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.

Do you have legal plant limits? Cannabis cultivation is legal in many countries and several states in the USA. However, many growers are subject to legal plant limits. That means they can only grow a certain number of plants at a time. For example, California (where I live) allows 21+ adults to grow up to 6 plants. In Canada, adults can legally grow up to 4 plants.

Legal plant limits? No problem! Learn how to grow up to 1 pound (~0.5 kg) of weed with 1-4 plants.

Just follow the step-by-step LST instructions and harvest a bounty of weed!

Legal plant count limits can make it harder to get big yields when growing cannabis, especially if you’re also limited on space, but there are cultivation tricks and tactics to let you harvest huge amounts of bud from small grow spaces with just a few marijuana plants. In fact, it’s possible to produce over a pound (~0.5 kg) of weed from 1-4 plants when you do it right.

Get big cannabis yields with just a few plants!

Pruning techniques like manifolding can force even one small plant to produce huge buds. This plant was less than 2 feet (0.6m) tall at harvest and produced 6.2 oz by itself.

Let marijuana plants get bigger to increase your yields. This is especially effective when combined with pruning (as explained below). These two cannabis plants are about 4 feet (1.2m) tall and produced 18.6 oz (over 1 lb) of weed between them!

This giant mass is actually made of only 4 plants trained to grow flat over a screen.

Multi-pound harvest with just 4 plants!

It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a few plants. Let’s learn how to produce a ton of weed in your marijuana garden with 1-4 plants.

1.) Grow Bigger Plants

You can only yield so much from a small plant. Bigger plants can produce a lot more weed than small plants. Just make sure you don’t let plants get too big or your space quickly gets overgrown. Growing plants to the perfect size for your setup leads to the best harvest.

In this picture: One of these clones got much bigger than the other. Although buds are similar in width, the bigger plant with longer buds produced higher yields overall. Letting a plant get big enough to completely fill your grow space can dramatically improve your final bud weights.

On average, bigger plants produce more weed.

What to do: Wait to initiate the flowering stage until plants are 1/2 the final desired size. In other words:

• Photoperiod Plants: Change to a 12/12 light schedule when plants are half size. Most strains are photoperiod strains. Plants will about double in height on average.
• Auto-flowering Plants: Auto-flowering strains start flowering on their own. Their final size depends on the strain, size of the pot, light levels, and overall care.
• Know Your Strain: Different strains “stretch” a different amount. Strains listed as “tall” strains can triple in size after buds start forming. Check the strain details when buying seeds so you know what to expect.

Cannabis plants don’t immediately stop getting bigger once they start making buds. After entering the budding/flowering stage, most plants about double in size. That means you should start 12/12 when plants are about half the final desired size.

To maximize yields, you want plants that are as big as possible without overgrowing the space. It helps to calculate how tall plants can safely get in your grow space without being too close to your grow light. No matter the height you’re going for, try to create a nice wide plant canopy. Fill the entire space under your grow light with plants.

These two plants reached half the final desired size for this grow tent. At this point, initiate the flowering stage by giving plants a 12/12 light schedule.

A few weeks later, the plants have about doubled in size. This is known as the flowering stretch. Use this knowledge to grow plants that are the right size for your grow space.

Tips to grow bigger plants

• Photoperiod strains help you control plant size – The main idea behind this step is to control the length of the vegetative stage so plants get to the optimal size. Auto-flowering strains only spend a few weeks in the vegetative stage, and therefore don’t give you much control over the final size. Learn more about the best strains to grow in Step 4.
• Use bigger pots – Bigger roots can support bigger plants. Plants in a small pot (under 2 gallons) tend to stay small while bigger pots (5-10 gallons) make it easier and faster to produce plants that are 3+ feet (1+ m) tall.
• Consider coco or hydro – Plants grown in hydroponics (and to a lesser extent coco) tend to grow faster than soil plants. If you want to get big plants fast, hydro or coco may be a good way to go. Soil or super soil can still be great choices, but they may add to the total time to harvest.
• Grow plants to 1/2 size before flowering – Initiate the flowering stage when plants are 1/2 the final desired size. This is done by using a timer to put grow lights on a 12/12 light schedule. On average, plants double in size after the switch to 12/12, though strains listed as “tall” or “short” may stretch more or less. Learn more about the flowering stretch.
• Total plant coverage – Completely fill your space before you initiate the flowering stage. Think of sculpting a plant canopy that is wide and flat like a table…

2.) Train Plants to Grow Flat

You just learned about good plant coverage. This step takes that to the next level. In addition to making sure your entire grow area is filled with plants, you increase yields even more by training them to grow wide and flat (like a table) before you initiate the flowering stage.

While plants are in the vegetative stage, bend branches down and tie them in place to maintain as flat and wide a canopy as possible. Try to make plants shaped like a table.

Why do growers train plants to grow flat? The biggest buds grow at the top of a cannabis plant, close to the grow light, Buds that are lower on the plant, or further from the light, tend to stay small. A flat canopy means you get many buds the perfect distance away. This ensures your plant grows tons of buds, and every single bud swells to a big size.

Main Idea: Train plants to grow flat and wide like a table in the vegetative stage.

Tips to grow wide, flat plants.

• Cut off the top of young plants – Cut off the top of young plants in the vegetative stage. Cutting off the top of a plant is often called “topping” in the cannabis growing world. Topping splits any stem into two, and a plant with two tops is easier to spread out to create flat plants than a plant with one main top
  • Beginner tip: Wait until the seedling has grown 6 sets of leaves. Cut off the top through the main stem above the 5th set of leaves (pictures below). Easy and simple, yet won’t stress plants. After being topped, your plant is easier to spread out and naturally grows more bushy and wide.
• Tall stems should also be “topped” – Cut off the ends of any stem that’s growing much faster than the rest. Each new pair of stems grows slower than the original one. Topping is a great tool to curb fast-growing stems in the vegetative stage.
• Spread out – As the plant grows, spread out the stems by bending them down and away from the center of the plant. Don’t forget to tie branches down with something like plant twist tie or they’ll spring right back up the next day!
• Supercrop (if necessary) – Cannabis stems get hard and woody as time goes on. If you find you need to bend a stem that’s already stiff, use the supercropping technique to bend even the toughest stems at any angle. This is a bit advanced because you can accidentally split stems. But don’t worry if you do. Simply tape broken stems back together like a cast and the plant can heal. One of the things I love about cannabis plants is it can recover if you make big mistakes in the vegetative stage.

Here’s an example of training plants to grow wide and flat for more bud sites and bigger yields.

Cut off the top of a young plant right above the 5th set of leaves (“top” the seedling above the 5th node)

When cutting through a stem, be careful not to damage the growing tips at the base of each leaf. These will become your two new stems.

Topping splits the main stem into two. You can see the two new “main stems” on each side of the cut.

Since you waited until the plant had several sets of leaves before cutting a small piece off the top, it will continue growing like nothing happened.

As the plant grows, spread out the branches and cut off the top of any stem that’s getting bigger than the others. You don’t want your plant putting too much energy into any one branch.

The plant was transplanted to a mini grow tent under an HLG 65 4000k LED grow light and given a week to adjust to the new environment.

Training time!

Bend over all the stems down and away from the center until it looks flat from the side

I used plant twist tie to hook on to each branch and tie it down where I wanted. I attached the other end to the fabric pot.

How to attach to the pot? You can use safety pins or binder clips but I think this is easier. Poke holes in the fabric using sharp pointy Fiskars pruning scissors and thread the twist tie through.

Back to training. Here’s a top view. We’re trying to fill the entire tent with this plant.

A few days later the plant has filled in nicely. Repeat the steps until you’ve filled your entire grow space.

Initiate 12/12 when plants have complete coverage at the height you want. Look at all the bud sites on this 1 plant right as it starts flowering

Here’s a side view. At this point, the only thing to do is water the plant and give it nutrients until harvest.

Partway through the flowering stage.

