“Fimming” (also known as FIMing) is a cannabis grow technique to increase yields. Discovered by mistake, this unusual plant training technique increases the number and size of cannabis buds. When the fimming is done right, of course. This marijuana fimming tutorial shows you how to fim plants perfectly every time.

Fimming refers to removing the top growth of a young cannabis plant, like this.

The result of successful fimming? 4 branches from one spot.

Fimming can help make more bushy, productive cannabis plants.

What to remember: The ultimate goal of fimming is to create a bushy plant with lots of main branches. This results in many big buds instead of only one.

What is fimming cannabis? Growers pinch off the top of a cannabis plant when it’s a few weeks old. When timed just right, plants naturally grow more top buds once the plant starts flowering. The fimming process causes a plant to naturally grow more wide and bushy as it develops. When growing cannabis indoors, creating a wide, flat plant is key to getting the biggest yields from your setup. Fimming naturally helps create that ideal plant shape for you.

A freshly “fimmed” cannabis plant.

Does fimming increase cannabis yields?

Yes, usually. The results of fimming range from “no effect” to “very effective”, depending on whether it’s done correctly. The bonus of basic fimming is growers can’t really do it wrong. The worst that can happen is no effect. But if you follow this fimming tutorial, your cannabis yields consistently get a yield boost.

Is fimming better than “topping”?

“Topping” is a similar technique to fimming, also to increase cannabis yields. The difference is topping means removing the whole top of the plant. Fimming means pinching off a small amount of growth.

Both methods are effective to make plants grow bushy and produce lots of big buds. Topping consistently splits the main stem into two, but you can accidentally stunt plants if you do it at the wrong time. Fimming is less consistent, resulting in 1-4 stems coming from the same spot, though you should get all four when fimming is done right. If you fim cannabis plants wrong, the result is no effect, and you’ll have the same single main stem as before. You can’t stunt a plant by simply fimming, but if you do it wrong, it doesn’t work and you don’t get any of the benefits.

Learn More: Topping vs FIMing Cannabis Tutorial

Why is it called “Fimming”? Fimming was discovered by mistake, and the name “Fim” reflects that history. The story goes that a cannabis grower tried to cut off the top of the plant, but didn’t do a complete job. But he liked the results better, and named the technique “FIM” for “F*ck I Missed”. Fimming was born.

How to “Fim” a Cannabis Plant

The main idea behind fimming is to “mow” off the top growth of your plant. The goal is to split the main stem into 4 stems with one strategic cut. A plant with 4 main stems is easy to train to grow wide and flat with simple bending. When done right, fimming cannabis can give results somewhat similar to time-intensive manifolding without adding weeks onto your grow time.

Wait until plant has grown 3-5 sets of leaves. At the right time, you’ll noticed all the lower stems are starting to grow into little branches. Yes, it’s not just about the total number of leaves, but also the overall size of the plant. If a plant is still tiny and thin, you should wait even if it’s got plenty of sets of leaves.

Too small to fim – even though this has 3 sets of leaves, the plant is tiny. The lower growth has not started growing away from the stem yet. Wait until plant gets a bit bigger or it may get stunted from fimming.

Beginning of fim window – This plant is just barely big enough to fim. The lower branches are just starting to grow away from the main stem. You might get better results by waiting just a bit longer.

Ideal size to fim – A cannabis plant about this size is the perfect size to fim. It’s got about 4 sets of leaves, and the lower growth is starting to grow away from the main stem into little branches of their own.

End of fimming window – This seedling has 5 full sets of leaves, starting on the 6th. This is about as big a cannabis plant should be when you fim. If your plant is bigger than this (and still in the vegetative stage), you should use the “topping” technique instead of fimming. To top a plant, cut through the main stem right above the 5th set of leaves (check out the full topping tutorial).

Right after fimming your young cannabis plant, it should have a “mowed” top left behind. Look at the above diagram to try to make sure you’re cutting through at the best spot.

Look at your plant and compare to the diagram above.

Remove this much growth to “fim” a cannabis plant.

Leave this much behind.

When done right, fimming results in 4 stems coming from essentially the same spot on the cannabis plant. However, fimming is not always the most consistent. Instead of 4 tops, if you don’t cut at the right spot you might end up with 1, 2, or 3 tops instead of all 4. If you want total control with perfect symmetry, check out the “topping” technique instead.

It’s normal for the new growth right after fimming to look weird. Remember, you cut off 80% of these leaves before they got a chance to grow out! If you damage a young leaf, it becomes more and more obvious as the leaf grows. However, brand new leaves after these ones should look normal.

A few days later, those mowed leaves from fimming should look a bit funny growing in.

Plants that have been fimmed naturally grow more bushy, which helps maximize yields in the flowering stage.

However, to improve your results, bend over tall branches. Just regularly bend the tallest stems down and away from the center of the plant, and tie them down. This process is known as Low Stress Training, or LST for short.

Keep bending tall stems down, so plant grows wide and flat.

The result? Tons of buds at harvest time!

Advanced Technique: Remove all stems but the top 4 (Serious Fimming)

Some growers take their fimming to the next step. Instead of just splitting the stem into 4 and letting the plant grow naturally, some growers remove all the other stems on the plant. In other words, they remove all steps but the top 4 they want to keep.

A fimmed cannabis stem. All but the top 4 stems were removed off the main “trunk”. Source: Nugbuckets

This makes it so all branches come from essentially the same spot on the cannabis plant.

Another example of a cannabis plant that was fimmed and all other branches removed. Source:Tarzan

However, if you want to go this direction, you may enjoy a more consistent plant training technique known as manifolding.

Learn how to manifold your cannabis plants.

Manifolding – better than fimming for cannabis growers who want symmetry.

Now you know how to fim your cannabis plants, so you get bigger yields at harvest time!

Want to learn about other marijuana plant training techniques to increase yields? Check this out!

Complete Guide to Cannabis Plant Training Techniques

The post “Fimming” Cannabis: The Secret to a Bigger Harvest? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

I recently received this email about a stunted, tiny autoflowering cannabis plant. Why does this happen? Stunted autos are a common problem, especially for auto-flowering strains with a very short vegetative stage. Keep reading to learn what causes autos to stay too small, and how to prevent it!

“This picture was taken last Fall. This my Purple Kush CBD Auto plant, quite pretty…

…until you see the actual size of it!

This came from an auto-flowering feminized cannabis seed that I dutifully planted outside in the Spring. Maturity was supposed to be 63 days but when I saw how little it had grown, I left it in as an experiment to see how tall it would end up. It didn’t grow even another cm taller. I ended up harvesting it at 113 days.

