiments so far. If yields are your #1 goal, I highly recommend the GH Flora trio – just follow the instructions on the side of the bottle at half strength, maintain a pH of 5.5-6.5 pH at the roots, and you don’t have to worry about nutrients.
• Don’t ignore heat – Young plants don’t mind the heat, but if it’s regularly above 85°F/30°C in the grow space while buds are forming, it will harm your yields by making buds grow more loose and airy.  Heat also greatly increases the chance of getting bud rot or mold in your buds. Luckily, a good exhaust fan venting air out of the tent goes a long way, which is why I included in a powerful exhaust fan in the recommended 4×4 setup. However, if the whole room is warming up above that temperature, adding more fans won’t help. At that point, you should vent the hot air directly out a window or install an AC. At that point, you won’t need to worry about heat and can focus on other things.
• React quickly to plant problems – If you notice a nutrient deficiency, see signs of bugs, or catch sight of any other unexpected plant symptoms, pay attention! Check our free plant doctor tool and correct the cause of the problem as soon as possible. Most problems can be dealt with easily at first, but they get harder and harder to fix the longer they go on without intervention.

Once you’ve got your garden set up, start your seeds and lets start growing!

• How to germinate your seeds directly in the grow medium, as pictured below (here’s a germination tutorial for hydro).
• How to water cannabis plants.

Plant your marijuana seeds and keep them warm during germination.

The result? Cannabis seedlings pop up a few days later.

3.) “Top” plants at a young age

Wait until the seedling has about 6 sets of leaves, then cut off the top of the main stem.

Wait until your plants have grow about 6 sets of leaves (6 “nodes”).

Cut off the top of the plant through the main stem. You want to remove the top node completely.

After topping 4 plants, I had 4 little tops. Cutting off such a small amount of plant doesn’t seem like it would make a huge difference to your yields, but this is one of the most important steps to take as a grower indoors to maximize yields. As a result of this simple act, the plant will stop growing with only one main stem, and instead naturally grow more bushy and wide with multiple stems. These bushy cannabis plants will be covered in buds instead of only having one main bud, giving you the “sea of buds” you often see in pictures.

These 4 plants were just topped.

These are the 4 tops from the 4 plants. Such a small amount removed, but it will dramatically change the future growth of your plants.

Now that their tops have been cut off, these plants will never grow the same again. After being topped, they naturally grow bushier with multiple bud sites instead of growing with just one big bud. As a result, you increase the amount of yield you can produce per plant.

Learn more about topping cannabis plants.

4.) Train plants to grow flat and wide (like a table) in the vegetative stage.

Method 1: Bend down branches and use plant twist tie to hold them in place.

• When any branch gets taller than the others, bend it down and away from the center of the plant.
• Tie the stem directly to the plant container using plant twisty tie to hold it in place.
• You’re done when they’re all the same height and about 1.5′ tall from the top of the plant container. At that point, move to the next step.

Full tutorial on how to use plant twist tie plus bending to grow plants wide and flat like a table.

The goal of any training when growing indoors is to force your plants to grow flat and wide like a table. This ensures all the parts of the plant are about the same distance from the grow light. This shape will dramatically increase your yields once buds start forming because it allows your plants to use “every last drop” of light to make buds.

Method 2: Use a “Screen” (get trellis netting and train plants to grow under the net)

Invest in a 4×4′ Scrog trellis net (get two because you may want a second one later) and install it to be half the final desired height of your plants. In a 4’x4′ grow tent, a good final height for your plants is about 3′ tall. So install the scrog net about 1.5′ feet above the tops of your plant containers. Any time a stem grows above the net, tuck it back underneath until you’ve filled the entire net.

Keep tucking branches under the net as plants grow.

Continue until the whole net is “filled” with a canopy of living plants. This net just has a few spots left before it’s completely filled and ready for the next step.

5.) Initiate the flowering stage, then…

In order to get plants to make buds (start “flowering”) you need to give plants 12 hours of complete darkness a day. This is typically done by putting your grow lights on a timer set on a 12/12 light schedule.  Since your plants are in a grow tent, when the grow lights are off, your plants are in complete darkness so they can enjoy their “beauty sleep”.

Note: Don’t check on your plants during their 12-hour “night” period because exposing them to light at night even a few times can disrupt budding and revert plants back to the vegetative stage. Keep plants totally in the dark when the grow lights are off.

Defoliate – Follow a strategic defoliation schedule.

It doesn’t seem like defoliation (removing leaves) should improve cannabis yields, but this is a “hack” that has proven to be remarkably effective. Not only does strategic defoliation increase your yields (when done properly), it also increases the overall bud quality including the THC percentage and density of your buds. We confirmed this at the lab in our defoliation side-by-side experiment with clones. There are many great defoliation schedules, but here’s one that works well to increase yields and is followed by many commercial growers.

Example of a great defoliation schedule (most common defoliation schedule for commercial cannabis growers)

First Defoliation: 3 weeks after 12/12

Remove all the big fan leaves from the plant about 3 weeks after initiating the 12/12 light schedule.

• If a leaf is the size of your hand or bigger, remove it.
• If the stem is at least 1″ long, remove it.
• Make sure to leave at least a few fan leaves on each main stem

Second Defoliation: Do this 4 weeks after the first defoliation

• Repeat the same process
• Focus on making sure all bud sites get direct exposure to the light and aren’t covered by leaves
• After this, don’t remove leaves unless the plant is getting overly leafy, causing leaves to lay on each other and create wet spots
• It’s okay to tuck leaves to expose buds

After defoliation, you should be able to see light from the grow light hitting the floor (if the floor is in shadow then remove more leaves).

Read the full defoliation tutorial.

Other flowering stage tips

• Not too hot, not too humid – Maintain a good environment while buds are forming.
• Keep plants healthy – Avoid bugs and nutrient deficiencies.

Leaves should appear green and healthy for most of the flowering stage. It’s normal for leaves to start turning yellow or looking rough the last 1-2 weeks before harvest, but before that, it’s a sign of a problem. If you notice discolored leaves, don’t ignore it. Do something! Your yields will thank you.

If using a net…

• Once you initiate the flowering stage, stop tucking your stems under the first net.
• Let the stems grow above the net. Each stem is going to develop into a main bud (sometimes called a “cola”).
• Are the colas getting too close ot the light or starting to fall over?
  • If the stems are wavy and falling over, or if some stems are growing taller than others, install a second net about 1 foot above the first one.
  • This is not 100% necessary, but can be helpful if your stems stretch a lot after initiating 12/12 (a second net helps you arrange buds to make sure they fill the entire grow tent).
  • Use the grid to stabilize your colas where you want them.
  • If a stem is getting too close to the grow light, tuck it under that second net.
  • Try to ensure your buds are all about the same height as each other and the same distance from the light.

Regardless of the exact method of training, the goal is to get all your buds about the same distance from the grow light. This maximizes yields.

6.) Harvest at the right time.

Harvest at the right time. Here’s a quick guide.

Not Ready

Baby buds (budlets) look like a ball of white hairs. These buds have many weeks to go!

If your buds are all white hairs, they’re just getting started. Expect much more fattening from here.

Watch out for pollen sacs!

If you started with feminized seeds from a trustworthy breeder, you should never see pollen sacs. But just in case, if you see pollen sacs instead of white hairs, it means your plant is growing male flowers and should be removed from the grow space immediately. Why toss male plants? Male flowers don’t contain much THC and their pollen causes nearby buds to grow seeds.

Immediately remove any plant that grows pollen sacs instead of white hairs. Learn more about male plants.

Still Not Ready

As the marijuana plant buds get closer to harvest, they thicken, and those white pistils start to darken and curl up. You’ll notice your buds are slowly getting thicker and denser. However, if you still have a lot of straight white pistils, like this bud, it means you still have a few weeks to go.

Ready to Harvest!

You’re in the ready-to-harvest window for cannabis when most of the hairs have darkened and curled in.

A bud is ready to harvest when most of the hairs darken and curl in.

Check out tons more pictures of ready-to-harvest buds from different strains!

Learn how to use a magnifier to look at buds for even more precision.

7.) Dry and jar buds properly.

Buds aren’t smokable directly off the plant because they’re mostly full of water. You need to dry and cure buds if you want to get bud quality like what you’re used to buying.

The simplest way to dry buds is to cut off the branches and hang each branch upside down until the buds are dry. Best done in a cool space.

Learn how to dry buds and cure them perfectly.

Time to enjoy the fruits of your labor!

Conclusion: Summary of Key Steps for 1 Pound Yields in a 4×4′ Grow Tent

Growing over a pound of cannabis in a 4’x4’ grow tent is an achievable goal for any home grower (even a beginner) when following my strategic plan.

Here’s a recap of the key steps covered in this guide:

• Start with high-yielding strains – Choose stable, fast-growing strains that are known for their heavy yields.
• Get the right equipment – Invest in a quality grow light, tent, fans, etc. sized for your space. If you get good equipment, especially a good grow light, your equipment will do most of the work for you.
• Top young plants – Cut the main stem early to promote bushy, wide growth.
• Train plants to grow flat like a table – Use bending and tying down (or a trellis / scrog net) to “train” plants and create a wide even canopy that fills the entire grow space. Do this before you initiate the flowering stage.
• Initiate flowering at the right time – Switch to 12/12 when plants are 1/2 the final desired size.
• Strategic defoliation – Remove large leaves to “hack” the plant’s natural plant processes and force it to grow in a way that produces bigger, denser, and more potent buds. Best when done on a specific schedule. For example, a common schedule is to defoliate heavily at the beginning of the flowering stage, and then defoliate again 3 weeks later.
• Control environment – Avoid excessive heat or humidity, and give plants lots of airflow. Luckily, if you started with good equipment and set up your grow space properly, you won’t have to worry about the environment.
• Stay vigilant – Catch issues early and take corrective steps. Don’t ignore problems!
• Harvest at peak maturity – Harvest buds at the right time.
• Dry and cure buds – Dry buds in a good environment, then jar and cure them for a few weeks. This is crucial to achieve professional quality bud!

Follow these steps carefully throughout the grow and you can expect to harvest over a pound of dense, high-quality buds from a 4’x4’ grow tent setup! With some experience under your belt, yields of 1.5 pounds or greater become possible!

You might enjoy the following cannabis growing tutorials…

15 ways to improve cannabis yields

How to increase bud density

How to increase THC of buds (make buds more potent!)

The post How to Grow 1 Pound of Weed Indoors (Proven Method) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

GrowWeedEasy.com teaches you the secrets of home grow. Growing weed is easy when you know what to do, but most “how to grow marijuana” tutorials leave you feeling like you need a degree in horticulture.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

1. Increase Light Intensity (plus choose right light for desired yields & possibly add CO2)
2. Manipulate How Plants Grow (a free way to yield more bud indoors)
3. Provide Right Nutrients (low Nitrogen in the flowering stage, and remember sometimes less is more!)
4. Control Growing Environment (let the growing environment work for you)
5. Harvest Plants Properly (most importantly, don’t harvest early!)
6. 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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A Complete Tutorial on Bud-Based Flowering Stage Defoliation

What is cannabis defoliation, and why/how does removing leaves from a cannabis plant increase yields?

This THC Bomb cannabis plant was defoliated according to this defoliation tutorial.