At harvest, this plant was just over 18″ (46 cm) tall, yet yielded several ounces because it was trained to grow wide and flat. Talk about making the most out of one small plant!

The buds started getting heavy, flattening the plant further.

Learn more about growing plants to be wide and flat.

3.) Grow Light is Key to Yields!

If you read step 1 and 2, you understand the value of plant coverage in your grow space. You’ve also learned how to produce plants that are the perfect height and shape to maximize yields.

This step is about your grow light, which is the other most important aspect of your setup when it comes to yields.

Main Idea:  Pick a grow light that maximizes yields for your grow space.

Tips:

• Avoid fluorescent grow lights (CFLs and T5s) – If yields are a key factor for you, choose LEDs, HPS, or CMH/LEC grow lights. These are the most efficient grow lights for yields when it comes to growing cannabis. Fluorescent lights like T5s and CFLs produce excellent bud but get about half the yields per watt.
• Expect 0.5-1 gram per watt – You can use wattage to estimate yields so you pick the right grow light for your goal. With LEDs, HPS, or CMH/LEC, you can typically expect about 0.5-1 gram per watt of actual power draw. So if you’re using a 400W HPS, you could expect to yields 200-400 grams. If an LED grow light uses 300W, you could expect 150-300 grams. You can yield more or less, and some specific grow light models are better than others, but that’s a good rule of thumb for an average grower. Some modern cannabis LED grow lights like HLG or Spider Farmer LEDs can achieve 1-2 grams/watt.
• Proper grow light distance to plants – Each grow light has an optimal distance it should be kept from plants. Too close and plants will burn, too far and yields are reduced. Most grow light models list the recommended light distance in their product details. If you’re not sure, check out our tutorial on light distance.
• Good light coverage – Each grow light has an optimum amount of space it can cover (its recommended “light footprint”). If light doesn’t reach your plants on the edges, those plants will produce poor yields For example, if you have a 2’x3′ (or 0.5mx1m) grow space, get a light that’s made for that size space. Luckily, this is another detail that’s usually listed in the description when you buy a grow light.

Maximize yields with the right grow light for your space

A great LED grow light produces a ton of weed with just a few plants.

Check out examples of yields to expect for 3 popular cannabis grow lights I recommend for indoor growers.

Set and Go – 100W Quantum Board (LED Grow Light)

• Grow space: 2’x2′ grow space
• Heat: Fixture gets hot but will not warm up the room
• Average Yields – 1.5 – 3.5 ounces
• Bud Quality: Potent and pretty with great effects, but buds may be airy
• Recommended model: HLG 100 LED Grow Light
  • 4000k version is best for seedlings, clones, and the vegetative stage
  • 3000k version is best for the flowering stage
  • both work from seed to harvest, but 3000k produces higher yields
• See an example setup with this grow light

If you want to start small, this light lets you hang up .a grow light and start growing decent amounts of high-quality weed in a small space. Flimsy but effective. It barely affects the electricity bill and doesn’t make much heat. Also an excellent choice for seedlings and clones.

HLG 100 should be kept about 10″ away from the tops of plants

3 plants grown with the HLG 100 using the techniques above – 5.5 oz

Great Yields Without Much Heat – 300W Quantum Board (LED Grow Light)

• Grow space: 2’x4′ or 3’x3′ grow space
• Heat: Warms up a room by a few degrees
• Average Yields – 5-10+ ounces
• Bud Quality- Dense, potent, sparkly nugs
• Recommended models: Mars Hydro SP3000 LED (2’x4′ space) or Mars Hydro FC-E3000 (3’x3′ space)
• See an example setup (with detailed yield estimates) for 2’x4′ space or 3’x3′ space.

For this size grow light, I’ve had really great results with Mars Hydro grow lights. They’re easy to use, powerful with big yields in the flowering stage, yet surprisingly gentle on young cannabis plants.

3 plants grown under a 300W LED grow light using the techniques listed above – 11.1 oz

Big Producer – 315W CMH (sometimes called LEC)

• Grow space: 3’x3′ grow space
• Heat: Burning hot bulb raises the temperature of a room by several degrees
• Average Yields: 5-12 ounces (though I’ve yielded over a pound before)
• Recommended Model: Sun System Flower Power 315W LEC/CMH
• Bud Quality – Intense smells and unbelievable trichome production (get the most glitter by using the 4200k Philips or 4100k Eye Hortilux bulb in the flowering stage)
• See an example setup with a 315 CMH.

4 plants grown under a 315 LEC grow light using the above techniques – 12.57 oz

4.) Choose the Right Genetics (plus example strains)

If yields are a consideration, pay close attention to genetics. You can greatly increase yields by choosing a strain that is known to yield more than average.

• Photoperiod strains only – To follow this tutorial, you need to be able to control the length of the vegetative stage. Photoperiod plants give you total control because they won’t start flowering until you initiate a 12/12 light schedule. Most cannabis strains are photoperiod strains, so unless you buy “auto-flowering” seeds, you’re good to go.
• High-yielding – Some strains can yield 2-3x as much as other strains in the exact same grow space and conditions. It’s astounding how big of a difference genetics makes to yields.
• Avoid “short” strains – Short strains tend to yield less because plants are smaller.

Example cannabis strains that are heavy-yielders:

• Kushberry Moonrocks – ultra potent, purple, sparkly buds
• White Widow – high-yield version of the classic strain
• Fruity Pebbles – smells sweet and fruity
• Royal Gorilla – easy to grow, top-shelf buds
• Planet of the Grapes – some of the best yields of any strain I’ve grown.
• Thug Roze R1 – massive yields, tangy ‘Sativa’ smell that’s rare these day, unique effects.
• Dos Si Dos 33 (Barney’s Farm version) – huge yields, excellent buds, easy to grow.
• THC Bomb (MSNL version) – massive yields, excellent buds, developed by a geneticist

A single White Widow cannabis plant produced 12.57 oz of dense buds under 300W.

Many branches produced over an ounce of weed after being dried, and every bud was rock hard.

5.) Advanced Techniques

If you only follow the steps above, you can produce bountiful yields with just a few plants. But some growers want to maximize their yields even more. In that case, this section is for you.

These techniques require a bit more work and know-how, but they can produce incredibly high yielding plants indoors.

• ScrOG (Screen of Green)
• Manifolding or Fluxing

ScrOG (screen of green) means using a screen or netting to train plants to grow flat before flowering.

Manifolding or Fluxing are similar techniques with the goal of creating plants where all the branches meet at one part of a plant (the “manifold”). These techniques require extra time in the vegetative stage, but reward you with huge symmetrical buds. Plus these techniques are super fun!

With manifolding or fluxing, young plants are cut up in the vegetative stage so that all branches come from one main “manifold” on the main stem.

The base of a “manifolded” plant

Fluxing is a different take on manifolding, but follows the same essential principles of splitting the main stem and creating a symmetrical plant structure

When followed step-by-step, these techniques produce outstanding harvests on every plant

A grower named “nugbuckets” designed and popularized the manifolding technique (though he called it “main-lining” at the time) to maximize yields per plant. Here’s one of the manifolded plants from his original tutorial. A huge thank you to nugbuckets for sharing your knowledge with the home growing community!

Now you are armed with the knowledge to produce tons of marijuana even if you have plant limits. It’s time to grow the yields you want!

GrowWeedEasy.com has hundreds and hundreds of pages!

Check out some articles you may not have seen…

• Nebula’s Manifold – Cannabis “Main-Lining”  – Turn your cannabis plants into a lean, mean, organized green producing machine! The technique is pretty keen if you know what I mean.
• How Long Does It Take to Grow Weed Indoors? – When we first started growing, we asked this question so many times only to get generic, non-specific answers. That won’t happen here! We only deal in details!
• Stealth Growing: How to NOT get Caught Growing Weed – Despite the ever-increasing legality of growing your own cannabis, it’s still be best to be on the safe side and remain as stealthy as possible. Even if it’s legal where you are, theives know that the police won’t investigate cannabis plant theft…
• How to Save Money When Growing Weed – When you grow your own weed, you should experience an increase in quality, but it should also cost drastically less than purchasing froma dispensary. If your weed isn’t dirt cheap (yet), let us help you get there!