Any idea of what’s happened? Why did this autoflowering plant stay so small and stunted?

~Carmen

Why did this autoflowering plant stay so small and stunted?

Auto-flowering cannabis plants are on a tight schedule. Once they germinate, it’s essentially a “race” to the end of their life. That’s because their ancestors (“Ruderalis” wild cannabis  plants) originated in Siberia where summers are just 2-3 months long. As a result, most auto-flowering strains start making buds at around 1 month from germination, and are ready to harvest when they’re just 2-3 months old.

What does this have to do with an auto-flowering plant staying small?

An autoflowering plant stops getting taller when it’s about 6 weeks old for most strains, and even earlier for faster-flowering auto cannabis strains like Purple Kush CBD Auto (which can be ready just 9 weeks from germination). That means that if your auto-flowering plant has a slow start for whatever reason (overwatered, cold, not enough light, other stress, etc.), it might not get very big before it stops growing taller.

• Short vegetative stage – Most autoflowering strains automatically start making buds (they start “flowering”) around 4-5 weeks old.
• Plants stop growing in the flowering stage – Auto-flowering plants typically stop getting bigger not long after they start flowering.
• Small plants that start flowering stay small – If an auto-flowering plant is still small when it starts flowering, it won’t get any bigger.

This Purple Kush CBD Auto must have had a slow start, and started flowering before it had a chance to get very big. As a result, the final size was really small.

Here’s another example from our reader Hypermx, who experienced the same thing with his autoflowering plant.

I’ve had it happen as well. This auto-flowering plant went through stress at the beginning of its life (a person fell on it… okay it was me), and as a result never got big before it started flowering.

Just to give you an idea of how much an effect stunting can have, these are both the same autoflowering strain. You can see how much smaller the plant was that got stressed at a young age compared to the auto-flowering plant that was given good conditions from the beginning.

You want to avoid stunting to get the best yields from auto-flowering strains. Small plants can’t make big buds.

Unlike autoflowering strains, photoperiod plants have the luxury of being able to stay in the vegetative stage for as long as you want. That means you can recover from stress or problems and still get plants big enough to produce good yields. But with auto-flowering strains, you need to think about your grow as if you’re in a race to the finish line, and start strong.

I hope that helps reveal the mystery of why an auto-flowering plant can stay so small. Whenever growing autos (or any cannabis plants, really), I highly recommend germinated an extra seed or two, just in case something happens when they’re young or some plants grow better than others.

Bonus: Recommended Autos to Prevent Stunting

These auto-flowering cannabis strains were chosen because they are extra stress-resistant and easy to grow, yet produce good yields and outstanding bud quality.

• GG 4 Autoflower – This version of Gorilla Glue #4 is easy to grow and tends to grow fast. It is a forgiving strain that can handle a bit of stress and is ready to harvest at 70 days from germination.
• Cinderella Jack Auto – When I grew this strain, it produced the densest and most potent buds of that entire auto-flowering grow. It responded well to plant training, and produced good yields even though it was in a crowded tent with 7 other autoflowering plants. Harvest at 80 days from germination.
• Planet of the Grapes Auto – Delicious grapes smell, high potency, medium height, and super easy to grow. This strain is something special! Harvest at 80 days from germination.

The GG 4 Autoflower I grew in the very front (right behind the green bar) thrived in a tiny grow tent (copy this setup).

The Cinderella Jack Auto I grew produced ultra-dense buds.

Planet of the Grapes Auto produced outstanding bud quality.

About the Author: Nebula Haze

I started growing weed in 2008. To be honest, in the beginning, I struggled. There just wasn’t great information available for cannabis cultivation. I had to find my own way through trial and error. After I had figured out how easy it could be, I decided to create GrowWeedEasy.com in 2010 with my partner Sirius to make cannabis-growing information easily available to everyone who wants to grow at home.

Weed companies charge way too much for subpar weed, and we want home growers to learn how easy it is to grow higher-quality buds than most weed you can buy. The secret doesn’t take a ton of money or require you to learn special tricks. You just need good genetics and the right information so you get the best results for the least amount of effort.

That’s why we’ve made all the tutorials on the website easy and straightforward to follow. If you follow our instructions like a recipe, your cupboards will soon be overflowing with weed. I hope you enjoyed this article about how to prevent stunted autoflowering plants. Don’t hesitate to contact us to share your experience or let us know your favorite auto-flowering strains. Also, we’d love to see your plant pictures so we can feature them in our weekly newsletter!

• Sign up for the weekly growing newsletter – delivered every Sunday at 4:20 am Eastern time
• 10-Minute Cannabis Grow Guide – 10 minutes from now you could be a weed-growing expert!
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Nebula Haze says, “Thanks for reading, and happy growing!”

The post Why did my autoflowering plant stay so small? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

A beginner grower recently asked, “How do I grow cannabis in a grow cube like that?”

Cannabis plants in a 2’x2’x3′ grow tent under a Spider Farmer SF1000 LED grow light.

I realized this grow setup really is like a “grow cube” for marijuana plants. It’s a tiny “microgrowery” without any DIY aspects like a space bucket. It contains smells and nurtures small cannabis plants from when they’re seedlings to a productive harvest. Just follow the instructions on this tutorial to achieve similar results yourself at home.

A “Cannabis Grow Cube” with a good LED grow light can produce a ton of weed in a small space. For this size tent, I recommend an LED that uses about 100W of electricity. A bigger size tends to get a bit too hot for this small space. All of the pictures on this tutorial page feature either the HLG 100 V2 4000k or Spider Farmer SF1000 (which are both 100W LED grow lights) and those models get excellent yields and bud quality. However, any high-quality cannabis LED grow light  in the 100W size range should work.

When set up right, you can produce a surprising amount of weed in a tiny space!

What is a cannabis “Grow Cube”? It’s just a cool way to refer to a small, versatile grow tent well-suited to growing weed.

When it’s all closed up, it looks like a big black cube.

This is a remarkably easy way to grow weed and fits in the corner of your bedroom.

A Pineapple Chunk plant I grew in one of these cannabis Grow Cubes.

That cannabis plant above was only 18″ (45 cm) tall at harvest, and produced several ounces of weed!

Follow the step-by-step instructions below to copy these results.

My partner Sirius took a picture of me holding it just before harvest. All the buds started falling over from their own weight.

I will show you exactly how to grow 1-4 plants successfully in this cannabis grow cube so you also make a ton of high-quality buds in one quick harvest, even in a really small space. Make sure to start with good genetics and follow the directions below to ensure you produce a top-shelf weed (and lots of it!).