The point of defoliation is to “hack” your plant’s natural processes in the early part of the flowering stage to cause it to grow its buds and colas differently.

You’ll notice in the picture examples that the defoliated plants seem focused purely on bud development. Growers achieve this by removing fan leaves from healthy marijuana plants during early bud development. As a result, plants put more energy on growing buds rather than leaves.

Defoliation is the only way to achieve plants that are ALL buds, like this Aurora Indica plant.

Blue Dream is another strain that responds especially well to defoliation.

Growing auto-flowering plants? Use this defoliation tutorial instead.

In the wild, your plant will spend some amount of energy on buds, as well as some amount of energy making and maintaining leaves. However, if you defoliate your cannabis plants early in the flowering stage, you change the plant’s natural growing patterns.

Without as many leaves at the moment buds are first forming, your plants puts more energy into making colas, and the colas will be longer, thicker, and go down further into the plant.

Theories Why Bud-Based Marijuana Defoliation Works…

• Wind-pollinated plant – Cannabis plants are wind-pollinated, and therefore don’t fatten any buds that lack access to wind. Defoliation exposes more buds to a breeze.
• Buds get more direct light – Cannabis buds grow fatter when exposed to strong, direct light. Defoliation exposes buds to more light.
• Energy diverted to buds – A defoliated cannabis plant focuses on bud sites during the initial part of flowering. It simply doesn’t have leaves to put energy into!

Did You Know? There are other commercial crops, like cotton, which also need to be defoliated early in the flowering stage to produce the best quality and yields!

Whatever the reason, defoliation works to dramatically increase your cannabis yields and bud quality when you do it right!

Only buds that get exposed to direct light ever get a good size. If your plant is very bushy like this one, you are losing out on potential yields because the hidden buds stay small. The buds would have been longer and bigger further down into the plant if it had been defoliated in the early flowering stage.

A non-defoliated plant – buds are smaller than they could be.

Here’s another example of cannabis plants that would have benefited from defoliation. Notice how short all the buds are. They end where the bushiness begins. If the grower had exposed the colas, they would have fattened much deeper into the plant!

A non-defoliated plant – buds are small and don’t go deep into the plant.

Many growers write in to tell us how defoliation was the secret sauce they needed to take their growing skills to the next level. In our growing forum we have some growers that are conducting defoliation and have taken the technique to new heights!

Ready to learn how to incorporate defoliation into your own cannabis garden?

THC Bomb plant grown by Ricky (a first time defoliator!)

Step-by-Step: How to Defoliate Cannabis Plants to Increase Yields

It’s pretty well-accepted in the cannabis growing world that defoliation can increase yields in some situations, but what’s the “best” way to defoliate? That’s a common question without an easy answer.

The truth is that many growers have their own ideas about the best way to defoliate. If you ask 10 different growers, you could possibly get 10 different answers! And you’ll probably find at least one grower who claims it doesn’t work at all.

Today, I’ll share my own personal defoliation timeline and tactics which I’ve developed over the last several years.

Note: Some equatorial Sativa and Haze strains naturally grow tall and “leggy” with thin leaves and lots of exposed stem. These strains may never produce enough leaves to get bushy even in the best environment, and may look like they’ve naturally defoliated themselves. When this happens there’s no need to defoliate plants further. However, many (if not most) strains produce some amount of leafiness that needs to be removed for optimal growth indoors.

You may not need to defoliate if you see lots of stem and bud sites are already exposed. Some strains naturally grow leggy enough that they don’t need much, if any, defoliation to expose bud sites or increase air circulation!

Step 1: Vegetative Stage Defoliation

I don’t remove leaves in the vegetative stage to the same extent I do in the flowering stage.

Most defoliation in the vegetative stage is used to thin out the plant if it starts getting really bushy. Making sure there’s always airflow through the middle and under the bottom of the plant will help plants grow better. Good airflow also prevents White Powdery Mold (WPM), a common problem when you have leaves laying on top of each other.

In my opinion, if you can’t see through the plant, and/or there’s no light getting through to the bottom, it’s too bushy for proper airflow!

These vegetative stage plants are too leafy! Notice how the floor is in shadow? They’re ready for a haircut!

When it comes to plant training, the focus in the vegetative stage is on getting the shape of the plant correct (flat and wide like a table), and making sure there’s multiple main stems/colas under the grow light.

When I’m growing my own cannabis plants, I don’t start defoliating aggressively until I’m in the flowering stage.

Step 2: Flowering Stage Defoliation

Right before the switch to the flowering stage, I remove any leaves and tiny growth tips on the bottom parts of the plant that aren’t getting light anymore (sometimes called “lollipopping” the plant).

It is important to do right this before the switch to flowering so the plant is putting all its effort into the top bud sites instead of the lower bud sites that will never grow into big buds no matter what you do.

Some growers call the technique “lollipopping” because you’re making the bottom bare like a lollipop stick 🙂 Though some growers also remove bud sites while lollipopping, for you first grow, I recommend removing all the leaves below the line, but leaving the bud sites (growth tips at the base of each leaf) alone. This helps ensure you have as many places to make bud as possible. I’ve found that leaving extra bud sites doesn’t seem to reduce your yields as long as you’ve defoliated the plant properly, but removing too many bud sites definitely hurts your yields!

This grower stripped all the buds sites from the bottom of the plant while lollipopping, resulting in shortened colas. I’ve done this, too! His yield would have been bigger if he’d allowed those bud sites to continue further down on each stem!

To prevent the problem with the plant above, avoid removing or damaging future bud sites whenever defoliating. It’s easy to accidentally damage bud sites when they’re just tiny pre-flowers like this one, so be extra careful when removing leaves!

After you’ve stripped all the leaves from the bottom your plant, it’s time to remove most of the remaining biggest fan leaves (though you’re not going to completely strip the top part as much as before). You’ll be leaving any small fan leaves as well as the top few pairs of big fan leaves of each cola completely untouched. After this step, the plant will be almost all “bones” and bud sites, with few big fan leaves except at the top.

Flowering Defoliation #1 (Immediately Before Switch to 12/12)

Before Defoliation

After Defoliation

I leave a few extra full size fan leaves at the top of each cola because I believe it helps power the growth of the colas during the flowering stretch so they get as long as possible. Make sure to remove only leaves during defoliation, but not bud sites! I have found after trying it both ways that removing bud sites while lollipopping/defoliating often hurts your yields!

Flowering Defoliation #2 (Last Major Defoliation) – Week 3 of Flowering Stage

This is what that plant looked like 3 weeks later. I didn’t remove any leaves in that time. The plant has gotten far taller due to the flowering stretch, and is completely covered in leaves again!

Usually by around week 3, a bunch of budlets have formed. At this point I remove all of the major fan leaves one last time. You’re forcing the plant to focus on the buds during this crucial phase of their development!

After that, I’m done with the majority of defoliation! From week 3 and on, I only remove leaves if they’re covering a bud site (and I can’t tuck the leaf away) or if the plant starts getting too bushy through the middle and bottom. Each leaf provides energy to the plant, and I cherish them… unless they get in the way! 🙂

Step 3: Harvest

Wait until buds have matured and appear ready to harvest. Then it’s go time!

7 Weeks Later I Harvested This!

Each bud dwarfed my hands!

The above pictures featured a single plant but I’ve used the same technique successfully with dozens of cannabis plants in soil, coco coir, and hydro.

More Examples of Defoliated Cannabis Plants

Here are examples of other harvests where I utilized this defoliation technique.

Grown in coco coir

I probably could have defoliated these ones a bit more, but results were still great.

Grown in soil

These are auto-flowering plants that were defoliated. Get instructions on how to use defoliation with autoflowering plants to increase yields. It’s pretty much the same, but in that defoliation tutorial I included some extra explanation on exactly when and how much to to defoliate considering you don’t have a specific day that you initiate 12/12 like with photoperiod plants.

These two hydro plants also utilized the manifolding technique in addition to defoliation to increase bud size.

Bonus Tips for Successful Defoliation

• Always use nutrients alongside defoliation – Defoliation works best when you’re providing cannabis-friendly nutrients in the water. Supplementing with nutrients help the plant replace nutrients lost in the leaves. If you’re growing in a “just add water” super soil setup (where you’re not adding extra nutrients), it’s recommended to avoid much defoliation. If you remove leaves without adding more nutrients, it increases the chance the plant runs out of nutrients early, starving it of precious nutrition during bud formation.
• Light should hit the floor – Defoliation is most effective if the plant is so leafy that light isn’t making it through the plant. If the floor underneath is in shadow, that’s a sign that no air or light is getting through the plant. After defoliation, there should be some amount of light getting to the floor under the plant.
• Err on the side of taking fewer leaves – You can always take more leaves, but you can’t put them back. Especially as a beginner defoliator, it’s recommended to remove fewer leaves than you might think, and see how the plant responds. Even a little defoliation can make a significant difference to yields.
• Only defoliate healthy cannabis plants – You should never defoliate a plant that is sick or unhealthy. If a plant has nutrient deficiencies, or otherwise seems stressed, “tuck” leaves to expose buds instead.
• Tuck leaves to expose buds – The goal of tucking leaves is to ensure they don’t cover any buds from the grow light. If the plant is not particularly leafy, showing signs of stress, or you’re not adding nutrients in the water, you can still achieve a lot of the benefits of defoliation simply by tucking big fan leaves out of the way.

If you want to copy the results for yourself, refer to the following quick summary!

Nebula’s Bud-Based Defoliation Technique (Quick Summary)

So basically, my (personal) cannabis defoliation technique could be summed up like this:

Vegetative Stage

• Plant Training – Train plant(s) to grow into a generally flat and wide shape, so they fill your grow space like a table. This makes it so you have multiple colas located at the top of the plant and close to the light. Or choose a Sea of Green setup (growing many small plants) and skip the training!
• Defoliate the middle and bottom of your plant(s) whenever you can’t see light coming through them. When the middle is completely dark it means the plant is too bushy.

Right Before Switch to 12/12 – What about autoflowering strains?

• Do this step when plant is about half the final desired height (since it will about double in size after the switch to 12/12)
• Lollipop the plant (completely strip the lowest leaves on the plant that will never get light, leaving the bud sites intact)
• Remove big fan leaves on the upper part of the plant (making sure not to damage bud sites) until plant is not leafy. If you can easily see your plant’s stems it’s a good time to stop.

Week 3 After Switch to 12/12

• One Last Defoliation at Flowering Week 3 – Now that you’re three weeks into the flowering stage, do another major removal of just about all the fan leaves. Make sure to especially take any big leaves with long stems, or leaves that are covering bud sites! Again, avoid removing or damaging any developing buds!

After Week 3, I only defoliate huge fan leaves that can’t be tucked away. Otherwise I just wait until harvest and reap the rewards!

Defoliation is a technique, but it is also an art! The above instructions should get you started but cannabis plants are like big bonsai trees and you’ll eventually learn how to defoliate without hesitation. It’s fun to try to alter the growth patterns of cannabis plants and I encourage you to experiment with your own plants and develop your own particular defoliation style and rhythm!

Defoliation done right makes big, dense, potent marijuana buds at harvest!

Have you tried defoliation on your cannabis plants? Send us pictures!