The post How to Produce a Ton of Weed with Only 1-4 Plants appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

A lot of indoor cannabis growers struggle with yields. It’s fantastic to grow your weed, but you must grow enough that you never run out. Otherwise, growing may feel like a waste of time and effort.

Luckily, cannabis yields don’t have to be a mystery. There are specific factors that cause yields to be big or small, and nearly all of them are under your control. The following article contains a comprehensive list of what you can do (both before and after buds start forming) to increase yields.

Learn how to achieve bigger yields in less time with less effort

Table of Contents

Before Buds Start Forming

1. Choose High-Yielding Genetics – Strain choice has a significant effect on yields, so it helps to choose a strain that naturally makes big buds. Learn what to look for, and get a list of recommended strains that produce fat, envy-worthy buds.
2. Grow Correct Number of Plants – Match the number of plants to your space and grow light. Often you’ll get bigger yields/faster harvests with many smaller plants as opposed to a few big ones.
3. Use The Right Plant Containers – Choose the right container type and size for your setup, so plants grow as fast and big as possible.
4. Use Coco or Hydro – Soil-grown plants typically grow slower than plants grown in coco or hydroponics. If you want to maximize the number of harvests each year, you should aim for fast-growing plants.
5. Manipulate How Plants Grow – Plant training in the vegetative stage is an effective and free way to increase yields dramatically.
6. Choose Good Nutrients and Supplements – Get cannabis-specific nutrients, and remember that sometimes less is more.
7. Grow Plants to Most Efficient Size – Too-big plants can cause considerable problems, but plants that are too small don’t have the structure to support big buds. Maximize yields by growing plants to the right size for your space.

After Buds Start Forming

1. Increase Light Intensity – Light is food to your plant, and giving more light will increase yields (to a point).
2. Use Suitable Flowering Lights – For the best yields, you should be using LEDs (best choice for most growers), LEC/CMH, or HPS grow lights while buds are forming. Avoid “blurple” LEDs or fluorescent grow lights.
3. Give Best Light Spectrum While Buds Form – Giving plants more red and far-red light in the flowering stage seems to increase yields compared to using the same grow light in a bluer spectrum. Learn which bulbs/lights work best below.
4. Follow a Recommended Defoliation Schedule  – Remove specific leaves at specific points of bud development to “hack” the plant’s natural processes and cause buds to grow bigger and denser than they otherwise would.
5. Don’t Ignore Problems! Plants get much more picky about nutrient ratios and nutrient strength in the flowering stage, especially as harvest approaches. Make sure you quickly diagnose and fix any nutrient deficiencies, bug infestations, or other visible problems. An unhealthy plant doesn’t have as much energy to put into bud formation.
6. Create an Optimum Bud-Building Environment – Hot or humid air with poor air circulation in the flowering stage causes buds to grow more airy and loose (among other problems). Reflective walls can help you get the most from your lights, and some growers supplement their environment with CO2 to increase yields.
7. Harvest Plants at the Right Time – Especially don’t harvest early.

And Most Importantly…

1. Always Be Growing – If you don’t pause between harvests, your bud coffers will soon be overflowing. Along the same lines, never stop learning!

Grow a lot of buds so you never run out

Bonus: Many of these techniques also increase THC levels, bud density, and overall bud quality.

There are a few ways to think about increasing cannabis yields indoors. Some growers want to maximize the yields for their grow space, and don’t care what it takes to increase yields overall. Other growers are looking at returns from more of an economic perspective, wanting to get the best yields for the electricity/cost, but maybe aren’t as concerned with how much space it takes. Lastly, there are many growers just looking to grow huge impressive buds and don’t care about maximizing anything else. This article is going to talk about all three. No matter what you’re looking for, we’ve got you covered.

Without further delay, it’s time to learn how to increase your yields!

You know a bud is going to get huge if it’s already fat before the white hairs start darkening and curling in!

BONUS: Now that you have tons of weed, what should you do with it?

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 Tinctures
• How to Make Hash Oil (aka Cannabis Extract Oil or RSO)
• Rick Simpson Oil (RSO) – Alternate

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)

The post 15 Ways to Increase Cannabis Yields Indoors 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 how easy it is to grow weed. Growing weed can be easy when you know what to do, but most “how to grow marijuana” tutorials make it seem like you need a degree in horticulture.

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

Who Made GrowWeedEasy.com?

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

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

The GrowWeedEasy.com Ethos

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

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

Looking for a complete harvest system?

If you want dense, beautiful, great-smelling weed, our new digital book gives you our complete harvest system. Follow the straightforward instructions and massively upgrade your results every harvest. A few small changes can make all the difference.

Get our fool-proof harvest system.

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🌟 $200 Off Special Offer: Enroll today in Home Grow Masterclass!

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

Get our fool-proof harvest system.

Home Grow Masterclass – FOR SERIOUS GROWERS ONLY

The post Grow Weed Easy – Learn How to Grow Cannabis Tutorials appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Cutting Cannabis For Better Structure: “Topping”

Topping is a cannabis plant training techniques that involves cutting off the top of a main stem. The technique is designed to give you a free way to create more colas as well as spread out the plant so you can take advantage of all your light. As a result, topping can help you achieve bigger marijuana yields!

Most plants naturally only have one main stem. The idea of “topping” is to cut off the top of a main stem to split it into two.

The two growth tips that remain will each develop into their own stem. Each stem can turn into a bud/cola in the flowering stage, so by topping the plant once or a few times, you increase the total number of buds sites under the grow light, and it also helps you keep the plant flat and wide.

It you let a marijuana plant grow naturally, it will usually grow one main stem

But if you top the plant when it’s young, you can cause it to grow multiple colas in basically the same amount of time! This often lets you grow more bud in the same amount of space with the same grow light.

…In the same amount of vertical space as a plant like this

All plant training techniques are designed to help growers get a more desirable plant shape and bigger yields without changing other aspects of their grow. For example, cannabis plants don’t naturally grow in a way that takes full advantage of indoor grow lights – a lot of light is wasted when cannabis plants are allowed to grow naturally without training.

Because of this, cannabis plant training techniques like topping are especially effective at increasing yields in indoor grow setups by creating a bushier plant with extra colas.

Notice how these plants have many colas instead of just one – this is due to using plant training techniques like topping.

These plants show the difference between one main bud (how cannabis naturally grows) and when you top the plant for multiple big buds.

In the above example, the plant on the left was allowed to grow naturally, which resulted in the classic “Christmas tree” shape that’s not very efficient under indoor grow lights. The plant on the right was topped as a seedling. This broke the dominance of the main cola, and the plant started putting out multiple colas.

With topping, the growth tips that become new colas are already present. They just get bigger and become colas because topping breaks the symmetry of the plant and exposes these growth tips to light and air. Instead of focusing on just one cola, the plant starts focusing on many growth tips until they become colas.

Topping Involves Removing or Damaging Top Growth – This Reveals Hidden Growth Tips and Signals Plants to Start Putting Energy Into Them

By damaging the main stem, topping encourages the plant to spend energy growing many colas instead of focusing on just one.

Lower growth nodes will become new colas once they’re exposed to light and air, but they develop much faster when the main cola’s dominance is broken by topping.

Notice how these growth tips have started developing and rising up after the plant is topped (the fan leaves have been removed so you can see the new colas more easily).

Here’s an example of a plant that was topped at a late age, after it had already grown 8 nodes. Although you might not get quite as good results as if you had topped it earlier, it still definitely increased the total number of colas and improved the yields.

Topping Quick Summary

• Cut off the top of the plant at the stem in between nodes
• Creates 2 main colas at the top of the plant, and LST can be used to create more
• New colas are evenly spaced (attached to the stem in the same place)
• Can be used to reduce the height of plants in the vegetative page
• Can slow down growth for a day or two

This video shows the whole cannabis topping process, in timelapse format. The lower growth tips begin to rise up, and each of these can produce even more main colas.