Here’s an example of bud quality grown in this setup.

Supplies for a Cannabis Grow Cube Setup

Here’s a complete supplies list to make your own cannabis grow cube.

2’x2’x3′ Grow Tent

A small grow tent that is 2’x2′ and 3-4′ tall. Most pictures on this page use the 2’x2’x3′ Grow Tent by CoolGrows, and a few use the slightly taller 2’x2’x4′ grow tent. I have had good experiences with the CoolGrows, Vivosun, and Melonfarm brands for small grow tents. But any similarly sized grow tent will be perfect for this cannabis grow style.

Cost: $50

A 2’x2’x3′ Grow Tent is tiny but can produce several ounces of weed when used correctly. Get a slightly taller 2’x2’x4′ grow tent if you want to grow bigger plants.

Here’s my CoolGrows 2x2x3′ grow tent with cannabis plants inside. CoolGrows is a good brand, but any similar 2’x2′ grow tent should work with this tutorial. Vivosun’s version of this size grow tent is the most popular on Amazon.

100W LED Grow Light

Cannabis plants grow fast and healthy under the Spider Farmer SF1000 LED grow light, which costs only $90 and comes with a handy dimmer to adjust the brightness.

Cost: $90

The Spider Farmer SF1000 LED grow light in action. (Can be surprisingly close to plants without light stress)

Alternative light: I also have had great results with the $150 HLG 100 Quantum Board (100W LED grow light) in this setup. However, it costs $50 more and doesn’t have a dimmer. Cannabis plants seem to respond really well to both, and both produce excellent bud quality/yields. I still need to do a side-by-side experiment to see if one outperforms the other when it comes to potency or yields.

HLG 100 LED grow light in action in this setup.

Exhaust Fan + Smell Filtering

Cannabis plants can create a lot of humidity in the tent (at least if your grow cube is filled with cannabis plants like in the pictures) and cannabis buds don’t form well in high humidity. You need a good exhaust fan to ensure that the humidity from all the plants doesn’t build up too much. An exhaust fan can also be hooked up to a carbon filter in order to filter smells from leaking out of the tent.

Option 1: Loud, But Cheap

This iPower 4 Inch 200 CFM Exhaust Inline Fan with Speed Controller and Air Carbon Filter costs $80 and includes a loud but effective exhaust fan and a matching carbon filter to scrub smells.

Cost: $80

The iPower 4 Inch kit is effective but the fan is kind of loud.

Option 2: Much Quieter, But Costs More

Mars Hydro 4″ Quiet Exhaust fan and Short Carbon Filter kit ($130 high-end alternative). If you want a fan that runs almost silently, you need to invest a bit more money and get a quiet fan like the AC Infinity version or this just-as-effective-but-cheaper Mars Hydro knockoff. The Mars Hydro 4″ kit includes the fan and a matching carbon filter. The reason I like this kit is it includes a small yet effective carbon filter. This is the kind of carbon filter I use, and I have a hard time finding them in this size anymore.

Cost: $130

The Mars Hydro 4″ kit is quieter but costs more. I use this in my bedroom.

Do I need a carbon filter to prevent weed smell?

Although a carbon filter is not necessary for cannabis plants to grow, if you don’t hook up a carbon filter to an exhaust fan, your tent may fill the surrounding area with a pungent weed smell as buds start forming. Normally it wouldn’t be such a big deal with such a small grow space, but you are going to be growing a surprising amount of weed in here!

Use a carbon filter for a smell-free cannabis garden!

Grow Medium + Pots

A cannabis grow cube can accommodate just about grow medium. I’ve grown in these with cannabis in soil, coco, or hydro (in a mini DWC kit). If you’re not sure what to use, here’s my recommendation:

• One $40 big bag of Coco Loco, a coco-based soil with perlite. This 2 cu ft bag should be enough to fill 14 gallons worth of pots (for example seven 2-gallon pots). You’ll have enough to last a few grows if you’re growing small, and any extra can be used later.
• 2-gallon fabric pots (here’s an example of a 5-pack for $14) – Just about any brand of fabric pot works great.

Cost: ~$55

Coco Loco is a coco-based soil that makes thriving cannabis plants.

 Example of a 5-pack of 2-gallon fabric pots (any brand works great).

Containers: I like 2-gallon for this size. You can go bigger, but I recommend sticking to 3 gallons in size or less, to keep plants a bit smaller. Plant tend to get much bigger in a big pot then if kept in a small pot. Plus it’s more difficult to overwater plants in smaller pots.

My experience with each size pot in this setup.

• 1-gallon pots help keep plants small by restricting their root size. This is a great size if you want to grow multiple plants in a small grow tent. If you go with the 1-gallon size, make sure to get a hard-sided plant pot (like a plastic or clay pot). This helps hold in water so the soil is slower to dry out. I’ve found that 1-gallon fabric pots need to be watered all the time because the grow medium dries from the sides extremely quickly.
• 2-gallon fabric pots give the benefits of fabric (faster growth by getting more air to the roots) but are big enough they can be watered much less often than 1-gallon fabric pots. This is my preferred size for this setup.
• 3-gallon pots were the easiest to water, but the plant really wanted to grow big. I had to do a lot of bending to keep the branches from growing into the light. Best if you’re only going to grow one plant in the grow tent.

Nutrients

The soil recommended above, Coco Loco, contains some nutrients already, but cannabis plants will use it up by the time they get to the flowering stage. Growers should give extra nutrients while buds are forming to ensure the best yields, density, and overall potency. There are lots of awesome cannabis nutrient options, but if you’re not sure, the following option is cheap, effective, and easy to use.

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom

• Grow bottle: Give about 1 tsp per gallon of “Grow” during the vegetative stage
• Bloom bottle: Give 1 tsp/gallon of “Bloom” during the flowering stage

Cost: $15

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is my recommended nutrient system for newbies. One bottle for veg, one for bloom. 1 tsp/gallon. Super simple and effective!

Professional Nutrients: My favorite nutrients for growing cannabis is the $40 General Hydroponics Flora trio. This is what I keep coming back to when I’m not testing out new nutrients. Unlike the 1-part Dyna-Gro bottles, it requires 3 bottles and you have to measure different amounts of each bottle depending on the stage of life. How to Use: Follow the instructions on the side of the bottles at half-strength. You typically don’t need to go up to full-strength nutrients under a smaller grow light like the 100W LED size in this tutorial.

My personal favorite cannabis nutrient system is the General Hydroponics Flora trio. Use at 1/2 strength what the bottles say.