You Might Be Interested in One of the Following Cannabis Plant Training Tutorials…

• Simplest Plant Training Guide Ever!
• Complete Plant Training Guide
• How Can I Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• 7 Unfortunate Plant Training Mistakes

Detailed Breakdown of Training Techniques​

• Low Stress Training (LST) Tutorial
• Topping vs FIMing Tutorial
• LBH’s Famous ScrOG Tutorial
• Supercropping: Simple Secret to Bigger Yields
• Sea of Green (SoG) Tutorial
• 12-12 from Seed – Flowering Plants Early
• Nebula’s Manifold Tutorial
• How to Manifold Clones
• Alternate Defoliation Tutorial ​
• What is Re-Vegging / Monstercropping?

Diagnose Your Sick Plant!

The post “Defoliation Deep Dive” Cannabis Yield Multiplier appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Most Common Plant Training Mistakes

1. Not Training at All
2. Breaking a Main Stem by Accident
3. Mistakenly Keeping Plants Too Small
4. Letting Plants Get Too Big
5. Topping Plant Too Early (or Incorrectly)
6. Not Securing Plants Properly
7. Excessive Training on Sick or Slow-Growing Plants

Did you know that “training” your cannabis plants to grow many main bud sites (instead of just one) is a simple and free way to get bigger yields indoors? Plant training can increase indoor yields by 40% or more (compared to letting plants grow naturally) by forcing plants to grow bigger, denser buds, without as many smaller or airy ones.

In the vegetative stage, marijuana plants are trained to grow wide and flat, like a table

In the flowering stage, this shape ensures that many bud sites develop into long, thick colas by taking advantage of the fact that cannabis plants put the most energy into buds that are both at the top of the plant and close to the grow light.

Although plant training can produce impressive results, sometimes marijuana growers aren’t given the right information, which can cause unfortunate mistakes that hurt their yields!

With that in mind, I will cover the 7 most common marijuana plant training mistakes, so you get the yields results you want every time, even if it’s your first time!

1.) Not Training at All

In our growing forum, when I asked what people’s biggest mistakes were when it came to training their cannabis plants, the most common answer was actually growers regretted not training their plants at all!

It’s true that you can get great results without any plant training, but training techniques can significantly improve your yields compared to letting the plant grow into its natural shape. Plant training can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, but even a little bit of effort in your plant’s early life can make a big difference to your final bud weight!

The trained plant on the right had many more main colas and produced far more bud than the untrained plant on the left, even though it took up less space

2.) Breaking a Main Stem by Accident

It’s important to use bending techniques from the beginning of a plant’s life because stems start getting stiff as they get older. Starting while the plant is still young makes the whole process go much more easily!

However, even if you’re careful, it can be easy to snap a stem by accident. This most often happens when trying to forcefully bend an older stem that has become thick and unyielding.

Nothing is better than bending when stems are flexible to get your plants to grow exactly how you want, but there are a few techniques that can help you bend over stems after they’ve already hardened!

Prevent broken stems by bending at the newest growth if possible, where stems are more flexible.

Supercropping (Advanced) – If a stem feels too stiff but it must be bent, don’t force it! Use a technique called “supercropping” to soften up the inside first, so the skin doesn’t break.

1. Pinch the stem tightly between your fingers at the place you want it to bend
2. Start gently wiggling the stem back and forth while also trying to crush the new joint in between your fingers.
3. Wiggle back and forth for 10+ seconds, or until the stem has greatly loosened up at the place you want to bend.
4. Once the stem feels loose and flexible at the joint, you’re safe to bend it over and secure it in place. This can even work with thicker stems if you’re patient enough to wiggle for a while!

Learn More About Supercropping

If you do end up breaking a main stem, you can often tape up the injury like a cast and the plant will heal itself over the next week or two.

Remember: If you do break off a main stem early in a plant’s life, it’s no big deal because there are usually dozens more growth tips to take its place! And even if you break off a main stem/cola during the flowering stage and can’t tape it up in time, it can help to remember that most growers lose a cola at some point!

3.) Mistakenly Keeping Plants Too Small

A very small plant just can’t make as much bud as a bigger plant, so keeping plants smaller than needed can reduce your yields. You will get the best yields by growing your plants so that they fill up your grow space.

Since this plant was kept so small before it started flowering, it just doesn’t have the size or infrastructure to support a lot of buds. There’s nothing a grower can do at this point to get a plant like this to yield a lot of bud. It’s important to avoid mistakenly keeping plants too small before they start making buds!

It’s important to wait until a plant is at least 3-4 weeks old before initiating the flowering stage (putting cannabis plants on a 12/12 light schedule), even if you’re trying to get to harvest as fast as possible.

This is because a plant won’t start flowering before about week 3-4 anyway, so giving plants a 12/12 light schedule before that time just reduces the total amount of light they get each day, and they won’t get as big as plants under 18/6 or a 24/0 schedule from seed.

3-4 Week Old Plant – Never switch to 12/12 earlier than this or plants will stay tiny, and waiting a few more weeks is probably better!

This plant was switched to flowering when it was 4 weeks old, and yielded about an ounce in one big cola.

Some growers recommend you wait until 6 weeks to start flowering. One reason is that cannabis plants tend to mature the fastest if they have already started showing “pre-flowers” (tiny versions of adult flowers) before initiating the flowering stage.

But the main reason is that letting the plants go just a little bit longer – to about week 6 – will give you plants that are significantly bigger and which can support bigger buds.

6-Week Old Plant That’s Been Trained to Grow Flat

After being switched to 12/12 immediately after the above picture, the plant turned into this, yielding about 6 ounces on the single plant. Two extra weeks in the vegetative stage can make a huge difference in plant size!

Note: These rules don’t apply to auto-flowering plants, which will automatically start flowering on their own without any input from you. If you want a very small plant that yields a lot, consider auto-flowering strains: they’re ready to harvest about 3 months from germination and stay small on their own! Overall, it’s much better than doing 12/12 from seed.

4.) Letting Plants Get Too Big

As we just covered, if you have the space/height for it, you’ll get better yields for your electricity by giving the plant time to get to a decent size before switching to the flowering stage.

However, if you let a plant get too big during the vegetative stage, it may completely overgrow your space!

Look at how this plant has already grown into the grow lights in the vegetative stage! This is a problem because the lights can’t be lifted up any higher in this particular grow space, and the plant is going to double in height after the switch to 12/12! This kind of crazy overgrowth can happen before you know it if you have a fast-growing plant, so stay aware of how big your plant is getting!

If plants are allowed to get too big during the vegetative stage, you’ll not only end up wasting time and electricity, you’ll also find yourself with an overcrowded grow space. Plants being too close to each other and the grow lights can cause light burn, white powdery mildew, bud rot, and other unwanted problems.

Flowering Stretch: It’s important to remember that plants often double in height (known as the “flowering stretch”) after the switch to the flowering stage, so it’s important to change to 12/12 around the time the plants have reached half the final desired height.

Pre-Stretch – Right before the switch to 12/12

Post-Stretch – 4 weeks after the switch to 12/12. Notice how much taller they got!

Learn more about the flowering stretch!

If you have a plant that’s been growing incredibly tall and lanky, with a lot of upward growth without as much side branching, consider that a plant like that may stretch up to three times its height after the switch to 12/12. A plant that tends to grow short and bushy its whole life may not stretch much at all.

Different strains will stretch a different amount after the switch to 12/12. The main clue is what the breeder says about the strain, as well as how the plant tended to grow in the vegetative stage (lanky vegetative plants often become lanky adults).

5.) Topping Plant Early or Incorrectly

Removing the top of the main stem (“topping” the plant) before it has grown at least 3-4 nodes often wastes more time than it saves.

In fact, removing any part of the plant when it’s very young can stunt the plant, meaning it may grow slowly or stop growing altogether for days or even weeks.

However, if you wait until a plant is healthy and growing fast with a good root system, it won’t even slow down after being topped! Waiting until the plant is the right size often improves your overall results from topping.

These young cannabis plants are ready to be topped

If you cut off just the very tip of your plant, there’s very little chance of stunting, even if it only has 3 or 4 nodes in total.

Many growers top down to the 3rd node/pair of leaves (like in the following picture) in order to form a short manifold. If you plan on any kind of extensive training like building a manifold, wait until the young plant has grown at least 6 nodes before starting; this ensures it has established a good root system. The more of the plant you remove at a time, the more it stresses the plant, so you want to make sure your plant is mature/strong enough to handle it!

Be careful not to damage the growth tips during topping. These tiny stems will become your new main colas, and the base of every growth tip is where buds form.

Always leave a little extra stem when topping a marijuana plant – this helps prevent the main stalk from splitting!

6.) Not Securing Your Plant Properly!

Don’t use string or anything “sharp” to secure plants, as it can start cutting into their skin over time! Also, it’s important to make sure that you can easily access all your plants after training.

Never use string to hold down your plants!

Notice how this plant can’t be moved from its location because it’s attached to a nearby wall? Don’t do this! Always attach your plant directly to the pot so you can pick it up and move it. Also, avoid using something sharp like string or chicken wire to hold down the plants, because it will slowly cut into the plant’s “skin” over time and cause damage.

Plant twist ties are perfect for securing plants! They bend into the shape you want, and are soft enough they won’t hurt plants.

Or get creative! Any type of soft flexible wire works well

Make sure to attach any twisty ties directly to the plant container; this lets you pick up and move the plant freely!

As the plant grows, whenever some of the colas are getting taller than the others…

Bend the tallest ones over until they’re all the same height as each other. Following just that one principle will produce the shape you’re looking for!

7.) Excessive Training on Sick or Slow-Growing Plants

When a cannabis plant is slow-growing or suffering from deficiencies, it is much more sensitive to stress from training. Things like topping, supercropping and extreme defoliation can all aggravate a sick plant and make it take longer to recover.

If you have a sick or slow-growing plant it’s good to give them a few days of TLC before you commence training 🙂

Always let sick plants recover before extensive training. This plant suffered from a grower accidentally giving 3x the correct amount of nutrients. It’s important to wait until it’s healthy and growing new leaves every day before doing anything else to this poor plant!

What can you do to help a cannabis plant relax for a few days?

Help plants recover quickly by moving the grow light a few inches away, and leaving the plant alone on an 18/6 light schedule (if it’s in the vegetative stage, of course, if you have a plant on a 12/12 light schedule you don’t want to change it!).

Providing relatively low levels of light in a comfortable, temperate environment without any disturbance can help a stressed plant regain its strength and start growing fast again in just a day or two. Once your plant is healthy and growing again, put the lights back on at full strength!

How far away should I keep my grow lights?

After extensive wilting from a heat spell, the grower of the plant below thought his baby was a goner. He tossed the dying plant in a bucket at the edge of his grow room, with the plan of throwing it in the garbage later that day. He somehow forgot, and a few days later he came back to find out that the comfortable temperature outside the grow tent and filtered light levels from a nearby window had been just the thing to bring the plant back to life! Even with just an inch of water at the bottom of the bucket, the plant was thriving!

Check out that plant at harvest!

At a recent growing convention in San Diego I heard from another grower who’d noticed that lowering the light levels just a tiny bit can help a sick plant recover more quickly. The worst thing you can do for a sick plant is turn up the light, because it makes the plant work harder to keep up with all that photosynthesis!

I thought a cannabis plant could come back from anything?

When people say, “It grows like a weed” and explain how cannabis plants can recover from anything, they’re talking about a healthy, fast-growing plant. You really can do almost anything to a vibrant cannabis plant in the vegetative stage and it’ll bounce right back!