Click here to watch a Youtube video by “fuzzygrow” showing what a cannabis plant looks like after being topped (time-lapse of about 2 weeks).

You will end up with a wider, bushier plant that doesn’t grow just one main cola in a Christmas tree shape.

Some growers will use several phases of topping to produce cannabis plants with dozens of colas. Some techniques take this to the extreme, for example, manifolding (also sometimes called “main-lining”) is a technique that uses topping several times to make a cannabis “manifold.”

Important: Don’t Top Too Early!

With topping, you remove some of the growth on the end of a cola of a young marijuana plant, which causes the plant to stop focusing on one cola (like a Christmas tree) and instead to create many bud-laden colas (grow more bushy).

If you top the plant too early, it will have a hard time recovering. It may seem like a good idea, but you will get the best results and fastest recovery if you wait until the plant has 4-5 nodes.

Wait Until Plant Has At Least 4-5+ Nodes – Topping a Too-Young Seedling Can Slow Down Growth. Waiting a Few More Days to Cut Can Result in a Much Faster Recovery.

Growers use the plant’s natural response to topping to produce short bushy plants with many colas. After the plant has been switched to the flowering stage, the widespread of colas allows the plant to efficiently use indoor grow lights to produce the biggest yields possible.

If you choose to use either of these methods, you will get the best results by doing it when the plant is young, usually when it has around 4-5 total nodes formed.

These young cannabis plants are almost ready to be topped

You get great results by breaking the tendency of the plant to grow one main cola while the plant is still short because you can arrange your multiple colas however you want as the plant develops, instead of dealing with a Christmas tree-shaped plant.

You can also top your plant later in the vegetative stage, but you will have a longer main stalk, giving you less ability to arrange the colas the way you want.

After being topped, your plant will need some time spent recovering in the vegetative stage, though generally this just causes the plant to ‘fill out’ more instead of growing taller, which is often desirable for indoor growers.

This plant was trained for ~2 dozen colas in the vegetative stage

Important: Don’t Top in the Flowering Stage; It’s Too Late!

Topping should only be used in the vegetative stage! In fact, any training technique that involves cutting or damaging your plant should only be done in the vegetative stage of cannabis growth, and never during the flowering/budding stage.

In the flowering stage, only gentle training techniques such as LST or bending should ever be used to change the shape of the plant.

A plant with many colas can only be achieved by training a plant from early in the vegetative stage

Cannabis plants are much less tough in the flowering stage, and they no longer are growing vegetatively (producing new stems or colas).

If you watch a plant in the flowering stage, you’ll see that it doesn’t get taller or develop growth nodes. It only “focuses” on making buds. Topping at this point won’t do any good. Damaging your plant during the budding stage will usually cause a reduction in your final yields.

By the time your cannabis plants are in the flowering stage, much of the growth structure has already been created, and you generally need to try to manage as best you can if your plant has grown into a shape you don’t like.

What if my plant is already too tall in the flowering stage?

If your plant is already too tall in the flowering stage for your grow setup, you’ve got to take immediate action to prevent the plant from getting any taller.

My suggestion is to use bending (LST) to control the height of further growth.

Once flowering is fully underway (after the initial flowering stretch), the plant will not grow much taller, so you can just try to hang on until harvest.

How Can You Tell That Your Plant is Diverting Energy to New Colas?

Almost immediately after topping, the connections to each node become enlarged at the base.

These thickened connections show that the cannabis plant is spreading energy more evenly across the whole plant.

When you see your plant thicken connections like this, it means that the plant is strengthening the “internal system” of the stem, so it’s easier to deliver nutrients and other building blocks. This results in faster growth, bigger colas, and increased yields for each of the affected stems.

The thickening that happens at the base of stems is one sign that the plant is diverting energy to the new colas (where before it was putting the majority of its energy into just the one main cola).

As time goes on, the most used stems can become so thick they’re almost like tree trunks.

How to Top Your Cannabis Plant

When topping your cannabis, you cut off a growing node of the plant, reducing the height instantly. This can be especially beneficial if you’ve let your plant get too tall. Topping also increases the number of colas, which can give you more bud at harvest,

When topping your marijuana plant, it’s best to top the plant when it is young and has 4-5 nodes (sets of leaves) in total. Although you could do it a little earlier, you’re more likely to accidentally stunt your plant the younger it is.

“Topping” the plant means cutting off the newest node on your marijuana plant’s main cola in order to split it into two. However, the word topping can also refer to cutting of the tip of any stem.

A good place to top is directly above the leaves of the next node. In other words, cut through the stem right above its next set of leaves from the top.

This will cause your plant to transfer its energy to two new main colas, as indicated by the two yellow dots in the diagram above.

14-day Timelapse Video of a Cannabis Plant’s Recover After Being Topped

These 2 new colas form a V, which can easily be bent to spread wide. You can top these two new colas a few weeks later and have 4 total colas. This can even be doubled to produce 8 colas that all come from a single “manifold.” Learn more about manifolding cannabis.

Another benefit of topping is how the plant tends to grow bushier afterward, spreading its energy much more evenly around the whole plant.

Often lower branches rise up to become new main colas. This is especially true if you combine Topping with LST to open up the plant so the lower branches get more light.

If you’ve grown a very tall plant, it’s also possible to top your (vegetative) plant down to the node you want to reduce the height but remember that all the time the plant spent getting tall will be lost. In order to get the most flexible colas, without losing vegetative time, try to top early in the plant’s life

If you’re still in the vegetative (non-budding) stage and plants are growing way too tall, you can top the plant immediately to remove height as needed. The time spent growing the extra growth will be lost, so this may add time to the veg stage.

If you want to top the plant multiple times, you may be interested in learning about cannabis main-lining (creating a manifold – a fun and popular cannabis plant training technique).

Jump to…

More Plant Training Techniques!

LST (low-stress training)

Super cropping

How long does it take to grow cannabis?

The post Topping Cannabis Guide: How to Top Your Plants appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Complete Guide: Plant Training to Increase Auto-Flowering Strain Yields

For those who don’t know: An auto-flowering marijuana plant automatically starts making buds about 3-5 weeks from seed germination (timing depends on the strain). Most autoflowering plants are ready to harvest just 2-3 months from germination, much faster than traditional “photoperiod” cannabis strains.

Today’s cannabis training tutorial will teach you how to grow autoflowering plants like this.

Unlike photoperiod strains, auto-flowering strains also don’t need special light schedules to make buds. Growers simply give the plants light, water, and nutrients, then wait until the buds are ready to harvest.

Note: You probably won’t find auto-flowering seeds in your buds so you’ll need to buy them from a reputable breeder (check out the list of recommended auto-flowering breeders below).

Learn how to force your autoflowering plants to grow a sea of buds!

Avoid stunted plants! Learn how to never grow autoflowering plants that stay tiny with small yields like this.

Avoid crazy plants! Learn how to never grow out-of-control auto-flowering plants like these ones.

Today, you’ll learn how to grow perfectly sized autoflowering plants with big fat buds. That way you get huge yields every time!

A quick-yet-bountiful harvest is one of the biggest benefits of growing auto-flowering marijuana plants. However, the shortened vegetative stage brings up an important question. Generally, when growing photoperiod cannabis strains, indoor growers use plant training methods for the first 4-6 weeks of a plant’s life to make plants grow flat and maximize yields in the flowering stage.

“Plant Training” to Increase Yields (a time-tested technique)

Can auto-flowering plants be “trained” in their short vegetative stage? And if they can be trained, does it actually provide any benefits? The short answer is “yes” to both questions (with one caveat).

What is training? Growers “train” cannabis plants to grow flat and wide like a table.

This wide, flat shape naturally increases yields vs letting plants grow naturally.

A 300W LED grow light produced over 11 ounces with this method! Here’s the full LED setup.

Big or Small, This Method Works!

This tutorial works for even small autoflowering plants to increase yields!