Other Supplementary Items

• Get your seeds – $10-20/seed on average, but can be more or less depending on the breeder. Make sure to get “feminized” seeds to ensure every plant is female and makes buds. I personally like autoflowering strains for this setup because they are usually ready to harvest in 2-3 months from germination and tend to stay small. NASC is the seed vendor I’ve been using lately, and they have an excellent selection of autoflowering seeds.
• 24-Hour Timer – Growers put a grow light on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule – $9
• Water containers – You may have something already around the house. I personally use a 3-gallon or 5-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients, but anything can work. If you need to buy one, it’s much cheaper to buy these at Wal-Mart or a water container store ($5-15) than online.
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature inside the tent (unless you got the really fancy Cloudline exhaust fan with a temperature and humidity probe built-in). It’s nice to have more than one so you can measure the air in different parts of the grow space. – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH – $18
• Clip-On Fan – You can get a basic clip-on-fan for $13, but they’re a pain to clip onto the poles of a grow tent. I recommend spending a little extra for a small fan that is made to clip directly on the poles of your grow tent, like this $36 Vivosun Aerowave grow tent fan.
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $10
• (Optional) Zip ties – the hanging apparatus that comes with many grow lights add several inches of height for no real reason. They just aren’t designed for height-limited growing. In a mini tent like this, height is at a premium and a few inches can make a big difference. When you need to get your light all the way to the top of your tent, nothing seems to work better than industrial zip ties! Once you start using zip ties you end up using them for everything. They’re weirdly permanent and strong for something so disposable – $10

Total: ~$80 plus seeds

Estimated Cost for Basic Setup: $370

How to Set Up a Cannabis Grow Cube

1.) Assemble the grow tent according to the instructions (similar to setting up a camping tent)

Here’s a quick idea of what that looks like.

A typical grow tent comes with these pieces, including the directions.

First set up the structure by clicking all the poles together.

Then put the “tent” part over the outside, like you’re giving it clothes. Last, put the flexible waterproof tray in the bottom. You’re done!

Unlike most grow tents, this one is so little it’s easy to just pick it up and bring it anywhere in the house.

2.) Set up the carbon filter and exhaust fan in a bottom port

This step is needed to cool the grow cube, remove humidity, and stop smells from leaking out. This setup doesn’t have a whole lot of extra room inside. If you’ve got the smaller 3′ tall version, you have two main options to setup the fan and filter.

Option 1: Carbon filter inside tent in bottom port, connected to exhaust fan outside tent (with air pointing out).

Here’s what that looks like (lower right) The downside to this configuration is it causes you to lose a little room inside the tent. This pulls the air through the filter so the smells have already been filtered before leaving the tent.

Option 2: Carbon filter and fan are outside of the tent.

This allows you to have the full inside of the space for your plants. To do this you have the fan in a port pointed out, and connect that to the filter. This pushes the air through the filter before it is released into the room. With this option, you can either have the fan and filter in a bottom port, and they’ll be laying on the floor. Or you could put them in a top port and have them both sitting on top of the tent.

This is what I ended up settling with, since I can easily hide these behind the tent it lets me keep the clean look of the grow cube and have full space for the plants inside. Note: this is using the small filter included in the Mars Hydro 4″ kit. If you got the cheaper kit, your carbon filter is likely several inches longer.

Don’t forget to install your small clip-on grow tent fan to blow over the tops of your plants.

3.) Plug in the timer to an electrical outlet.

Plug in your electrical timer. I put my on a power strip for extra protection. Set it to the correct time, and then have it turn off the lights for 6 hours a day (so they’re on for 18 hours every day). This is known as an 18/6 time schedule. Whatever strain of cannabis you’re growing, 18/6 is a great light schedule to start plants on.

4.) Hang the LED from the top using the included hanging hardware and then plug it into the timer.

On the Spider Farmer SF1000, there is a dial to adjust the intensity of the light, and also a switch that lets you easily turn it on and off without having to unplug it.

5.) Turn everything on and let run for 24 hours before adding plants.

Let everything run for 24 hours, just to make sure everything works, and you’re ready for plants.

It’s cannabis time!

How to Grow a Ton of Weed in a Cannabis Grow Cube

Now it’s time to grow some cannabis. Follow the directions to achieve results like this:

1.) Germinate Your Seeds

Easiest method is to just put the seeds directly in soil.

Dampen your soil then get your cannabis seed.

Poke a little hole and add your cannabis seed, then cover it up.

Put it in your cannabis grow cube with the lights on, make sure it doesn’t dry out, and you should see a seedling in a few days.

The key to watering cannabis seedlings is to give just a little water at a time, and wait a few days between waterings. Once the seedling grows bigger, it drinks more and can be watered normally.

We have a complete “how to water” tutorial but check out this example schedule for watering seedlings.

Day 1 – Give 1 cup (250ml) water per seedling
Day 3 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per seedling
Day 6 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per seedling
Day 8 – Give 2 cups (750ml) water per seedling
Day 10 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per seedling

This is just a general starting guide. You need to watch your plants to see if they need more or less water at a time.

2.) Vegetative Stage

Main goals in the cannabis vegetative stage:

• Keep plants healthy – Keep watering plant regularly and giving nutrients. If using Dyna-Gro, give them 1 tsp of Grow per gallon of water. Check the pH if you notice any nutrient deficiencies. In soil, the water should be between 6-7 pH or you’ll see deficiencies (spots or markings on your leaves).
• Train plants to grow wide and flat like a table  – Full instructions below
• Wait until they have reached half the final desired size – Once plants have reached half their final desired size, it’s time to move to the next stage. They double in size (on average) after they start the flowering stage.

Overview of how to train plants to grow flat and wide like a table

• 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.

The main goal is to bend over tall steps to create flat plants…

…with full plant coverage from above.

Why? Later, this shape leads to a cannabis plant with tons of buds sites filling the mini tent.

Auto-flowering training guide

If you’re growing an autoflowering strain, follow this autoflowering-specific plant training guide. The following guide also works for autoflowering plants, but there are a few things you should watch out for and the full autoflowering training guide breaks it all down so you know exactly what to do.

Click here: How to Train Auto-Flowering Plants

I’ve fit up to 4 autoflowering cannabis plants in one of these mini tents!

Main Idea: Bend over tall branches as they grow, so they fill up the whole space.

Your Goal: Total plant coverage in the grow tent.

Example of training a photoperiod plant in a cannabis grow cube:

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 as if 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 given a week to grow after being topped. Now it’s 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 cannabis plant. If you’ve got multiple plants, then you’re trying to fill the whole space with them, too.

A few days later the plant has filled in nicely.