For growers who always have healthy plants, it can seem like plants simply can’t get stunted. But if you take the same approach with a sick, sparse or slow-growing plant, it can dramatically slow down the plant’s growth for days or even weeks in rare cases!

Now is not the time to train this plant (or try anything new really). Wait until it has recovered first, then start training!

Whenever you’re thinking about training or removing parts of the plant, always consider the plant’s overall health first. You’ll know when you would be better served by waiting a few days to start training.

Now that you know how to prevent the 7 most common plant training problems that hurt yields…

Time to start training your plants!

Jump to….

How Many Plants Should I Grow?

7 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I First Started Growing Weed

Why Are Cannabis Leaves Turning Yellow?

7 Tips to Improving Bud Quality

The post 7 Unfortunate Plant Training Mistakes appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

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…

• Best Type of Nutrients
• Choosing the Best Grow Light
• Soil vs Hydro
• How Many Plants Should I Grow?
• What Part of the House Should I Grow In?
• What Setup Should I Get?
• Best Strains for Beginners
• Where to Get Seeds (including the U.S.)

Common New Grower Topics

• How Much Will Electricity Cost?
• Stealth Growing: How NOT to Get Caught Growing Weed
• What Equipment Do I Need?
• Germinate Your Seeds
• 7 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I First Started Growing Weed
• How to Save Money When Growing Weed
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• Ask Questions & Get Answers From Real Growers! (In Our Free Growing Community)
• Cannabis Grower’s Glossary

Problems & Symptoms

• Cannabis Problems Guide
  • How to Help Yellow Seedlings
  • How to Fix Yellow Cannabis Leaves
  • How to Fix Curling and Clawing Cannabis Leaves
  • What Causes Dry or Crispy Leaves?
  • What Causes Brown Spots on Cannabis Leaves?
  • What Causes Bananas (“Nanners”) on Cannabis Buds?
  • Is This Nutrient Burn on My Marijuana Plant?
  • What causes red stems in cannabis plants?
• Diagnose Your Sick Plant
• Bugs & Other Cannabis Pests
• How to Prevent Nutrient Deficiencies
  • Which Nutrient Deficiencies are Caused by pH? (picture guide)
  • How to Stop Flowering Stage Nutrient Deficiencies
• 7 Reasons Why Cannabis Plants Grow Slow
• 5-Step Remedy That Fixes 99% of Grow Problems
• All-Natural Pesticides – Safe Up to Harvest!

Plant Training (Indoor Tricks for Bigger Yields)

• Simplest Plant Training Guide Ever!
• How to Control Height of Indoor Cannabis Plants
• Complete Plant Training Guide
• Breakdown of Techniques​
  • Low Stress Training (LST) Tutorial
  • Topping vs FIMing Tutorial
  • LBH’s Famous ScrOG Tutorial
  • Supercropping: Magic Technique to Control Cannabis Plant Height
  • Sea of Green (SoG) Tutorial
  • 12-12 from Seed – Flowering Plants Early
  • Nebula’s Manifold Tutorial
  • How to Manifold Clones
  • Nebula’s Bud-Based Defoliation Tutorial
  • Alternate Defoliation Tutorial ​
  • What is Re-Vegging / Monstercropping?
• How Can I Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• 7 Unfortunate Plant Training Mistakes

Grow Mediums

• What’s the Best Growing Medium?
• Soil vs Coco vs Hydro
• Basic Soil Guide
• Organic Soil Compost Guide (Super Soil) – Just Add Water!
• Coco Coir Guide
  • Coco Coir: The Most Flexible Cannabis Grow Medium
• Hydro/DWC/Bubbleponics Guide
• “True” Organic Growing vs Just Using Organic Nutrients
• Can You Use Miracle-Gro?

Nutrients

• Which Nutrients Are Best For Growing Cannabis?
• Soil Nutrients
• Coco Coir Nutrients
• Hydroponic 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

• Create the Perfect Growing Environment
  • Temperature Tutorial
  • 5 Secrets to Heat Control
  • Control Humidity for Better Buds
  • How to Use Reflective Walls to Increase Yields Indoors
  • How to Make Plants Grow Faster with CO2
• Where’s the Best Place in the House to Grow Your Plants?
• How to Control Odors
• How to Set Up an Exhaust
• How to Set Up a Grow Tent for Better Yields (and Stealth)

Plant Care Tutorials

• Cloning
  • How to clone weed in a cup of water (easy!)
  • How to make cannabis clones with an aero cloner
• Intro to Plant Training for Bigger Yields Indoors
• How Often to Water Plants
  • The Easiest Way to Water Plants & Remove Runoff
• How (and When) to Transplant Cannabis
• Male vs Female Plants
• When to Harvest?
• Drying & Curing

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

• Where to Get Seeds
• How to Find the Right Strain
• What are “Feminized” Seeds?
• Which Breeders to Trust?
• Photoperiod vs Auto-Flowering Cannabis Strains
• Bag Seed vs Hype Seed: Is it worth it to buy cannabis 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

• Nebula’s Guide to Cannabis Auto-Flowering Strains (Photoperiod vs Auto-Flowering)
• Should I “Top” or Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• What’s the best light schedule for auto-flowering strains?
• Nebula’s Auto-Flowering Grow Journal (Topping vs Natural)

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!

• How Long Does it Take to Grow Weed?
• Vegetative vs Flowering Stage (Long Days vs Long Nights)
• Germination & Seedling Mistakes
• Simple Guide to Plant Training
• What’s the Best Pot / Container?
• Perpetual Harvest
• What Determines Yields?
• 5 Time-Savers for Busy Growers
• Breeding Techniques
• 7 Gift Ideas for Cannabis Growers
• Grow Journals
• How long can I store nutrient water?
• What is High-Frequency Fertigation?
• Where is it legal to grow weed in the USA?
• See EVERYTHING on the Site!

Safety & Preparation

• Fire Protection in the Grow Room
• Electrical Safety Tips & Tricks
• Prepare Yourself for Growing Emergencies
• Stealth Growing Indoors: How to NOT get Caught Growing Weed

Just for Fun

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

Submit Pics

• Submit Trophy Pictures of your Plants!
• How to Take Better Plant Pics
• How to Fix Yellow HPS 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!

The post Link Guide to Growing Cannabis Tutorials appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

What isn’t there to love about training cannabis plants? Training is fun, it gets you more involved with your plants, it helps maximize your grow space and lights, and it burns a calorie or two in addition to dramatically increasing yields!

But there is a dark side to training. It shows up when newer or possibly misinformed growers attempt to train their cannabis plants, but end up stunting their growth or generally doing them more harm than good. This can come from accidents like breaking stems, but sometimes it’s a fault in the way the technique is being used.

Today, we’re going to show you how to avoid making plant training mistakes that will slow down the growth of your cannabis. Instead, you can be sure you’re using the right technique the right way at the right time!

ScrOG Mistakes
ScrOG – short for ‘Screen of Green’ – is a method of growing cannabis where a screen is placed in between the plants and the light. The plants are kept under the screen during the vegetative stage and guided through the screen by the grower during flowering to influence neat rows of colas equally spaced from each other.

Most Common Mistakes

First Time Grower 
ScrOG can be a tough method, even for growers who’ve been doing it for a while. It isn’t just a question of knowledge, ScrOG takes much more time and physical work to keep the plants arranged the correct way. If you’re just looking into growing for the first time, I would leave the ScrOG technique for a few grows down the road.

Foul: Improper Use of ScrOG Net!
If you’re like me, you’ll see the ScrOG net in action and be hypnotized. From the outside, it looks like you set up a net and just let the plants do their thing. Unfortunately, doing ScrOG this way nullifies its benefits and will actually make for a tougher grow since there will be a useless net in the way.

When using the ScrOG net, one of the most important aspects is to keep your the plants in an even canopy and below the ScrOG net until the 2nd week of flowering (minimum). Topping will give more colas and make them easier to train under the net; topping is pretty much mandatory for ScrOG really shine.

Manifolding/Mainlining Mistakes
Manifolding (another name for the ‘Mainlining’ growing technique) is like topping taken to the extreme. Manifolding involves topping your plant three separate times for a total of 14 cuts. This is to accomplish something similar to ScrOG, but without a net; it makes for 8 colas that are spaced apart from each other in addition to being equidistant from the main stem.

Most Common Mistakes

Wrong Medium
Manifolding is a great technique and I enjoy using it personally, but it doesn’t perform the same in all mediums.

Although we learned the original Mainlining technique from Nugbuckets who was an avid organic soil grower, many growers claim it adds too much time to the vegetative period. This is due to the fact that manifolding requires a lot of recovery and growth time due to all the topping.

Hydroponic setups generally experience much faster vegetative growth than soil, so this method is much more viable in mediums like coco or DWC. In particular, plants grown in DWC, hempy buckets, or similar mediums are great at demonstrating the power of manifolding.

First Time Grower
This is another technique that can give a new grower a lot more responsibility than they expected. In addition to having to make quite a few cuts on your plant, LST is almost necessary at a vulnerable time for the plant. This means there isn’t much room for error though there is plenty of opportunity for a wrong snip or bend.

If you’ve never grown cannabis or feel apprehensive about having to top so many times, try growing a plant and top it just once. If you feel confident and/or experimental at that point, try topping the plant again or top a side branch for practice.

Topping Too Early
When growing a cannabis plant and trying a new technique, the excitement is palpable! Unfortunately for us, even fast-growing plants don’t grow fast enough to quench our gardening thirst. This can lead to ‘over-care’ (aka ‘Too Much Love’) or starting techniques prematurely.

When topping a plant for manifolding…actually, when topping a plant at all, make sure to let it grow 6 nodes before cutting anything off. You can certainly do it earlier, but topping after your plant has grown six nodes means it will be stronger and won’t need as much time to recover.

Keep the ‘Low’ In ‘Low-Stress Training’
Cannabis plants are pretty hearty, but a young plant can easily be decimated by the strength of a human, even if they’re trying to be gentle! When using LST on a cannabis plant, the difference in strength it takes to bend a stem versus breaking it is minuscule; in some cases, the breaking point is indistinguishable based on resistance alone.

This means you have to be super careful when utilizing LST on any cannabis plant, especially when they’re still young since their stems break much easier. If you’re feeling nervous when doing LST on a young plant and feel it might break soon, try splitting the LST session into multiple days. This way your plants will have a chance to recover and have a smaller chance of breakage on the next bend.

Defoliation Mistakes
Defoliation is the act of purposefully removing fan leaves from a cannabis plant to expose more nodes/bud sites to a higher amount of light. To make it short, defoliation takes back space and light taken by fan leaves and instead makes both things available for parts of the plant that can actually grow bud.

Most Common Mistakes

Defoliating Outdoors
Defoliation – amongst other things – is meant to help growers capitalize on two things in short supply: grow space and light. When it comes to growing indoors, this is a constant battle since indoor space is usually limited and grow lights give off a finite amount of light. Although a 1000W light can give MUCH more light than a plant needs, the area to which that light can reach is very limited…unlike the sun!

Defoliation is meant to help solve problems that many outdoor growers never face in the first place. If you have the room and privacy to grow in a backyard, you likely aren’t worried about how to cut down on the amount of space your plant uses. And since the sun has amazing penetration and power, there isn’t much need to try to open up the plant; it’ll grow tons of buds regardless. In short, defoliation isn’t of much use to outdoor growers.