Example: This gorgeous Forbidden Runtz auto-flowering plant was trained from a young age and produced several ounces under a tiny 100W LED grow light (a $90 Spider Farmer SF-1000 LED). Here’s the full setup I used.

Healthy Auto-Flowering Plants Usually Respond Well to Plant Training

Auto-flowering strains can be trained to produce more and bigger colas, and proper plant training can increase yields and overall improve your grow results. Follow the instructions on this page to copy the results in your autoflowering cannabis garden.

See 10 Recommended Auto-Flowering Cannabis Breeders
(plus several suggested autoflowering strains)

Auto-flowering strains from a decade ago were heavily hybridized with wild hemp and produced small and subpar-quality flowers. However, modern auto-flowering strains from trustworthy breeders (like this Auto Lemon OG plant) produce buds that are just as potent and beautiful as traditional photoperiod strains.

Now let’s learn how to maximize your yields so you harvest tons of high-quality buds every time.

Which is Best? 3 Main Schools of Thought on Auto-Flower Training

There are 3 main schools of thought about what works best when it comes to training auto-flowering cannabis plants. Each has pros and cons:

• Method 1: No Training at All – This means letting plants grow naturally, without any attempt to “train”. Since autos only stay in the vegetative stage for a few weeks, it may end up stunted if you stress your plant too much with extensive training. A stunted auto-flowering plant produces very low yields. As a result, many growers recommend no training at all when it comes to auto-flowering marijuana strains, just to be safe. Untrained auto-flowering plants can still produce a lot of bud!
• Method 2: Low Stress Training Only (aka “LST” or Bending) – The idea behind low stress training is to force the plant into the flat shape you want by bending over tall stems and tying them down. The advantage of sticking only to bending is it’s very low stress (hence the name) on the plant. There’s basically no chance of stunting a plant from gentle bending. However, with LST you don’t have the same full control over the plant’s shape as you do when you actually “top” the plant (split the main cola into two), which makes it very easy to grow a wide and flat plant.
• Method 3: “Top” the Plant in Addition to Other Training – With cannabis plants, “topping” is one of the most common ways to dramatically increase yields for almost no work. But does topping work for autos? Yes, when done right. Modern auto-flowering strains often respond well to “topping”. This is when you cut off the very top of the main stem when the plant has only a few nodes, so that it grows two main stems instead of just one. This makes it easy to spread out the plant under the light. Topping usually won’t stress your plant if it’s healthy and fast-growing, but it’s possible that topping may contribute to stress or stunting if your plant is slow growing or sickly. Keep reading to learn more!

Most cannabis growers agree you don’t want to do ultra-aggressive training on an auto-flowering plant, for example you probably wouldn’t want to make a full manifold, which takes several weeks in the vegetative stage to set up. Though there are exceptions, you usually don’t have enough time in the vegetative stage to take full advantage of that kind of training technique with auto-flowering plants. But you do have some effective options.

Your main goal with training auto-flowering strains is to avoid “stunting” plants.

Avoid This: Stunted Auto-Flowering Plants

These auto-flowering plants were stunted when they were young by heat and overwatering. Now they’ve already started flowering and are just a few weeks from harvest.

Even though they have a plentiful amount of light, at this point the plants are not going to get any bigger no matter what the grower does because the vegetative stage is over, and the flowering stage is already under way.

Here’s a closeup of the middle plant. You can see by the bud development that it’s just a month or so from harvest. Since it’s this far into the flowering stage, you know that the plant is not going to get any bigger. The buds will fatten up, but even if they tripled in size, the grower would only get a few grams of bud. The plant just isn’t big enough to support bigger yields.

This is why many growers recommend no training for auto-flowering plants. They’re trying to avoid stunting. But in the above example, the plants weren’t even topped. They were stunted from heat and overwatering, not training. So, I think the main point is to avoid stressing the plant when it’s young, not something as black and white as “no training allowed.”

Method 1: Untrained Auto-Flowering Plants

Here are examples of untrained auto-flowering plants. With good care and a strong grow light, they can produce a whole lot of bud without any training, especially if you have some extra height to spare.

Gorilla Glue Auto by Fastbud – This plant did great without training.

White Widow Auto – This plant grew too wild and tall without training.

These 5 auto-flowering plants were started at the same time. Without any training, they grew into this sea of buds at harvest! Growing many untrained plants together can be one of the easiest ways to get to a quick, hefty harvest. This style of growing is known as Sea of Green and is very well suited to auto-flowering strains. However, they likely would have produced even better yields (and fewer small larfy buds) if they were trained.

Method 2: Low Stress Training on Autos (without “Topping”)

Here’s an example of LSTing (Low Stress Training) an auto-flowering plant by bending over the main cola when it was young and still mostly in the vegetative stage.

This allows the plant to be spread out in a way that’s somewhat similar to the result of topping

This auto also wasn’t topped. I only used bending and securing to try to keep it wide with many colas. I was happy in the end with the shape, but it was a big pain trying to keep it flat. It’s just a lot easier to keep plants flat when you top them, since it splits them and you can lay each side flat.

Without topping you end up making a “spiral” with the main stem to keep it as short as the rest. Here’s the “skeleton” of that plant to give you a better idea of what the training looked like underneath

An auto-flowering Super Skunk plant just before harvest – this plant spent a little over 2.5 months under a Mars LED grow light.

A view of the same plant from the side. Only LST/bending was used to keep it short and wide, and as a result, you can see there’s still one dominant cola higher than the rest, even though the plant has been completely bent over.

​

Method 3: “Topping” the Auto-Flowering Plant

If you cut off the very top of a young, fast-growing auto-flowering plant, it may not even notice. Many growers recommend against topping an auto plant because stress can stunt your plant. While you definitely want to avoid stunting, I personally think topping autos works well as long as you make sure your plant is healthy and fast-growing first.

To be honest, other factors like overwatering or a poor environment seem to be much more likely to stunt an auto-flowering plant than topping, especially if you’re cutting off just the very tip of the plant without removing much plant matter.

Overwatering or a poor environment is far more likely to stunt an auto-flowering plant than a simple topping. For example, this auto-flowering plant was stunted due to overwatering and heat. 

I’ve had great results from topping my auto-flowering plants. I’ve also gotten great results with either no training or just low stress training! So, I definitely think you can succeed with any training style as long as you listen to your plants.

This Auto Amnesia Haze plant was topped, trained, and defoliated. It already has a sea of buds, with a month left to go until harvest!

When is the best time to top an auto-flowering cannabis plant?

Although you can top a plant any time it is still in the vegetative stage, I believe you will get the best results by removing the 4th or 5th node while it’s still tiny, as long as the plant is fast-growing.

This is about as old as an auto-flowering plant should be for topping. For auto-flowering plants older than this, you should probably avoid topping and stick to low stress training.

I think one of the most important things to avoid stunting is to remove as little as possible. The less you remove, the less the plant will notice.

I personally wouldn’t cut off more than this when topping an auto-flowering marijuana plant.

You could even pinch the stem off a little higher, above those two baby fan leaves. The arrows point to the two growth tips that would be the new “tops” if you had cut where the red line is. In this case, you would have removed even less from the plant, reducing the chance of stunting even more, and helping your plant keep as much growth as possible.

This diagram shows where to cut for topping, along with where to expect the new main stems.

Here’s an example of two topped autoflowering plants. The tall one was topped as specified above, before it started growing buds. The small one is the same strain, but was topped after it had already started growing buds. This helps show just how much you can stunt the growth of an auto-flowering plant by topping it too late.

When cannabis plants start making buds, the buds look like little white hairs (sometimes called pistils, stigmas, or styles). These hairs appear at the base of fan leaves or at the top of each stem. If you see more than 2 hairs coming from one spot, it means buds are already developing and it’s too late to top the plant.

Top autoflowering plants before you see more than 2 hairs per spot. You can see there are only 2 pistils coming from each spot here. It’s still okay to top this plant, but just barely. By tomorrow or the next day, it will likely be too late.