Repeat the steps until you’ve filled your entire grow space from above.

Regardless of the number of cannabis plants, just focus on achieving the a wide tabletop canopy. This makes it so that all your buds will be about the same distance from the grow light in the flowering stage.

When to go to the flowering stage:

• Auto-flowering strains – If you’re growing an autoflowering strain, the plant will automatically start making flowers/buds 4-6 weeks after germination. At that point, regardless of the plant size, you have to move to the next stage.
• Photoperiod strains – If you’re growing a photoperiod plant, then it will stay in the vegetative stage until you “tell” it to start flowering/making buds by giving it a 12/12 light schedule. The long nights simulate the late summer sun and cause the plant to “think” winter is coming so it starts its second stage of life.

3.) Flowering Stage

Main goals in the flowering stage:

• Initiate flowering by putting the lights on a 12/12 light schedule – Get plants to start making buds/flowers (this step is unnecessary if you’re growing autoflowering strains because they automatically start flowering after a few weeks regardless of the light schedule)
• Expose bud sites to light and air – Use strategic defoliation and/or tuck away extra leaves to make sure that your bud sites get access to a ton of direct light and gentle air circulation. Maximizing light to your buds will greatly increase both yields and THC levels/ potency.

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.

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.

Here’s a cannabis grow cube with multiple plants at harvest.

4.) Harvest, Dry & Cure

Buds are ready to harvest when nearly all the white hairs have darkened and curled in.

This picture shows examples of ready-to-harvest cannabis buds. Buds should appear solid and the hairs should be curled in.

Read the tutorial on how to dry and cure your newly harvested buds!

5.) Enjoy your weed!

You’ve worked so hard. Now it’s time to enjoy your weed!

This was my first harvest out of the mini tent.

About the Author: Nebula Haze

Nebula Haze is an experienced cannabis cultivator and co-founder of GrowWeedEasy.com, the web’s most comprehensive online resource for growing marijuana indoors at home. Since creating the website in 2010, Nebula has dedicated her life to understanding the cannabis plant and teaching fellow growers how to produce huge yields and captivating bud quality at home. Stop paying other people a ton of money for sub-par weed and start growing better weed for a fraction of the cost today!

Check out my easy 10-step guide to growing cannabis.

The post How to Use a “Grow Cube” to Grow Cannabis appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

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.

See Other Examples of Cannabis Growing Setups

Table of Contents

• About the Spider Farmer 100W LED Kit Setup
  • Cost Estimate Breakdown
• Complete Supply List
• How to Grow Weed so it Stays Short

About the Spider Farmer SF-1000 LED Mini Tent Setup

If you want to start growing weed without spending a fortune, this small cannabis grow kit with a 100W LED is great. This cannabis setup is more forgiving than the tiny mini tent setup because it has extra height and yields a bit more. It also gives you more room to expand if you decide to go bigger in the future. This setup has been designed to produce several ounces of high-quality bud in a small 2’x2’x4′  grow tent without any sounds or smells to give it away. It will produce up to 4 oz every 3-4 months.

Total Setup Cost: $290 ($360+ with professional smell filtering)

Check out a grow journal in this setup with the SF-1000 LED grow light.

The Spider Farmer SF-1000 (dimmable 100W LED) produces several ounces of weed when you follow this tutorial.

• Yield: 2-4 oz per harvest
• Total time: 3-4 months from seed to weed
• Cost: $90

100W Tent Cannabis Grow Examples

Here are some plants I’ve grown in this grow tent (or check out a full grow journal).

This mini cannabis grow setup uses a 2’x2′ around and 4′ tall grow tent with a 100W Spider Farmer SF-1000 LED grow light.

The 2’x2’x4′ size tent is just tall enough that you can even squeeze a little hydroponic system in there.

I once had autoflowering plants that grew too tall because they took longer than expected to start flowering. However, the SF-1000 light is gentle enough that it won’t burn buds even if they’re close, as long as you make sure to give your plants proper nutrients. The SF-1000 makes this a perfect beginner grow light because it will still produce a lot of great weed even you if you make some mistakes.

Estimated Cost for entire setup: $290-360+

• Ultra budget (no exhaust fan or smell filtering) – $290
• Only the necessary stuff + cheapest exhaust fan + smell filtering: $360
• Get everything including the premium equipment and optional extras: $460
• Estimated Monthly Electricity Cost: $10/month (based on US average of $0.15/kWH)

Total Setup Cost: $290 ($360+ with exhaust fan & smell filtering)

Summary of what you need to get started with this SF-1000 LED Mini Tent grow setup:

Complete Grow Supply List

This marijuana mini grow tent setup list includes all the supplies you need to get to a bountiful harvest.

Spider Farmer SF-1000 LED Grow Light (100W LED)

• Plants tend to be less sensitive under this grow light than most other LEDs I’ve tried. Some other LEDs are harsher on leaves and more likely to trigger nutrient deficiencies.
• Keep about 10″ away to start. If plants start getting tall/stretchy, move the light closer.
• Performs best if plants are about 8-10″ away, but if plants get too close it still produces great weed (you’re just more likely to see yellow or discolored leaves)
• Simple to use. Works exactly as you’d expect. Dimmable.

Cost: $90

The Spider Farmer SF-1000 (100W LED) can produce several ounces of weed in this setup. Other LEDs would likely work, but I know the SF-1000 works great with cannabis plants in this tent.

Grow Space

• Grow Tent Recommended Sizes
  • I like this 2’x2’x4′ grow tent by MelonFarm, though any grow tent of this size will work.

Cost: $45

I like this cheap-yet-effective 2’x2’x4′ grow tent for growing mini weed plants.

Exhaust Fan & Carbon Filter (Optional Smell Filtering)

This LED grow light does not get very hot. But if you plan on filling your tent with plants like the pictures, you really should get a good exhaust fan to ensure that the humidity from all the plants doesn’t build up too much. An exhaust fan can also be hooked up to a carbon filter in order to filter smells from leaking out of the tent.

• Recommended:  4″ AC Infinity CLOUDLINE series of inline exhaust fans. These run quiet and have the ability to turn the speed way down if necessary.
  • S4 is the cheaper, simpler version – (21W electricity usage, 26 dB sound level) works well and gives you basic fan speed controls – $90
  • (My favorite) Programmable T4 version – (21W electricity usage, 26 dB sound level) has handy extras like a Temperature/Humidity Probe, auto-on and auto-off, ability to program a schedule, a display screen, and ability to check on the temperature and control the fan with your mobile phone – $120 (I got both versions and I wish I’d gotten two of this version – the features are worth the extra $30!)
• Budget choice: Vivosun 4″ Fan – 195 CFM (28W electricity and 42 dB sound level) – effective cheap fan, but runs louder than the AC Infinity fans – $27

Cost: $27-120

The programmable T4 AC Infinity CLOUDLINE fan ($120) runs at a quiet 26 dB sound level and can be controlled from your smartphone. Quietest exhaust fan this effective.