First Time Grower
I hate to do this again, but it’s just as true with defoliation as it is with manifolding or ScrOG. If you try this on your first grow, you’re lowering the chances of success and thus you being happy with your first attempt. It’s always a good idea to tackle a grow once on easy-mode, and then try your hand at some advanced techniques.

Plucking the Wrong Leaves
Defoliation is meant to open up the plant so more light can get in. This is accomplished by removing some of the fan leaves, and the fan leaves only! Pulling sugar leaves, or growth tips can mean less bud, lost bud, and slower growth for that part of the plant.

This is a picture of a fan leaf:

Remember that this is the only type of leaf you want to remove when attempting defoliation. Also, keep in mind that the removal of leaves shouldn’t be random. Before you pluck one, try moving the leaf to the side to see if it lets light through to a growth tip or a part of the plant that could use it.

Pulling Leaves Too Early
Younger plants, especially those grown in hydroponics under a metal halide, tend to take on a shorter and bushier look than if they were grown otherwise. When you see what looks like a little shrub packed with cannabis leaves, your instinct may be to pull some, but you’ll need to make sure to factor in the age and health of the plant before moving forward.

Even if the plant looks bushy, make sure that removing leaves will actually benefit another part of the plant.

Also keep in mind that your plant should be in full-on vegetative mode, meaning that it’s growing at a pace that makes recovery easy. If you pull leaves from a plant that’s sickly, small, has only a few leaves, or is just plain bad at recovering, you’ll be waiting for days or even weeks before your plant bounces back from the procedure.

Are there pitfalls you’ve run into when trying to employ training techniques? Have you found something that has saved you time and effort and can possibly do the same for your fellow growers? Let us know!

Jump to…

LBH’s Famous ScrOG Tutorial

Nebula’s Manifold Tutorial – Main-lining Cannabis

Cannabis Defoliation: Removing Leaves to Increase Yields

Super Cropping Marijuana: Simple Secret to Bigger Yields

The post Don’t Make These Plant (Advanced) Training Mistakes! appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

What is Cannabis Defoliation?

Picture Proof: Defoliation Works!

• Vegetative Stage
• Flowering Stage

Vegetative Stage: How to Defoliate Cannabis

Flowering Stage: How to Defoliate Cannabis

Why Cannabis Defoliation?

Cannabis “defoliation” is the process of removing leaves from your cannabis plants. Some growers call this “lollipopping” when applied to the bottom of the plant.

Here’s an example of a defoliated cannabis plant.

Many growers believe defoliation can be used as a tool to increase cannabis yields indoors, but there are also a lot of cannabis growers who say that plucking leaves off cannabis plants (defoliation) is not beneficial for your cannabis yields in any way. Today, I’m going to provide evidence that defoliation does indeed work and I believe the pictures I’m going to show you in this article will speak for themselves!

Defoliation means strategically removing leaves to “hack” the plant’s natural processes so you get bigger yields.

Over the years I’ve heard many naysayers swear defoliation can’t work:

“My friend is a grower and he says defoliation doesn’t work”

“I read in a book that defoliation is a terrible idea”

“I tried it and it hurt my yields!”

“The plant NEEDS those leaves or it wouldn’t grow them”

There is some truth to what they’re saying. Defoliation isn’t for everyone in all setups. It should only be used in specific situations. If you do defoliation the wrong way it will hurt your plant and reduce your yields. As one example, defoliation doesn’t appear to be effective at significantly increasing yields for outdoor plants. But for indoor growers, cannabis defoliation done right results in larger yields.

Unfortunately, I’ve also seen growers try to defoliate their cannabis plants the wrong way, most especially by pulling leaves from plants that are slow-growing and/or sickly. Defoliation will not make up for other problems like too-hot conditions, not enough light (or conversely too much light) or nutrient deficiencies. If you try to defoliate plants that are not in top condition, you’re asking for trouble because defoliation will only stress your sick plants further.

The truth is, when growers defoliate their plants the wrong way, they’ll end up with slow growth and reduced yields, and I believe that is where a lot of the criticism of defoliation is coming from.

But the fact that defoliation doesn’t work for all growers in all setups doesn’t mean that it doesn’t increase yields when done the right way!

Today I’d like to show you what successful cannabis defoliation looks like, and how to use it to increase your yields indoors. You’ll see examples and lots of picture-proof! If you still don’t believe properly-done defoliation works to increase yields after reading this article, I still encourage you to give it a try if you can afford to do so. You don’t need to do any defoliation on your plants… just don’t complain when the defoliators get better yields 😉

Defoliation Example (under 250W grow light)

Growing wide and flat is the key to producing the best yields indoors under grow lights! I used the manifold technique on this plant.

Just before switch to 12/12 – Before Defoliation

Just before switch to 12/12 – After defoliation

I started by removing the biggest fan leaves, especially any that were hand-sized and bigger. Some growers like to defoliate the bottom 20% of the plant at this stage. Make sure not to disturb bud sites, and always leave enough leaf cover that you still can’t really see through the plant very well. The plant needs a table of leaves to power the growth and stretch the way we want in the next few weeks! I think it’s common to go overboard at this stage, so I recommend taking a few less leaves than you think. It’s easy to get lost in the zone and realize you’ve completely plucked your plant bald! Just remember, you can’t put leaves back but you can always take more later 🙂

3 weeks after switch to 12/12 – Before Second Defoliation

It has started growing buds, and completely re-leafed itself in that time!

3 weeks after switch to 12/12 – After Second Defoliation

At this point I only took the biggest fan leaves, making sure not to disturb the growing buds. Again, you still shouldn’t be able to see through the plant very well after you’re done, your plants need leaves to fatten those buds! Nothing else was done after this point, and buds were allowed to fatten unhindered. I just gave them nutrients and water from here until harvest!

39 days into flowering (2.5 weeks later)

72 days into flowering – Just before harvest

Drying buds upside down.

How can this be? Why would the plant make leaves if it doesn’t need them?

Outdoors, cannabis plants need extra leaves to store nutrients and create an extra wall of defense in case the plant gets attacked by pests or otherwise loses all its leaves. But indoors there should be no pests, and you are there to give your plants the exact nutrients it wants at the exact right time. This makes holding onto leaves a lot less useful for the plant, especially some plants which get extremely bushy without defoliation.

“In the wild a fan leaf is a pretty necessary thing. Not only is it a solar panel but it is also a holding center for the plants nutrients. Indoor grows, where you control a constant supply of food to your plants, makes the fan leaf less necessary. Yes, they are a solar panel but they are also a huge blocker of light to your offshoots which need daily development to achieve greatness.”

– AK GreenLover

Cannabis isn’t the only plant that benefits from defoliation

To those naysayers who claim defoliation can NEVER work, I think it’s important to point out that cannabis isn’t the only plant that rewards growers with bigger yields and higher quality from defoliation. Some commercial crops, such as cotton, need to be defoliated during their grow to produce the best yields and quality of cotton. In fact, even after 40 years of intense study on cotton defoliation, there is still controversy and ongoing research by commercial crop producers to further pinpoint the exact time and way to defoliate cotton plants in the field to produce the best results. In a study with subterranean clovers, defoliation in early to mid flowering dramatically increased the number and size of flowers, but continuing defoliation until later in the flowering stage dramatically reduced flower yields. Cowpeas and some palms are other plants that produce better yields in response to thoughtful defoliation, but again yields are lower when too many leaves are taken, or if they’re taken at the wrong time.

Some palms produce more flowers in response to being defoliated

I think these examples demonstrate the main thing you need to remember: Defoliation is definitely not some magical way to increase cannabis yields; it’s a technique like any other and it can be done in both good and bad ways.

Let’s learn how to do defoliation the right way for cannabis plants!

Note: Cannabis defoliation works best when it’s combined with other cannabis plant training methods such as topping or LST.

Cannabis Defoliation in the Vegetative Stage

Some growers say cannabis defoliation in the vegetative stage can only hurt your plant. They believe removing leaves only prevents the plant from growing. In our experience, we believe defoliation gives growers better control over plant structure, while also stressing the plant in just the right way to cause it to explode in growth… but only in the places you want!

Now I would never recommend that someone take defoliation to an extreme unless they were a very advanced grower who can understand their plant…but I do believe the following extreme example shows that defoliation doesn’t necessarily hurt or stop your well-established, hardy indoor cannabis plant.

In the following example, the left plant was only defoliated slightly while the right plant was heavily defoliated! Defoliating this much is NOT recommended for most growers and could seriously hurt your plants in the wrong conditions!

The right plant was heavily defoliated – don’t do this if you have never defoliated before! If you do decide to “skin” your plant this way, I highly recommend leaving all the bud sites and only removing leaves. I’ve found having more bud sites (without leaves) doesn’t seem to take away from your top buds, but taking too many buds sites WILL hurt your yields. As a result, growers usually get better yields if they leaves all their bud sites alone, and stick purely to removing leaves.

Here’s a closeup of that defoliated plant. The grower wanted 8 main colas, with no other larfy bud from below. So they removed all growth except the growth at the end of the desired colas. However, in my experience, this grower would have produced even higher yields if they’d left all the bud sites and only removed leaves. The top buds would have been the same side, but you’d still get a few chunky buds from the bottom, too, getting more out of your grow space.

Now here’s those two plants 12 days later. The defoliated plant has completely overtaken the other plant, but with a better plant structure to take advantage of indoor grow lights.This grower did this in a very controlled environment, but you can start to see how it works. Like I said, that plant got good yields, but I think it would have gotten more with more lower bud sites.

The defoliated plant does not have growth tips from underneath trying to make bud (which would never amount to anything anyway). The only growth tips left are the ones that the grower wants to become main colas. This type of structure sets the perfect stage for flowering, where the main colas stretch up and become a row of buds in your canopy.

Picture Proof – Cannabis Defoliation in the Flowering Stage

How can taking away leaves help your plants in the flowering stage? Don’t they need as much energy as possible to make buds?

Yes and no.

Yes, your plant does want to make the most energy for its buds in the flowering. But, making sure all the bud sites are exposed to direct light (and air) is actually one of the best ways to do that. For whatever reason, just like several other types of plant, partial (and thoughtful) defoliation increases the final size and mass of flowers.

I’ll show you a quick cannabis defoliation sequence, and there are lots more pictures below

Defoliation: Before – notice how leafy the plant is; no light can get down past the top canopy. Way-too-bushy plants like this are prime candidates for defoliation in the flowering stage.

Before plucking

Immediately After Plucking

4 days later, look at the incredible bud growth!

Now that you’ve seen how powerful cannabis defoliation can be in the flowering stage, let me give you a little background information, plus even more picture proof!

In the wild, plants are powered by the sun. The sun has deep penetration (enough to travel 93 million miles and still power your plants) and moves throughout the sky, getting light and energy to all the buds. This may be partially why defoliation doesn’t seem as effective on outdoor plants.

But in an indoor grow environment, your grow lights just don’t have that power.

The only way to get light directly to your buds is by removing physical obstacles so the buds aren’t left in the shade.

Outdoors cannabis plants get light from all angles (since the sun moves through the sky). When all the buds of an outdoor plant get direct exposure to light, they don’t grow larfy buds at the bottom like indoor plants do. But if part of an outdoor plant is in the shade, those buds won’t develop.