Can be topped: This plant can also be topped, but do it right now. It’s just about to start flowering.

Too late to top! It’s too late to top this autoflowering plant. Way too many hairs popping up everywhere! That means it’s fully in the flowering stage.

Too late to top! This plant is a week or two into bud development. Never top a plant with buds that have developed this far.

When is it a Bad Idea to Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?

Auto plants are on a very tight time schedule in the vegetative stage, and therefore plant training isn’t necessarily the best idea for plants that are already sick or stunted since they likely won’t have time to recover.

Don’t Train an Auto if…

• Plant is Sick, Stunted, or Slow-Growing
• Plant is older than 4-5 weeks old
• Plant has already started forming little budlets (more than two white hairs from a spot at the base of each leaf)
  • after this point, only use low-stress bending and securing stems down to keep the plant the shape you want

With an auto-flowering strain, you generally have about a month to create the main shape of the plant. After that, it will start flowering and although it will continue getting taller, you want to let the plant focus on fattening the buds as opposed to a whole lot of further training.

If you’re not sure whether to top your plant, it’s recommended to stick to bending as it can achieve similar results without any risk of further stunting your plant. Notice how the main stem of this plant was bent all the way over and tied down.

That being said, almost every other plant training method (topping or FIMing, low stress training, supercropping and Sea of Green) can be used on auto-flowering plants as long as you watch the plant closely for signs of stress and make sure you let the plant get big enough to produce good yields in the flowering stage!

Extra Growing Tips for Autos

Low to Medium Nutrient Needs

Whether you grow in soil, coco coir, or a full hydroponic setup, auto-flowering plants often tend to prefer relatively low levels of nutrients compared to many other cannabis strains.

When it comes to adding extra bottled nutrients, start at 1/2 strength of the recommended dose or less, and only add higher levels of nutrients if needed. In hydro use “vegetative” nutrients until you see “budlets” (little bunches of white hairs) which is often around 4-5 weeks. In good soil, you don’t need to add any nutrients during the vegetative stage. After the first signs of buds, start adding “flowering” nutrients at very low strength (1/2 strength to start).

Don’t go overboard with nutrients & supplements.

Use a Good Potting Mix (Soil or Coco)

Potted auto plants tend to do best in an airy potting mix with lots of drainage (plenty of drainage holes, and something like perlite to help add more drainage to your growing medium). This helps makes sure roots get plenty of oxygen so plants grow as fast as possible.

With any soil mix, it’s recommended to have about 20-30% extra perlite for increased drainage.

Good soil or coco is fluffy, and has airy white rocks (known as perlite).

Read a simple soil grow guide for autos.

However, I use coco coir to get faster growth than soil.

Strain & Final Size Have an Effect on Training 

The final size of your auto plants is largely dependent on the strain you get. Some cannabis autoflowering strains have been bred to grow extremely short – less than 1-2 feet. Other strains can grow taller, up to 4 feet tall, or even more.

Although most auto strains start flowering at just 3-4 weeks, some strains take up to 8 weeks (or even longer) before they automatically start making buds. Often, long-flowering auto strains are labeled as “Super Autos” or “XXL” but you should still read the breeder description to fully know what to expect as far as timelines and height.

If you have a plant that is not “auto-ing” as soon as you want, you can put it on a 12/12 light schedule and it will usually start flowering in 1-2 weeks just like a photoperiod plant.

These two auto-flowering plants are the same age and were grown in the same setup! Genetics makes a huge difference to your final results, so it’s important to pick the right auto-flowering strain!

The small plant is White Widow Auto & the huge plant is Onyx Auto (unknown breeders).

Auto-flowering pic by Vapo69

These two auto-flowering plants are also the same age and grown in the same environment. The itty bitty plant (front bottom left, it’s easy to miss it’s so small!) is Auto Chemdawg. The huge plant is Super Lemon Haze Auto.

Auto-flowering pic by henry tate

As a general rule of thumb, auto plants tend to double or triple in size from when they first start showing signs of flowering/budding (usually when plants are about 3-4 weeks old from seed).

Final Height of Auto-Flowering Plants is Often ~2-3 Times the Height When the Plant First Started Showing Pistils/Hairs

An auto-flowering plant is usually “full size” at just 6-7 weeks from seed. For example, these autos are 6 weeks old and didn’t get any taller, even though buds are still fattening and harvest is still several weeks away.

A stunted autoflower won’t produce much bud because it never gets big,

Bend too-tall branches down and away from the center of your plant

Plant training is a tactic that helps cannabis growers increase yields indoors by exposing more buds to strong, direct light from the grow light.

When growing any cannabis plants indoors, it’s recommended to at least use bending to open up the plant so it grows flat and wide

A view from the side just before harvest so you can see how those plants were trained to grow flat and wide. Training allows all the bud sites to grow directly under the light, so they get as big as possible

See the full grow journal with these autos.

10 Recommended Auto-Flowering Breeders (and some favorite strains)

Which breeders can you trust for good auto-flowering marijuana seeds? These auto breeders have dedicated themselves to developing great auto-flowering strains, and have gained popularity for their consistency and quality.

​There are many other breeders that offer auto-flowering seeds, but the breeders listed have become famous for breeding some of the best auto seeds when it comes to ease of growth, potency and yields. Let us know if you believe there’s an auto-flowering cannabis breeder we should add to this list!

10 Recommended Autoflowering Breeders

Many breeders produce great auto-flowering strains (Barney’s Farm, etc.), but the following breeders stand out for consistency and potency. Click the name of the breeder to see a list of their currently available auto-flowering strains.

• Bomb Seeds – sparkly and potent buds. Bomb Seeds breeds both autoflowering and photoperiod cannabis seeds, and all perform well. I’ve grown their THC Bomb Auto multiple times and I was impressed with the yields, bud potency, and just overall nice look of the buds. Their other auto-flowering “bomb” strains are great too, including Berry Bomb Auto (berry flavor), Cherry Bomb Auto (cherry flavor), and Big Bomb Auto (super high yielding).
• Dutch Passion – Excellent yields (some of the best yields for auto-flowering strains that I’ve grown). Smooth, classic effects on their buds. Their Cinderella Jack Auto is extra potent with dense buds.
• FastBuds Seeds – Fast and potent. Fastbuds have gone “all in” for auto-flowering strains. In fact, every auto strain I’ve grown from Fastbuds has produced above-average quality buds in smell, appearance, and potency. Highly recommended.
• G13 Labs – Consistent good results. Plants closely match the strain descriptions, so you get what you expect. I especially like their Pineapple Express Auto strain.
• Mephisto Genetics – One of the first truly great auto-flowering breeders, Mephisto has been at the top of the autoflowering game for over a decade now. They keep upping the ante and are an industry leader in autoflowering genetics for a reason! My favorite strains from them are Double Grape Auto and Creme de la Chem Auto.
• Nirvana – All their strains are easy to grow. Their Blue Dream Auto makes beautiful medium-THC buds with a medium amount of CBD, while their Raspberry Cough Auto is popular because it has a relatively low, fruity smell.
• Royal Queen Seeds – Buds always come out beautiful (they look just like the pictures) and smell great.
• Seed Supreme – Offer a ton of different auto-flowering strains, with genetics suitable for any taste.
• Seedsman – The Seedsman website offers seeds from many different breeders, but they also sell in-house “Seedsman” brand auto-flowering seeds, which grow fast with high-quality buds, and have above-average germination rates.
• Sweet Seeds – Spanish genetics with beautiful and colorful strains like Cream Caramel Auto.

Here are some pictures of autoflowering cannabis plants I’ve grown from these breeders.

Cinderella Jack Auto by Dutch Passion makes extra-potent, rock-hard buds with above-average yields. This little plant produced several ounces by itself.

Zkittlez Auto by Fastbuds – big yields and bud effects are lovely

Auto Lemon OG makes beautiful buds and plants are easy to grow.

I’ve grown multiple THC Bomb Auto plants (by Bomb Seeds) and they always respond well to training and produce great bud quality.