What’s all this about a carbon filter?

• Although a carbon filter is optional, if you don’t hook up a carbon filter to an exhaust fan, your tent may rapidly fill the surrounding area with a pungent weed smell as you get close to harvest. Normally it wouldn’t be such a big deal with such a small tent like this, but you are going to be growing a surprising amount of weed in here. Learn about growing low-odor cannabis strains.
• Recommended: 4-inch iPower Carbon Filter, 4″ x 12″ version – Note: these are 12″ long, which is likely bigger than you might expect. You can get a smaller one that is still as effective, but they’re hard to find and cost more than the standard size.
  • Duct tape – to connect the filter and fan together securely so no air leaks out. Another option is a 4″ duct connector but duct tape works great and many people already have a rolle somewhere.
  • (Optional – likely unnecessary) 4″ Ducting and Ducting Clamps – you might need this if you plan on venting the air somewhere, like out a window, but with such a cool-running grow light, that is probably not necessary.

Cost: $32

Plant Pots

• Growing medium: Coco coir or soil
• Containers: Stick to under 3 gallons in size to help keep plants a bit smaller. I grew with 1-gallon fabric pots, which worked well at keeping plants small, but plants needed to be watered daily towards the end of the grow because the plants drank the water so fast. The plants needed to be watered less often when I used 2-gallon pots, but the plants got a little bigger. 3-gallon pots were the easiest to water, but the plant really wanted to grow big and I had to do a lot of bending to keep the branches from growing into the light.

Recommended:

• One big bag of Coco Loco, a coco-based soil with perlite. This 2 cu ft bag should be enough to fill 14 gallons worth of pots (for example seven 2-gallon pots). You’ll have enough to last a few grows if you’re growing small, but luckily coco-based soils store well so you could use the rest later.
• 2-Gallon fabric pots (here’s an example of a 5-pack) – Any brand of fabric pot works great, in my experience.

Cost: $50

Coco Loco is a coco-based soil that makes thriving cannabis plants

 Example a 5-pack of 2-gallon fabric pots for growing cannabis (any brand of fabric pot works great)

Nutrients

Most nutrient systems will come with at least 2 bottles (one bottle for the vegetative stage and one for flowering/bloom stage). Many nutrient lines carry 3 bottles or even more that must be mixed into the water in different ratios over the course of your cannabis plant’s life. Whether it’s on the bottle or online, most nutrient lines come with a schedule on how much nutrients to give your plants. Start the schedule at half-strength in the beginning and only raise to full strength after your plants are healthy and growing fast.

Recommended Base Nutrients: Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom nutrient combo is excellent, cheap, and easy to use for growing cannabis.

• Grow bottle: Give about 1 tsp per gallon of “Grow” during the vegetative stage.
• Bloom bottle: Give 1 tsp/gallon of “Bloom” during the flowering stage after buds start forming.

Learn about other recommended cannabis nutrients.

Cost: $20

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is my recommended nutrient system for newbies. One bottle for the vegetative stage, one bottle for bloom (after buds start forming). 1 tsp/gallon. Super simple!

Other Supplementary Items

• Get your seeds – $10-15/seed on average, but can be more or less depending on the breeder.
• 24-Hour Timer (to put your grow lights on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule) – $10
• Water containers (I personally use a 3-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients as that’s as much as I can carry without difficulty, but any water container can work). Note: These are much cheaper at Wal-Mart or a water container store ($5-15) than online!
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature inside the tent (unless you got the really fancy Cloudline exhaust fan with a temperature and humidity probe built-in) – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH – $20
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $10
• (Optional) Zip ties – the hanging apparatus that comes with many grow lights add several inches of height for no real reason. They just aren’t designed for height-limited growing. In a mini tent like this, height is at a premium and a few inches can make a big difference. When you need to get your light all the way to the top of your tent, nothing seems to work better than industrial zip ties. Once you start using zip ties you end up using them for everything. They’re weirdly permanent and strong for something so disposable – $10

Total: $55+

Estimated Cost for entire setup: $290-$460

• Ultra budget (no exhaust fan or smell filtering) – $290
• Only the necessary stuff + cheapest exhaust fan + smell filtering: $360
• Get everything including the premium equipment and optional extras: $460

Carbon filter and fan (how to cool tent, remove humidity, and stop smells)

Notice the configuration of the carbon filter and fan. Even though this is a very small carbon filter, just 10″ long, there’s not a lot of extra room at the top of the tent. The configuration below seems to be the only way I can find to fit the carbon filter inside while still allowing the grow light to get to the top of the tent. This is not as effective as exhausting from the top of the tent, but it will work in this small tent.

Your other option is to put both the fan and carbon filter sitting on top of the tent, exiting from the top port. In that case, you’d want the carbon filter to be the last thing before air escapes (carbon filters should always be at the ends of an exhaust system, either inside the tent at the beginning, or at the end on the outside).

You have to get creative to fit a carbon filter in a small cannabis tent like this.

When set up right, you can produce a surprising amount of bud in a tiny space!

But not much room at the top.

This is when I grew a single Pineapple Chunk plant in this setup. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how I trained this cannabis plant to stay so short (scroll to the bottom of the article to see each step with this plant as the main example).

This was a Pineapple Runtz Auto (highly recommended strain for this mini cannabis setup!). Learn how to train auto-flowering cannabis strains to stay short and still get big yields.

We’ve even grown in the 4′ tall tent with a mini DWC/hydro system! A tight fit but doable.

Another tiny cannabis plant grown in the hydro setup. Contact us if you want to see a tutorial to grow cannabis in mini DWC setups. If there is interest, we will make a full mini-DWC cannabis tutorial.

How to Make Cannabis Plants Stay Small and Still Produce a Lot of Weed

There are lots of great beginner grow tutorials on the site such as the 10-Step Cannabis Grow Guide. However, here’s a super quick overview of everything. Then I’ll explain how to grow cannabis in this mini grow tent setup so it stays the right size and produces as much weed as possible.

Basic process of growing of an indoor cannabis plant

Germination – there are lots of ways to germinate seeds but the easiest is just to put the seeds directly in the dirt just below the surface (about a knuckle down) and give some water and warmth from the grow light. Seedlings should appear in a few days.

Plants only need a tiny amount of water at first.