But why doesn’t the plant just use the energy from the top leaves and send it to the buds below? Because the plant sends energy to the nearest budsite, instead of taking that energy and having to move it to all the way to another place on the plant. If you look at any indoor-grown plant, it’s obvious that the buds that don’t get light never fatten up.

The less light received by a bud, the smaller it usually is at harvest. With indoor grow lights, the light is usually only coming from above and has much less penetration, and so buds lower on the plant (and any buds in the middle that don’t receive light) stay small and airy.

Buds that don’t get light stay smaller, so with indoor plants the lower buds stay smaller.

It’s even worse if the plant is very leafy like the one below. Notice how tiny the lower and middle buds are. You can also see a few tiny buds peaking through their leaf cover at the very bottom middle. These “buds” are little more than a few hairs.

This is the type of bud that grows at the bottom and middle of the plant grown indoors without access to light. These buds are often called “popcorn buds” or “larfy buds” and they don’t really have any use beside being thrown in with the trim.

So for the best results, indoor growers must try to keep all the buds near the grow lights, so they all develop and get as big as possible.

That’s why many indoor growers try to grow flat plants (shaped like a table) with lots of bud sites at the top – you get bigger yields when many buds get great access to light. In fact there are many plant training techniques besides defoliation for indoor cannabis growers, and the goal of nearly all plant training techniques is to create a flat even canopy directly under the grow lights. Defoliation is just one of the most advanced technique that builds on all the others.

Let’s show you some examples of what defoliated buds look like in the flowering stage. I hope these pictures and videos show what I cannot express in words!

This plant was grown in coco coir after being defoliated throughout its life. Despite the tiny low-wattage lights, this plant ended up rewarding the grower with solid yields.

Getting more light to more of your buds is the whole purpose of the ScrOG technique (using a screen so you end up with just tops under the grow lights). ScrOG relies on removing unwanted leaves and underbrush in order to focus all energy on the top buds.

As you can see, this plant was defoliated just enough to expose all the buds, and no more. This is the ideal way to defoliate for beginners, since there’s less room for error.

This plant was under 2 feet tall at harvest, but still pulled in 6 ounces of premium bud after grower exposed buds with defoliation throughout the flowering stage.

I think it’s difficult to find examples of indoor cannabis plants that grow huge buds like these without some sort of defoliation or a massive amount of light. Whether it happens naturally or manually, I believe this type of indoor result is difficult to achieve without exposing the buds to direct light from the grow lights in the flowering stage, but I would love to be proven wrong!

Send us pics of your defoliated cannabis plants!

Vegetative Stage – How to Defoliate

Why defoliate in the Vegetative Stage?

• Prevent Mold – With a leafy plant, the inside can get very humid and even produce water droplets on the leaves. Defoliation can help prevent mold from growing on a leafy plant.

• Faster growth in the parts of the plant you want – you’re getting rid of unwanted parts of the plant, and the rest of the plant will start growing faster in response (since it doesn’t have to spread its energy, it can focus just on growing the parts of the plant you want).

• Better structure to take advantage of grow lights – Defoliation can help you create a better structure to start flowering by allowing you to create several main colas (prime bud sites), and get rid of colas that are unlikely to produce any significant amount of bud.

• Training is easier – Removing leaves can make it easier to train plant with LST (Low Stress Training), and defoliation is absolutely necessary for advanced growing techniques like ScrOG and manifolding.

When to defoliate in Veg (checklist)

• Plant has several nodes (is no longer a seedling or young plant)

• Plant is healthy and fast growing

• Hardy strain

• Plant is so leafy that leaves are laying on top of each other, especially if it’s leafy in the middle of the plant

• Leaves are preventing light and air circulation from getting to the inside of the plant (see picture below for an example of a great candidate for defoliation)

These vegetative plants are so bushy the bottom of the plants are in complete shadow. These plants should be defoliated for the best growth and to prevent possible mold or other problems from occurring in the middle of the plant

When NOT to Defoliate in Vegetative Stage

• Plant is unhealthy or slow growing

• Strain is known to be finicky and tough to grow

• Plant is not very leafy

• First-time or new grower

You can see through this plant and light easily reaches the bottom. That lets you know this cannabis plant doesn’t need to be defoliated.

Which Leaves to Defoliate in Vegetative Stage

When defoliating in the vegetative stage, you should start by taking off troublesome fan leaves (big leaves with many “fingers”). You’re looking to remove leaves that are laying on top of each other (which can create wet spots, leading to mold). When possible, try to take leaves lower down on the plant, and in the middle of the plant.

Try to stick to removing fan leaves that are on the larger side

Try to avoid plucking the outer and uppermost leaves – they already should be getting plenty of light and don’t need to be removed. You want a plant with leaves around the outside, and fewer leaves in the middle or bottom getting bunched up and touching each other.

When defoliating, take 20% of the leaves at most in one session. If you’re inexperienced with defoliation, it’s recommended you take far less, and do your defoliation over a couple of weeks. Leave at least a week between defoliation sessions. Taking too many leaves in a short period of time can seriously stunt your cannabis plants.

While defoliating, you should work on creating the right structure for your plant. Indoor growers generally want many colas (bud sites) to increase yields, and defoliation can help you create a desirable structure.

How to create more colas in the vegetative stage during defoliation

Indoor cannabis growers usually want many colas on their plants to get the most bud out of their grow lights. But in order to achieve the biggest main colas, the competition on the plant needs to be weeded out. That means you need to remove the growth tips/leaves that make up unwanted colas.

Note: Removing growth tips is not technically defoliation since you’re removing tips in addition to leaves, but this technique works so well with defoliation (and does involve removing leaves) that I think it’s important to include this here.

A nice general rule for indoor growers is to try to create 4-8 main colas right under the light. For smaller plants you may want fewer main colas, for bigger plants you may want to create more colas.

In order to create main colas that get fat and dense, you want to remove smaller bud sites so they don’t steal the energy from your main buds. To do this, you should remove undeveloped colas/growth tips that are not going to help you.

This starts by looking at your plant and studying its structure to see which colas seem to have the most dominant branching. You’re looking for colas with a thick connection at the base with lots of nodes at the top of the stem – these nodes are where buds form, so you want your main colas to have a lot of them right under the light.

Buds only form at the nodes on a stem (where fan leaves come out), so if you have a lot of space between nodes, you’ll end up with less bud. This is why it’s important to get rid of these slim, gangly stems and choose to promote main colas that have closely spaced nodes.

The growth tips you choose to leave alone will become your main colas/bud sites. Once you’ve figured out which main colas you want, it’s time to start de-leafing!

If your plant starts getting so bushy that no light is making it down to the floor through the plant, it’s time to “clean” the bottom of the plant. First start by removing any tiny growth tips on the lower part of stems that will never be able to reach the light anyway. These will only create wispy buds at best, and you don’t want these tiny buds to steal from your main buds.

Remove small growth tips from the bottom of the plant that are in shadow

Next, remove long stringy stems with big spaces between nodes – these will never become good colas since they can only make buds at the few nodes it has, and generally should be removed.

Remove stems with few nodes, especially if the stem hasn’t made it to the top of the plant where the light is

This plant was over-defoliated (grower took too many leaves) but I wanted to show it to you because it really shows the structure of the plant underneath.

Now take a look at your plant and study its structure. Determine which stems you want to save to become your main colas. You want at least 4 main colas when growing indoors. Check to see if you need to remove any parts of the plant that may be in competition for light and space with those colas.

What happens after defoliation in the vegetative stage

If you follow all the instructions above, the remaining parts of your plants will grow faster and immediately start “re-leafing” themselves on the colas you have left behind. This faster growth lets you start flowering sooner, and with a better structure to take advantage of your grow lights. The side growth will increase so the plant starts growing more wide and less tall than before, while the bottom growth won’t steal energy from the top buds.

“I stripped many of the fan leaves, not knowing there was a name for it. My girls were at day 20 of growth and fan leaves were huge, so I got rid of them.The plants almost seemed to gather themselves in a tight ball for a few days and then just exploded with sideways growth. A week later not much vertical growth, all sideways.”

– Tose

Flowering Stage – How to Defoliate

Cannabis plants seem to spend the most energy on buds which are exposed to light, and those are the buds that grow the biggest and the most dense. I believe that’s why buds hidden from view and in the middle or bottom of the plant never seem to fatten up – they don’t get enough exposure to light and air.

Why Defoliate in the Flowering Stage?

• Helps prevent mold and bud rot on indoor plants by reducing humidity inside the plants, on the leaves and in your grow tent

• Bigger yields – buds that are exposed to light and air fatten quickly and produce bigger yields than buds hidden from the light and air.

Who Should Defoliate in the Flowering Stage?

• Growing indoors with bright grow lights

• Your plants are healthy and fast growing

• Your plants have been hardy their whole lives, without problems

• Your plants are so leafy that leaves are laying on top of each other, OR

• Some buds are hidden from the light by large fan leaves (example below)

Who Should NOT Defoliate in the Flowering Stage?

• Your plants are unhealthy or slow growing

• Your plants have given you problems during your grow (they may be too sensitive to respond well to defoliation)

• Your plants are not leafy – if you can see through the plant to the other side, and/or if light is making it to the floor under your plants, then you probably don’t need to defoliate

• Buds are already exposed to light and air (buds are not hidden by fan leaves)

Don’t defoliate this plant!

When to defoliate in the flowering stage

There are a few schools of thought as to when to defoliate in the flowering stage. I’ll share some common ones:

• Nebula’s defoliation tutorial – Defoliate the plant right before switching to the flowering stage, then defoliate once again at week 3 of the flowering stage. This is what I do with photoperiod plants and I’ve gotten good results with it. I suggest you start with this if you’re not sure what to do.
• Week 3 & 6 defoliation – I’ve heard some grower like to move everything down 3 weeks, and avoid defoliation right at the beginning of the flowering stage. In this case the first defoliation would happen at the end of week 3 of the flowering stage, then a second defoliation end of week 6. I’ve never tried this method, and I typically avoid defoliating that late in flower but some growers swear by it. Let us know if you’ve tried this method and share your results!
• Many growers don’t have a specific schedule, and instead defoliate throughout the flowering stage by pulling leaves whenever the plant seems leafy, or if they notice leaves laying on top of each other or covering bud sites. Basically they go more “by feel” as far as when the plant looks like it needs to be plucked.

Which leaves to defoliate in the flowering stage

Your main goal with defoliation in the flowering stage is to expose all your main buds to light and air. Exposed buds simply grow faster and fatten up faster than buds that have been hidden by leaves.

Try to focus on removing the bigger fan leaves

As in veg, you should still be removing any leaves that are laying on top of each other, and focus on removing those lower leaves (only bigger fan leaves) on the plant if possible. This defoliation will decrease the chances of mold and help release energy to be put into the colas.

You especially want to remove any big fan leaves near the top that are hiding buds from the light. If a fan leaf is yellow, it doesn’t really have anything left to offer the plant, so it’s also important to take these fan leaves at the top of the plant if they’re blocking any buds.

The defoliating tool 🙂

As always, never take so many leaves that you can fully see through the plant. Plants later in the flowering stage don’t really grow more leaves, so all the leaves you take are gone forever and the plant won’t replace them! Taking too many leaves in the flowering stage, especially during the last few weeks, can seriously hurt your yields, and no one wants that!