Buds come out super sparkly on the THC Bomb autos!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial as much as I would have when I first started growing with autoflowering strains. Send us pics of your favorite autoflowering plants for a chance to be featured in our weekly newsletter’s “trophy pics of the week” section.

The post How to “Train” Auto-Flowering Plants for Bigger Yields 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?
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• 7 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I First Started Growing Weed
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• Cannabis Problems Guide
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  • 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

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

Table of Contents

Growing Marijuana Flowering Stage Timeline

Week 1-3 – Transition to Flowering

Week 3-4 – Budlets Form

Week 4-6 – Buds Start Fattening Up

Week 6-8 – Buds Ripen, Pistils Darken – some strains spend longer in this stage

Week 8+ – Flowering Ends, Final Flush, Harvest

Introduction to the Cannabis Flowering Stage

Do you want to know what to expect when growing marijuana in the flowering stage? First, let’s talk a little bit about the beginning of your plant’s life so you can understand exactly how the flowering stage comes in. During the phase known as the vegetative stage (the first stage of life for marijuana), a cannabis plant grows about how you’d expect… like a weed! In the vegetative stage, a cannabis plant only grows new stems and leaves, and can grow several inches a day with the added ability to recover from just about anything.

Even if you run into major problems in the vegetative stage, you can bring your plant back from the brink of death simply by addressing the problem and giving your plant some TLC.

In the vegetative stage, your cannabis plant only grows stems and leaves and is resistant to problems. It grows like a weed!

However, things aren’t so rosy in the cannabis flowering stage. In the flowering stage, your cannabis plant grows very differently and is much more sensitive to problems. The tricky thing about the flowering stage is that you don’t have much room for error and big mistakes can lower your yields.

In order to maximize your yields, it’s important to know what to focus on during each part of the flowering stage. It’s also really helpful to know what to expect so you know when something is going wrong!

Week-by-Week Timeline of the Flowering Cycle (with pictures)

This marijuana flowering stage “walk through” will explain exactly what to expect week-by-week while your plant is making buds, and it’ll tell you what you need to do to ensure you get to harvest with the best bud quality and yields possible!

Week 1-3: Transition to Flowering

When growing cannabis indoors, the flowering stage begins when you change your grow lights to a 12/12 light cycle (12 hours light, 12 hours darkness each day). Getting those 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness each day gives your plant the signal that it’s time to start flowering. In a way the plant “thinks” winter is coming because the days are getting short.

Note: It’s common to think that a cannabis plant getting 12 or fewer hours of light is what initiates flowering, but it’s actually uninterrupted darkness that does the trick! If the plant gets any light during the dark period, even for just a minute, it won’t make buds! In fact, a flowering plant may even revert back or express hermaphroditism if it gets any light at night!

Outdoors, it’s also the days getting shorter that cause a cannabis plant to start making buds in late summer, but outdoor buds develop on different schedules depending on the local climate. This tutorial is meant to explain how a cannabis plant usually develops when grown indoors since that is done under controlled conditions, and plants tend to grow the same way.

For the purposes of this indoor cannabis growing tutorial, the flowering stage starts the day you switch to 12/12.

Autoflowering strains of cannabis don’t need special light periods to start flowering, however the cannabis flowering timeline in this tutorial is a good general guideline for indoor auto-flowering strains, too. Their “vegetative stage” lasts about 3-4 weeks, so as long as you start counting at week 3-4 from seed (when they start getting their first pistils) this flowering timeline will generally apply to autos too, though sometimes they finish up faster.

During the first few weeks after being switched to a 12/12 schedule, your plant will be growing like crazy and rapidly gaining height. In fact, a cannabis plant can (and frequently will) almost double in height after the switch to 12/12. This period of super-fast and often stretchy growth is sometimes referred to as the “flowering stretch.”

Example of flowering stretch – what to expect

Pre-Stretch – just before 12/12

Post-Stretch – 4 weeks after 12/12

Although your female plants will start sprouting lots of white pistils, they usually won’t start growing “real” buds with substance quite yet. If you’re new to growing cannabis, it’s very important to note that only female cannabis plants make buds.

Did you know you can figure out if a plant is male or female while it’s still in the vegetative stage?

If your plant is male, it will start growing distinct pollen sacs and should be removed from the grow room immediately to prevent it from pollinating your female plants and causing ‘seedy’ buds. Learn where to get feminized (all-female) seeds online so you don’t have to worry about male plants.

Remove any plants growing pollen sacs instead of pistils, because they are male and won’t make buds. Plus they can pollinate your female plants and cause them to grow seeds!  What if my plant is growing both pistils and pollen sacs?

Female plants should be growing pistils wherever a fan leaf meets a main stem. They look like white wispy hairs emerging from the joints

During the first few weeks of the flowering stage, you will see bunches of single leaves forming at the tops of your main colas (like in this pic). Soon white pistils will start coming out of the middle of the bunches, and they will become your main buds!

During week 1-3 of the flowering stage, your plant will mostly be producing new stems and leaves as it grows taller. Right now your plant is still very resilient and can handle problems just like in the vegetative stage. However, it’s still very important to avoid problems and take great care of your plant!

As part of the stretch, your plant will be growing out its bud sites. Stunting growth at this point could cause the plant to make smaller and fewer bud sites than it would if it were healthy and growing fast.

If you have more room in your grow space under the light to spread your plants out, or if you are running out of headroom, it is important to gently bend stretching stems down and away from the center of the plant to help maintain a flat canopy (a technique known as low stress training).

During the stretch, gently bend new stems down to try to maintain a flat, even canopy.

If you keep up with it during the stretch, you can prevent any one stem from getting much taller than the others.

When stems are new, they are flexible and easy to bend, but they quickly harden up and turn woody. By keeping a close eye on your plant and bending any too-tall branches down and away from the center of the plant as soon as you can, you will maximize your yields since that flat shape will most efficiently use your grow lights. If all your main bud sites are spread out and about the same height, you can increase your yields by up to 40% or more!

Spreading out your bud sites and maintaining a flat canopy can increase cannabis yields by as much as 40%…or even more!

At this point, you only have a few weeks left until you lose the ability to do any further training, so don’t miss this last opportunity to control the shape of your plant, especially if you’re running out of room!

Week 3-4: Budlets Form

The mad stretching of the first few weeks will start to slow down in week 3-4, but your cannabis plant will still be growing upward. At this point you’ll actually start to see real buds instead of just hairs (I like to call them “budlets” during this stage) and all the pistils will be white and sticking almost straight out.

“Budlets” start forming where buds will be, with white pistils sticking straight out.

Your plant is going to start getting a little picky about the environment and nutrients in week 3-4 so it’s important to keep a close eye on your garden. You need to make sure your plant stays healthy all the way to the end of the flowering stage, and you’ve still got more than a month to go so you don’t want your plant to run into any major health problems now!

Be especially aware of leaf symptoms, for example: discolored/yellow leaves, or if your plant starts rapidly losing leaves. It’s completely normal to lose a few leaves at this stage, especially leaves that aren’t getting light (which often look like they may have a nutrient deficiency and then fall off, but it’s just your plant cannibalizing the leaf since it isn’t getting any more light). That being said, overall your entire plant should still be lush and green in week 3-4 while your budlets are forming.

As your plant continues through the flowering stage, it’s normal to see a few yellow or discolored leaves near the bottom of the plant, especially in the places where the leaves are no longer getting light. This isn’t anything to worry about if it’s just a few leaves as the plant is putting its energy to the top of the plant and the buds.

But it’s not normal for your plant to be yellowing or losing leaves rapidly like this

Diagnose sick plants as soon as possible!

Another thing to be aware of is nutrient burn. This is what happens when you give your plants too-high levels of nutrients – the tips of all the leaves actually get “burned.” While a little bit of nutrient burn won’t hurt your plant, it’s important to try to avoid it if you can. Your plant can never recover the parts of the leaves lost to nutrient burn, so if you accidentally give too much nutrients in the future, the burning will start “climbing” up the “fingers” of the leaves. Cannabis leaves tend to look much less appealing/pretty as more of each leaf gets burned. However, even cannabis plants with severe nutrient burn can produce good bud, so don’t give up if you run into thi problem!