Here’s a day-by-day watering schedule for cannabis seedlings.

Vegetative stage – When cannabis plants are young, they grow branches and leaves but not any buds. Simply give plants water, light, and possibly nutrients. Nutrients are only necessary if you’re not growing in soil (for example in coco or hydroponics) but even in soil, providing nutrients makes plants grow faster. In the flowering stage, the right nutrients make buds get bigger.

Initiate the flowering stage (with a “12/12 light schedule”) when the plant is half the final size – Cannabis buds are actually flowers (isn’t that nice?), and you need to “tell” the plant to start making flowers by tricking it into thinking winter is coming. So once plants have reached about half the final desired size, a grower initiates the flowering stage by putting grow lights on a vacation timer so the light turns off for 12 hours a day. This 12/12 light schedule tricks the plant into “thinking” it’s the end of summer and it starts making flowers/buds. If you’re growing an auto-flowering strain, plants will automatically start flowering when they’re 3-5 weeks old, so you don’t need to think about this step or light schedules. This is a general overview. Read the tutorial below to learn exactly how to make cannabis plants the right size for this specific tent.

Flowering stage – Plants start growing white hairs (“pistils”) at the base of each fan leaf and at the tops of branches. These are are the first signs of buds. Plants will about double in height (more or less depending on strain) after the flowering stage is initiated. Auto flowering strains will double in height from when you see white hairs/pistils. But after about 5-6 weeks, the plant will stop getting any taller and the bunches of white hairs will start fattening into solid buds.

New buds look like white hairs

White hairs darken and curl in as buds mature. Buds often start to “sparkle” (depending on strain).

Harvest – The white hairs on all the buds will all darken and curl in when plants are ready to harvest. Check out pictures of ready-to-harvest buds or some people look at the buds under a magnifier to help decide when to harvest. When buds are ready, cut down the branches one by one and hang them upside down in a cool dark place with light ventilation. Often the place you grew the weed is also a great spot for drying it, for example the inside of a grow tent. There are also other ways to dry buds. Once buds are dry, they will easily pop off the branches. At this point the buds can be smoked but if you put them in glass jars the bud quality will continue to improve for several weeks. This process is known as “curing” and helps buds tighten up, smell better, be less harsh, and overall have higher “bag appeal” and be more pleasant to smoke.

Ready to harvest bud. Mature buds are solid with no white hairs. Leaves may turn yellow or purple like autumn leaves (especially directly under the LED grow light).

You can do it!

This infographic I made may be helpful as well (here’s a PDF version)

Now that you know the basics of growing weed, let’s get into the details of how to grow in this mini tent setup.

Bonus Tips for this setup: 

• Choose the right strains – Avoid choosing cannabis strains that naturally grow big plants!
  • Choose autoflower strains that are ready to harvest 10 weeks from germination or sooner (these strains tend to stay smaller than longer-flowering strains), especially if it’s specifically listed as tending to stay short. Recommendations: Blue Dream Auto, Creme de la Chem Auto (a personal favorite), Strawberry Cheesecake Auto.
  • Choose photoperiod strains with a 8 weeks or less flowering period (faster than average). You will initiate flowering when plants are about 3 weeks old for a total of 10 weeks just like with the autos. Make sure to choose a strain that says it’s short or medium size in the description. Even short strains can get tall, but they tend to grow more out than up, especially compared to other strains specifically listed as “tall”. Recommendations: Strawberry Cola Sherbet F1, Bruce Banner Fast, Tropicana Cookies Fast.
• Small pots help keep cannabis plants smaller. Use a 2 or 3-gallon pot (or smaller if you don’t mind watering more often) to help plants stay small enough for this setup. Plants can still get big in small pots, but they will be smaller than the same plant if it’s allowed to grow without any restrictions on its roots.
• Hard-sided pots tend to keep plants smaller, because it further restricts their root size compare to the same size container in hydro or a fabric pot.
• Follow the instructions below to get the most weed from this setup.

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

Tips

• 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.
• Spread out stems so plant grows flat and wide – 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!
• Tall stems can be “topped” if they can’t be bent over flat – Cut off the ends of (“top”) 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 because each new stem grows half as fast.. If you don’t want to cut off the end, you can also bend the whole stem down so it’s not taller anymore. That accomplishes the same thing if you don’t mind tying down the stems.
• 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 as if 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.

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!

Learn more about growing plants to be wide and flat.

Check out the results from a grow that followed this 4oz mini tent tutorial with many small plants instead of just one. This is actually only a 3′ tall tent, so if you got the taller version (as recommended in this tutorial), you would be able to grow even bigger plants with longer buds.

Example of a mini tent harvest

Purple Ghost Candy buds

Mandarin Cookies bud

Those Mandarin Cookies buds in hand.

The post Harvest up to 4 oz Cannabis in this 100W LED Mini Grow Kit – Complete Setup & Weed Growing Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Ready to start growing weed for only $300? This tutorial uses the HLG 65 V2 4000k LED in a 3′ tall mini grow tent to produce up to 3 oz of top-shelf cannabis per harvest (at 65W it’s almost free to run this marijuana grow light after set up). This is my absolute favorite grow light for cannabis micro-growing because it produces great bud quality and yields, while the unique 4000k spectrum helps cannabis plants stay short. Essentially, this setup makes a lot of big buds on a little plant. I’ve included a supplies list with Amazon links for this marijuana mini grow tent kit, plus a complete cannabis growing tutorial below. Learn how to achieve these results (it’s easy!) by following the easy step-by-step instructions below.

Note: See Other Examples of Cannabis Growing Setups

Today’s easy growing tutorial is everything you need to get started and get to a bountiful cannabis harvest!

Check out a grow journal in this setup

Table of Contents

• About the Cannabis Mini Tent Setup
  • Cost Estimate ($300 to start)
• Complete Supply List
• How to Keep Cannabis Short and Still Grow Big Buds

About This 65W LED Mini Tent Setup for $300

For a micro cannabis grower, it’s all about getting the best yields in the smallest and stealthiest way possible. This mini-tent setup has been designed to produce several ounces of high-quality bud in a tiny 2’x2’x3′  grow tent without any sounds or smells to give it away. It only costs $300 for the bare-bones version without smell filtering and will produce a great harvest in 3-4 months.

• Yield: Up to 3 oz per harvest
• Almost free to run a 65W LED grow light
• 3-4 months from seed to weed

Total Setup Cost: $300 ($420-500 with professional smell filtering)

The HLG 65 V2 (4000k spectrum) can produce several ounces of weed in this setup. Almost free to run at just 65W.