Defoliation Example in the Flowering Stage

Before – notice how leafy these plants are; no light can get down past the top canopy and the floor is in shadow. Way-too-bushy plants like this are perfect for defoliation in the flowering stage. You may notice this one was defoliated less than some of the other exampless. If your plant is really bushy but you’re worried about taking too many leaves, you can take just a few leaves and it can still help!

A view from above

Here’s the same two plants about an hour later, after a defoliation session. Bigger fan leaves were the target, and small fan leaves were left alone. Notice how all the bud sites are now exposed and the light can get to buds deep down in the plant. Several small stems and leaves around the bottom of the plant were also removed, since the tiny lowest buds on spindly stems will likely never amount to anything. But there’s still enough leaves left that you can’t easily see through the plant.

Quick video: immediately after defoliation

Here’s the resulting pile of leaves and stems. Some of the stems with growth tips had little buds forming, but we had to remove them because they were thin and too far from the light to ever fatten up properly. We want to allow the plant to focus only on buds that are in the right conditions to get big.

What happens after defoliation in the flowering stage

If you follow all the instructions above, your newly exposed buds will explode with growth and start fattening up noticeably. You should easily be able to see the difference after a week. If you’re not sure if defoliation is right for you, try defoliating just half your plant so you can really see the difference 🙂

Here are those same plants only 6 days later

And a view from above

Watch a time-lapse video showing the first 7 days after defoliation for the above plants

“I have been trying defoliation for a month or so of flowering. It works. It always made sense to me but I was too apprehensive to try removing plant parts. After I worked at a commercial nursery growing everything from Catnip to Brugmansia I learned plants can take a beating and defoliation is where it’s at!!!”

– DrRosko

The post Cannabis Defoliation Tutorial: How to Increase Yields by Removing Leaves appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

What is Low Stress Training?

How Does LST Work?

Step-By-Step: How to LST Your Cannabis Plants

1. Top Your Cannabis Plant (optional)
2. Create a “Star” Shape from Above
3. Prepare for Flowering Stage – LST Strategy

Introduction to Low Stress Training (LST)

Low Stress Training or “LST” is like bonsai for cannabis plants. It’s the practice of gently bending stems and tying them in place to drastically change the shape of the plant. This pruning is done to create multiple bud sites, even out the canopy, and overall help your cannabis plants get the most from your grow light.

Using LST can increase marijuana yields for free without changing your setup, and it’s also surprisingly fun. Are you ready to learn how to use LST in your cannabis garden? This cannabis LST tutorial has you covered.

Example: All this bud is growing on a single 18″ (45 cm) tall weed plant in a simple homemade grow box. LST / pruning is what forced the plant to stay short and grow multiple big buds (aka “colas”).

Note: “Cola” is a common nickname growers use to describe the big main buds on a cannabis plant. “Cola” means tail in Spanish, and refers to how these buds look like a tail after being dried. At least compared to smaller buds which look like nugs or nuggets after drying.

Low stress training can be used to grow marijuana plants in any size or shape. This grower pruned his outdoor cannabis plants to grow flat, like hedges, by training stems to grow along a ScrOG net. This ensured his plants didn’t get too tall.

See the Complete List of Cannabis Plant Training Techniques.

How to Use LST to Your Advantage

What is “Low Stress Training” and how does it increase yields for cannabis growers?

Low stress training is any kind of plant training or pruning that is considered to be low stress for a cannabis plant. LST is mainly gently bending and trying down the stems of a plant into the shape you want. This is compared to “High Stress” techniques like manifolding or strategic flowering stage defoliation, which involve removing large amounts of the plant at a time and can cause major distress to a plant when done incorrectly. LST is a simple and reliable technique to form a relatively flat, even canopy. This exposes many bud sites to direct light instead of just the top main bud. As a result, trained marijuana plants naturally create more (and bigger) buds in the same environment or setup than untrained plants.

What about “high stress” techniques? There are other free cannabis plant training techniques that are more “high stress” such as manifolding the plant, but LST will not stress your plant or slow down growth much, if at all.

These two Aurora Indica cannabis plants were LST’ed to produce many fat, thick colas.

LST is a free, gentle & effective training technique to prune all cannabis plants

The idea behind LST is to bend and otherwise gently manipulate cannabis so your plants create multiple main “colas” or buds. Additionally, Low Stress Training lets you produce plants that grow in the exact shape and size you want, giving indoor growers much bigger yields from the same grow lights.

The LST pruning technique can be used to reduce the height of marijuana plants that are getting too tall for your setup, or are growing taller than your other cannabis plants. LST allows you to keep an even canopy and get as much bud as possible from your light.

Benefits of Low Stress Training

• Bigger yields from the exact same grow lights and setup, for free!
• Complete control over height, shape and size of plant (helpful both indoors and outdoors!)
• More and bigger buds since plants make multiple big buds (instead of only a single big bud with a lot of tiny buds)

This marijuana plant is only a foot tall yet is engulfed in fat buds due to LST.

Now take a look at the “guts” of that cannabis plant to see how this shape was achieved with LST. It was trained to grow in a spiral!

The main stem was first bent down and away from the center of the plant, towards the side. After that, the grower continued to bend the main stem in a circle around the plant. As a result, several lower growth tips rose up to become colas with fat chunky buds, giving much bigger yields than if there was just one main cola.

LST allows a better distribution of light since all parts of the plant (and therefore all the potential bud sites) are located the proper distance from your grow lights.

When it comes to indoor growing, bud sites at the proper distance from your grow light (in the “Sweet Spot”) produce the biggest buds.

Wait, what distance should my grow light be from my plants? What’s the sweet spot for my particular grow light? Learn even more about cannabis grow lights here.

The percentages on the sides of the following diagram describe how much light is getting to your plants according to the Inverse Square Law of Light Intensity.

As you can see, the light intensity drops off fast as you get further away from the lights! You need training to get more buds in that sweet spot.

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

Example: This White Widow marijuana plant with many huge colas is the result of LST training!

How Does Low Stress Training Work?

Low stress training involves bending unruly branches and using gardening wire or soft ties to hold the branches where you want them.

The reason the majority of cannabis growers use LST is to keep their plants short and wide to take advantage of grow lights (or possibly the sun). Here’s how to do it: You want to bend any branches down and secure them away from the other branches, so you’re creating a wider canopy with many colas for bud to grow out of.

Main Idea: Bend too-tall branches down and away from the center of your plant. Tie them down. Repeat until the plant is flat!

If some of the colas are getting taller than the others…

Bend the tallest ones over until they’re all the same height as each other and secure them down with something like twisty tie or plant ties. Repeat if necessary.

As the cannabis plant starts making buds, it will form multiple colas because all the colas are located at the top of the plant and get direct light.

After harvesting all the buds, you can see the “skeleton” of the plant.

Some growers like to install a tomato cage so there’s something to attach the plant to besides the pot itself. These can also offer additional support if the plant gets very large down the road.

This grower stuck a few bamboo stakes in every pot, which can also be used for support. Be careful of possible splinters though!

When growers LST their plants, the general idea is to gently pull branches away from the middle of the plant, so that the plant looks like a star when viewed from above. This helps expose the lower branches to more light, while also keeping plants short.

Many growers cut or pinch off the tops of their plants before starting LST work. This is not necessary but can be helpful. The reason for pinching off the tops is it breaks the apical dominance of the cannabis plant, splitting the main cola, and providing a more symmetrical base of the plant for training.

Learn More About “Topping” Your Cannabis Plants.

However, any cutting technique is not actually considered LST. LST is simply the act of actually bending and manipulating stems. Other plant training techniques are often used alongside LST to get the best results, and topping the plant when it’s young is one of the most popular ways to “set the stage” for LST. But topping your plant isn’t for every grower. In this article’s step-by-step LST tutorial below, I’ll walk you through the entire process of how to LST cannabis plants including any special plant training techniques.

Here’s a great LST example by grower Santacabrera showing how to gently bend the middle colas of a plant down and away from the center without cutting the plant. Instead of cutting off the main cola, he simply bent it over like all the other side branches

Auto-Flowering Strains: Those who are growing auto-flowering strains are often encouraged to skip the cutting part and go straight to LST. Auto-flowering plants go through their entire life in just 2-3 months and may not have a long enough vegetative period for the plant to recover from a cutting/topping technique if it goes wrong. However, auto-flowering strains can be topped if you do it right! Learn how to train auto-flowering plants properly here.

After a stem is bent over on the cannabis plant, each of the growth nodes on the stem can become new colas if they’re exposed to light and air.

Eventually, all the growth tips on a horizontal branch will start growing upward toward the light and become full-blown colas.

After initially bending your plant, it’s possible growth may slow down for day or two as the plant recovers, especially if stems are damaged in the process. But usually, with LST there’s little to no recovery time and the plant gets right back to business as usual. Often times they’ll be pointing back up at the light in just a few hours.

If you plan on using LST, I highly recommend getting a spool of plant ties, twisty tie, or coated wire to tie your plants down with. There are many options available at your local gardening store or online, or you can rig something together yourself. More on that below. This gives you the power to craft the shape of your plant like an artist.

No string! Don’t use string or anything sharp to tie down plants for LST.

Anything sharp can cut into your plants as they grow bigger, which you don’t want. Open wounds are not good for cannabis growth. But soft wire ties, twisty ties, or anything soft and bendable will work perfectly without hurting your plants.

Twisty ties are good for smaller stems.

Soft wire ties are much stronger and can hold even strong branches.

The stems you bend over with LST can be tied to the pots your plants are in, your hydroponics bucket, a tomato cage or almost anything you can think of.

My main piece of advice is to make sure that you can pick up your plant as one unit. Don’t anchor any part of your plant to the floor or it will be difficult to move your plant!

Low Stress Training Encourages Plants to Grow More Wide and Bushy

This Granddaddy Purple cannabis plant grew wide and bushy due to strategic LST.

Learn how one grower uses Low Stress Training to create a “Screen of Green” in his cannabis garden.

Some growers also gently bend flexible branches until they snap slightly or crush the bent part between their fingers to cause slight damage to the bent point. This technique is known as super cropping.

Whenever you notice some stems are getting taller than others, bend them over and secure them down. This ensures a nice even canopy.

Basically, you’re training the plant to grow into the shape you desire, like a marijuana bonsai tree. You train the plant slowly and take care not to hurt your plant. You don’t want to snap any of the branches and never try to bend stiff branches or they’ll just break off. If you must bend stiff branches, use the supercrop technique.

If you accidentally hurt the plant, and you create an open wound, it’s important to tape up the wound to keep it closed while also providing support to the stem. The tape acts like a bandage and cast until your plant has healed.

If you accidentally snap a stem while bending, tape it up immediately. Most of the time the broken stem will recover just fine.

By using the LST method alone, you can grow a plant that conforms to nearly any shape that you want.

How to LST Your Cannabis Plants

Supplies for Low Stress Training

• A young vegetative cannabis plant
• Plant twisty ties
• Soft wire ties (optional) – only get these if you’re going to grow very large plants; they’re overkill for small plants
• Sharp scissors (I like Fiskars Micro-Snips)
• A dash of Creativity

What else can be used to secure plants? I’ve seen growers use pipe cleaners, coated wire, and more. You can use almost anything that isn’t sharp or thin like string (string can cut into the “skin” of the plant after a while).