Try your best to avoid nutrient burn (burnt leaf tips caused by too-high levels of nutrients), as it can only get worse as the flowering stage continues.

When nutrient burn starts getting bad, it can actually start discoloring your sugar leaves (the small single-finger leaves emerging from your buds). If nutrient burn reaches the base of the sugar leaves, you won’t be able to trim it off at harvest so your buds will end up with yellow/brown spots where all the leaves were burned.

Nutrient deficiencies can also cause the same problem if left unchecked. This doesn’t necessarily affect the potency but buds don’t look as good as they could have.

So to grow bud you’re proud of, you’ll want to be aware of avoiding nutrient burn from the beginning. Since your plant isn’t really growing many more leaves, you need to really care for the ones it has left.

If they haven’t already, your plants may start to smell!

Some strains like Blue Mystic and Northern Light are known for having relatively low smells, but many strains can start getting pungent quickly!

Learn more about controlling smells in the grow room.

Week 4-6: Buds Start Fattening

Your cannabis budlets are fattening and soon you will have buds with substance! They will still have nearly all white pistils sticking straight up in every direction, but the buds themselves will be getting fatter every day.

By weeks 4-6, the stretch is almost over and you no longer need to pay attention to training your plant. Instead of trying to keep the colas down, from now on you’re doing the opposite – trying to hold any buds up if they start getting too heavy for your plant!

If you’re having trouble fitting your plant in your space within a safe distance from your light, your training options can start looking very grim.

If your plant has grown into the light, you may have to consider last-resort solutions like supercropping (a high-stress training technique of forcing stems to bend at a 90° angle) which you normally should never do this late in the flowering stage.

Since you don’t get many more new leaves, you need to think of your remaining leaves as armor – insurance against any nutrient or leaf problems.

Although you don’t want an excessively leafy plant, and strategic defoliation (for advanced growers) can be helpful to expose bud sites, it’s important to make sure that you let your plant keep enough leaf coverage to power the growth of buds. It may need a little extra help if something happens!

Although defoliation may be used to expose buds sites, make sure your plant still has enough leaves (“armor”) to last until the end of the flowering stage to power the growth of buds, and as insurance against any possible nutrient or leaf problems.

Although most of the pistils will probably still be mostly white by the end of week 6, the buds are getting bigger and denser every day.

Week 6-8: Buds Ripen, Pistils Darken

From now on your plant won’t be making any new leaves or stems. It has completely switched gears away from vegetative growth and all its energy will be focused on growing buds from now until harvest.

It’s normal for some of the bottom leaves to begin to turn yellow as the plant continues to put its energy in the leaves and buds getting the most direct light, though the plant should still be mostly green from top to bottom even in week 6-8.

At this point of the flowering stage, your plant may start getting much more picky and sensitive to nutrient problems, including those caused by incorrect pH at the roots. Now is not the time to slack off on caring for your plants!

If your leaves are already turning yellow in week 6-8 it’s too early! Early leaf yellowing is likely caused by either a nutrient problem or light burn (which are both much more common in marijuanas flowering stage). React quickly to problems so you don’t hurt your yields!

If many of your leaves turn yellow or die early, your cannabis plant can’t make nearly as much energy from light, and buds will be smaller than they could be. For example, if the following grower had kept the leaves green and healthy for longer (by quickly fixing nutrient deficiencies), all these buds would be bigger.

Quickly diagnose sick plants & don’t ignore problems!

Another common problem to watch out for at this stage: if you see a whole new bud or “spire” emerging out of the side of an old bud that’s already developed, it’s usually a sign of heat or light damage.

“Foxtailing” like this is caused by too much heat or light – it’s not normal bud growth! If you see this it means you need to control your temperature and light levels to prevent further damage.

Here’s another foxtail growing from a cannabis bud under a powerful LED grow light. The grower should have turned down the light intensity or moved the LEDs further away. Another option would be to bend the whole branch down and away from the light. I personally cut off big long foxtails as they don’t fatten or make a significant amount of bud, and seem like they may reduce fattening lower down on the bud.

Learn more about marijuana foxtails caused by heat or light stress

From now until harvest it’s extra important to avoid too-high levels of light and especially heat because (in addition to foxtailing) this can discolor/bleach/burn your buds and may even burn off some of the THC (potency) or terpenes (smell).

If things are going well, your buds should be really hitting their stride at this point. They will grow in size significantly over the next few weeks.

Week 8+: Flowering Ends, Final Flush, Harvest

Home stretch! You’re so close! To make sure things go smoothly until harvest, treat your plant like a movie star and attend to its every need! Very few strains of cannabis are ready to be harvested before week 8, but now we’re at to the point where some short strains are getting close to being harvest-ready!

Many growers do a final flush, which involves giving only plain water to your plants (for a few days up to a few weeks) before harvest.

Once you’ve reached week 8, buds are fattening quickly. Trichomes and pistils are maturing, though new pistils may continue to develop on the buds as they grow.

You are basically just maintaining your plant until harvest. Different strains are ready at different times, but from now on you’re going to pretty much treat them all the same. Keep a close eye on the buds, pistils and trichomes as a whole to help you figure out the best time to harvest to get the effects you are looking for.

Now is Probably the Best Time to Take Bud Pics!

Quick Tip: Want to take better bud pics? Try taking a picture of the bud in the dark with your camera flash on. Learn more tips for taking great bud pictures!

Just around 8-10 weeks is when you get to see the buds in their full glory. It’s also when the smell of cannabis often starts to get overpowering!

Your plants are probably STINKING up everything around them.

At this point it’s completely normal for your plant leaves to start yellowing, sometimes rapidly. As long as the yellowing isn’t affecting your buds and you’re very close to harvest then it’s completely normal. You probably can’t prevent this type of yellowing no matter what you do with nutrients because this is just what a cannabis plant naturally does as it’s wrapping up the flowering stage.

After Week 8 it’s normal to see leaves turning yellow, in fact, there’s not much you can do to prevent it. As long as it’s close to harvest and the yellowing is not affecting your actual buds, it’s ok.

Raising nutrient levels at this stage is not recommended as it won’t stop the yellowing and can possibly prevent your buds from fattening up as much as they could have (cannabis wants relatively low levels of nitrogen in the flowering stage for proper bud growth).

If buds start getting too heavy and fall over, special tools known as plant yo-yos (pictured to the right) can be hung from the ceiling and will hook around your buds to gently hold them up without damaging them.

Many growers choose to give their plants a 2-week flush before harvest to help make sure the plant has used up any additional nutrients that may affect the taste or smell of the buds.

These buds are ready to start flushing – white pistils have nearly all darkened and curled in
(learn exactly when to harvest so your buds produce the right effects)

Sometimes you’ll need to harvest your plant early due to life situations, or because the plant is unhealthy and buds are starting to look burnt or discolored. If your buds look completely done, and you’re seeing leaf symptoms getting worse, it’s often better to harvest a little early to ensure the best possible quality given the situation.

You may want to harvest your marijuana buds early if they’re starting to get damaged by nutrient or other problems. Sometimes it’s better to cut your losses than let your buds continue to get beat up! If you harvest your plants too early you can improve many unwanted effects by curing them. For example, these buds probably should be harvested before the buds get any further damage.

Harvest buds early if they’re getting damaged.

Harvest day is the best day!
(well, until the day you try your buds for the first time)

Learn how to dry & cure your cannabis plants here.

Jump to….

Diagnose Your Sick Cannabis Plant!

Tips to Growing Top-Shelf Buds

How Long Does It Take to Grow Weed?

Quick Start Guide: Grow Cannabis in 10 Steps

Check These 7 Things & Cure 99% of Marijuana Growing Problems

The post Week-by-Week Timeline of the Cannabis Flowering Stage: 12/12 to Harvest (with Pictures) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.