Step 1: Top your young plant when it’s got 4-6 nodes. 

Note: Growing with autos? Learn how to Top an Auto-Flowering Strain!

Read the full tutorial on how to top your cannabis plant or use the following quick guides:

The purpose of any cannabis cutting technique is to break the apical dominance of a cannabis plant. When you cut the “trunk” or main stem of a cannabis plant, the plant tends to start branching out and allowing lower growth tips to rise up and become colas.

Topping makes it easier to LST a cannabis plant since you’re given a more symmetrical “platform” to build your base on instead of working just with one main stem. Using the topping training technique will encourage your plants to start growing more wide and bushy.

I prefer to top my plants when they’ve grown 4-6 nodes, although some growers top earlier. I typically top plants down to the 3rd node, which forms a more symmetric base compared to topping higher up on the plant. With topping you always end up with two main colas that split at the same place on the stem.

Don’t let your cannabis plant get bigger than this before topping it if you can help it!

If you top your plant too early, it can stunt growth and your plant may take a while to recover. Your plant should be healthy and growing fast. A vigorous plant will recover quickly from topping, but a very young or slow-growing plant can get stunted for days or weeks from a single topping.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, letting the plant grow 6 nodes first can make the whole process go more smoothly because at that point there is very little chance of stunting your plant. However, if you top a very small plant, it can get stunted because it doesn’t have the internal energy yet to deal with losing a chunk of its “flesh”.

Top Down to the 3rd Node

As we explained earlier, “topping” means cutting off the top of a plant or stem.  In the picture below, the top of the plant has been removed, so that only 3 nodes (pairs of fan leaves) are left.

When topping, leave a little part of the old stem above the topping point. 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 until they have thickened.

The little growth tips nestled in the V of each fan leaf will become your new colas, so be careful not to injure them!

After this, it’s time to let your plant grow naturally for a while until it’s grown several new nodes on each of the two main growth tips.

Note: Some growers will top multiple times to create a “manifold” at the bottom of each plant. Learn more about manifolding: https://www.growweedeasy.com/manifold

Step 2: Bend over the tallest stems and tie them down. 

It is essential that you start any Low Stress Training as soon as possible. It’s best to start when your plant is very young, though with LST, it’s better late than later, and better later than never.​

The main idea is to keep all the stems about the same distance from the light. So, you want to continually bend the tallest stems down to the level of the others, and use twisty tie to secure it in place.

Even if you never top the plant, you can simply bend it in the direction you want it to go.

Another basic technique is to create a “star shape” from above. As your plant grows, you bend stems down and away from the middle of the plant, tie them down.

If you were unable to or chose not to top your plant, you need to bend over the main stem. Here are two examples of what that looks like from above:

Always bending the tallest stems down results in cannabis plants with a flat canopy.

Some strains/branches will bend more easily than others. Young growth is almost always easier to bend than old growth.

Bend Stems When They Are Still Young and Flexible!

If you’re going to LST your plants, you’ll get the best results by starting early since it’s easy to bend stems when they’re young and flexible. As stems get older, they become hard and woody, making them difficult to bend without breaking.

Bending technique – try to bend only the flexible parts of cannabis stems, which are located near the tips.

Bending Tips and Tactics

How exactly do you bend your cannabis plants?

The main ideas to keep in mind…

• Be Gentle – Always bend very slowly and carefully. You can always bend more, but you can’t undo a broken stem.
• Only bend soft growth – Newer growth is soft and pliable, so it is easily bent to your will. It’s important to focus on bending the newer, most flexible parts of the plant to avoid breakage. If a stem feels stiff, it will likely break if you try to bend it.
• Start Training Early – Start low stress training early in the plant life so you can avoid ever having to try to bend thick stems. If you keep on top of plant training from the beginning, you will only need to bend new growth and it will go much more easily.
• Make Sure Ties Are Securely Attached to Plant – Don’t let wires or ties “scrape” or slip across the surface of a stem because it can cause abrasion (imagine something rubbing all over your skin until it gets raw). If you’re having difficulty getting a specific stem to stay down without slipping, try to secure that stem in more places so all the stress isn’t being placed on just one part of the stem.

Quick Summary: Do this at least once a week! 

1. Choose a too-tall stem that you want to bend over.
2. Check that the stem is bendy where you plan to bend it. If it’s too stiff to easily move, choose a place higher up on the stem with newer growth.
3. Tie one end of twist-tie around the stem. Turn the end of a twisty tie into a hook and gently hook it around the stem.
4. Attach other end of twist-tie to container. Hook the other end of the plant tie to the container after the stem is bent where you want. This holds the stem in place as the plant grows.
5. Repeat for any other stems that are taller than the rest, until the plant is flat.

Basically, you’re training the plant to grow into the shape you desire, further creating your own cannabis bonsai tree. Always bend stems slowly and take care not to hurt you plant. You don’t want to snap off any of the branches, so never try to bend stiff branches; they’ll just break off.

Here are some pictures of how I personally use plant ties to LST a cannabis plant. This demonstrates all the above steps.

How to Secure Ties to the Sides of the Container

• If you picked something made for plant training, like plant ties or soft wire ties, it can be a lot easier to secure your ties since these can be bent to hook onto almost anything, like the lip of a plant container.
• Some growers drill holes around the top of their plant containers so that ties can be secured through the holes.
• With fabric pots, the sides can be pierced (for example by safety pins) and ties can be attached to the safety pin.
• Many growers stick something in the soil and use that as an anchor to attach ties to, for example, bamboo stakes or a tomato cage.
• You can really get creative about this!

Don’t tie down your plants in such a way that you won’t be able to tend them or move them! You’ll regret it later! For example, don’t secure ties to something on the ground, or something else in the grow space. Try to make a self-contained container that you can pick up and move without disturbing any of the ties. This is why so many growers attach ties to the sides of their containers.

Since the tie is attached to the pot, the entire plant can be picked up and moved without accidentally pulling out ties, breaking stems, or otherwise messing up the LST job.

If you don’t have safety pins, you can poke a hole through the pot if you’re using fabric pots.

Two more examples of hooking your ties to something that will always remain attached to your plant and its container. Plastic pots usually have some kind of lip you can hook the twist-tie around.

You will not be able to train your plant just once and that’s it. The plant training process needs you to watch over your cannabis plants so you can slowly create the shape you’re looking for as they grow. It also helps you quickly spot unruly branches so you can bend them over before they get too stiff.

One thing to remember is, stem that get bent immediately “realize” they’re sideways. As a result, any part that is not tied down will immediately start growing upwards again. The unbound parts of a healthy plant will point up again in just a few hours. If you check your plants a few hours after bending, you’ll be able to see exactly what I mean.

This is a pic of a cannabis plant immediately after an LST session – most of the stems are on their side.

17 hours later, all parts of the plant not tied down have stood back up.

Because of the quick recovery time experienced by cannabis plants in the vegetative stage, LST can be used to create short, bushy plants in a very short amount of time.

No matter how you secure your plant, the main idea is for it to hold down the branches in the shape that you want, while still allowing you to easily tend to your plants as they get bigger.

That’s worth repeating, don’t tie down your plants in such a way that you won’t be able to tend them or move them. You’ll regret it later (speaking from experience).

If you accidentally snap a stem, tape it up immediately like a cast – the plant will quickly heal itself as long as the two broken ends of the stem are held firmly together.

With LST, you’ll get the best results if you check on your plant at least every few days to see if any stems are out of place, so you can quickly bend them over where you want.

Step 3: Initiate the Flowering Stage

Continue to LST your plant throughout the vegetative stage until you get the height, width and shape you want.

You’re ready to start flowering when…

• You’ve transformed your cannabis plant into a horizontal table
• You’ve reached half your desired plant height (since the plant may double in size after the switch to the flowering stage)

Learn how to initiate the flowering stage by changing the light schedule: https://www.growweedeasy.com/light-schedules

LST In Flowering Stage

When a cannabis plant is switched to the flowering stage, it can double in height within just the first few weeks. This is known as the flowering stretch.

But all that new growth needs to be controlled so you can maintain the amazing canopy you’ve been working on throughout the plant’s life.

So once your plant starts flowering, you should continue to watch out and use LST for the first few weeks, if needed, while your plant goes through her final growth spurt. During this period, you should try to avoid touching new buds as much as you can, but don’t worry if it happens a little – we’re only human 🙂

After the first month of flowering, your work is pretty much done as far as LST. Phew! Now you get to sit back and just wait for your buds to fatten up. At this point, your plant is putting all its energy into making flowers/buds, and your plant structure will not change during the last several weeks of flowering.

After the first month of flowering, it’s best to use LST only sparingly as needed, like when you have a troublesome stem that is cutting off light to other parts of the plant, or if a cola has grown too close to the grow lights.

It is NOT recommended that you start LST while your marijuana plants are flowering. Proper LST must begin when the plant is in the vegetative stage, because by the time you get fully into the flowering stage, the majority of the plant structure has already been formed.

If you’ve LST’ed properly in the vegetative stage, your plant should naturally start growing rows of colas along the flat table you produced, and you’ll get plants that produce bigger yields from your same grow lights.

These two plants produced nearly a pound and a half under a 600W grow light due to LST and other plant training methods

(view the full grow journal on this harvest)

As you spend time training and observing your plants, you’ll begin to get a much better understanding of what you’re working with. I highly recommend viewing some cannabis time-lapse videos to get a better idea of how the cannabis plant grows.

That’s it! You now have all the tools you need to become an LST master and produce huge harvests of your own!

About the Author: Nebula Haze

Nebula Haze embarked on her cannabis cultivation journey in 2008, and through intensive trial and error, quickly mastered the art and science of growing high-quality weed. In 2010, she co-founded GrowWeedEasy.com with her partner, Sirius Fourside. Their mission: to simplify home cannabis cultivation. Since then, their comprehensive guides and tutorials have helped millions of home growers around the world achieve the home harvests of their dreams. In 2019, Nebula and Sirius further expanded their outreach through online classes, teaching home growers the insider tricks and tips they learned along the way. Dedicated to demystifying cannabis growing, Nebula’s teachings emphasize ease, efficiency, and the joy of harvesting your own buds.

Ready to Achieve “Master Grower” Status?

If you’re interested in getting walked through the whole cannabis grow process, Nebula Haze and her partner Sirius Fourside co-created a 5-week online course called Home Grow Masterclass. The structured lessons in this course walk you through the entire grow process from setup and germination to an outstanding first harvest, for a tiny fraction of the cost of buying weed.

Home Grow Masterclass will work for you even if you’re a total beginner, or even if you’ve never successfully grown a plant in your life. For growers who already have some experience under their belt, you will discover the insider secrets that guide you to a smoother harvest with higher yields and better bud quality. You’ll finally understand those intangibles that just seemed to be missing from your grows.

If you can follow basic directions, you already have what it takes to achieve master grower status and confidently produce the yields and bud quality you’ve been dreaming of. We will hold your hand every step of the way in Home Grow Masterclass.

Ready to grow professional level buds at home, the easy way? Want to save a ton of money, get access to unlimited weed, and have a great time doing it? Register your seat today!!

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Jump to…

How to “Super Crop” Your Plants

7 Tips to Growing Top-Shelf Buds

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4 LED Grow Lights That Excel at Growing Cannabis

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