It can support any strain when used according to the directions below, but this marijuana microgrowery setup tends to do best if you choose “short” cannabis strains as they tend to stay smaller.

See other examples of cannabis growing setups

Mini Tent Cannabis Grow Examples

Here are some plants I’ve grown in this exact setup or check out a full grow journal.

One photoperiod plant in a 3-gallon fabric pot

Side view of that plant not long before harvest. Look at all those buds! It ended up yielding about 3 ounces in total.

Three autoflowering plants in 2-gallon fabric pots produced a little over an ounce per plant

Estimated Cost for this Setup

• Ultra budget basic version (bare minimum with no smell filtering) – $300 plus seeds
• Only the necessary stuff + smell filtering: ~$420 plus the cost of seeds (I swear I didn’t do “420” on purpose, it was just meant to be)
• Get everything including the premium equipment and optional extras: ~$500 plus seeds
• Estimated Monthly Electricity Cost: $10/month (based on US average of $0.15/kWH)

Total Setup Cost: $300 ($420-500 with smell filtering)

Summary of what you need to get started with this HLG 65 Mini Tent grow setup

Complete Cannabis Grow Supply List

This cannabis mini grow tent setup list includes all the supplies you need to get to harvest.

65W HLG Quantum Board LED Grow Light

HLG 65 V2 (4000k spectrum)

• The 4000k (blue) spectrum helps keep plants short, which is helpful in this setup
• Keep about 10″ away to start. If plants start getting tall/stretchy, move the light closer.
• Simple to use. Works exactly as you’d expect.
• I’ve gotten some of the best yields per watt with this particular grow light than any other

Cost: $100

The HLG 65 V2 (4000k spectrum) can produce several ounces of weed in this setup.

Grow Space

A grow tent is an easy and cheap way to instantly create a perfect indoor cannabis grow space that can deal with water, light, heat, and smells. Learn more about grow tents

3 Foot Tall Mini Grow Tent

• 2’x2’x3′ (true microgrow) – I use this tent by CoolGrows but the brand doesn’t matter much.

Cost: $40

2’x2’x3′ grow tent by CoolGrows

(Optional to Stop Smells) Exhaust Fan + Carbon Filter

An exhaust fan brings in fresh air to the plants and helps vent extra heat/humidity from the plants. If you are only growing one small plant and don’t care about smell, you can get away without an exhaust fan because the HLG 65 LED doesn’t make much heat. However, if you plan on filling your tent with plants like the pictures, an exhaust fan helps ensure that the humidity from all the plants doesn’t build up too much, which is not good for bud development. If you want to stop smells, you need to get both the exhaust fan and the carbon filter and connect them together (instructions below).

• Recommended:  4″ AC Infinity CLOUDLINE series of inline exhaust fans. These are quiet at top speed and completely silent at lower speeds.
  • S4 is the cheaper, simpler version which works well and gives you basic fan speed controls
  • The programmable T4 version has handy extras like a Temperature/Humidity Probe and Display Screen
• Budget choice: Vivosun 4″ Fan – 203 CFM (good cheap fan but runs loud)

Cost: $65-120

The AC Infinity S4 is a quiet exhaust fan.

What’s all this about a carbon filter?

• If you don’t hook up a carbon filter to an exhaust fan, your tent may rapidly fill the surrounding area with a pungent weed smell as you get close to harvest. Normally it wouldn’t be such a big deal with such a small tent like this, but you are going to be growing a surprising amount of weed in here.
• Recommended: 4-inch Carbon Filter, 4″ x 10″ version (note: these are bigger than you expect)
  • 4″ Ducting and Ducting Clamps – to connect your fan and carbon filter together securely

Cost: $35

4-inch Carbon Filter, 4″ x 10″ version

Soil + Plant Pots

• Growing medium: Coco coir or soil
• Containers: Stick to under 3 gallons in size to help keep plants a bit smaller. I grew with 1-gallon fabric pots, which worked well at keeping plants small, but plants needed to be watered daily. The plants needed to be watered less often when I used 2-gallon pots, but the plants got a little bigger. 3-gallon pots were the easiest to water, but the plant really wanted to grow big and I had to do a lot of bending to keep the branches from growing into the light.

Recommended:

• One big bag of coco-based soil with perlite. This 2 cu ft bag of Coco Loco should be enough to fill 15 gallons worth of pots (for example seven 2-gallon pots with a tiny bit left over). You’ll have enough to last a few grows, but luckily coco-based soils store well so you could use the rest later.
• 2-Gallon fabric pots (here’s an example of a 5-pack) – Any brand works great.

Cost: ~$65

Coco Loco is a coco-based soil that makes thriving cannabis plants

   Example a 5-pack of 2-gallon fabric pots (any brand works great)

Nutrients

Most nutrient systems will come with at least one bottle for vegetative and one for bloom. Many nutrient lines carry 3 bottles or even more that must be mixed into the water in different ratios over the course of your cannabis plant’s life. Whether it’s on the bottle or online, most nutrient lines come with a schedule. Use the schedule at half-strength in the beginning as the recommended strength is typically too high for cannabis.

Recommended Base Nutrients: Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom nutrient combo is excellent, cheap, and easy to use for growing cannabis.

• “Grow” bottle: Give 1 tsp per gallon of water during the vegetative stage
• “Bloom” bottle: Give 1 tsp/gallon of water during the flowering stage

Learn about other cannabis nutrients we recommend.

Cost: $25

Dyna-Gro Grow + Bloom is my recommended nutrient system for newbies. One bottle for veg, one for bloom. 1 tsp/gallon. Super simple!

Other Supplementary Items

• Get your seeds (lately I’ve been using Seed Supreme) – $10-15/seed on average, but can be more or less depending on the breeder.
• 24-Hour Timer (to put your grow lights on a timer so the plants get a day and night period on a schedule). Why do cannabis plants need to be on a day/night schedule? What about autoflowering light schedules? – $10
• Water containers (I personally use a 3-gallon or 5-gallon water jug to mix up nutrients, but anything can work) – Much cheaper at Wal-Mart or a water container store ($5-15) than online!
• Thermometer/Humidity Monitor with a probe so you can keep track of the temperature in different parts inside the tent (though less necessary if you got the really fancy Cloudline exhaust fan with a temperature and humidity probe built-in) – $15
• PH Test Kit – Prevent potential nutrient deficiencies by testing the water pH: https://www.growweedeasy.com/ph – $20
• Measuring spoons for measuring out your nutrients (many people already have these) – $10
• (Optional) Zip ties – the hanging apparatus that comes with many grow lights add several inches of height for no real reason. They just aren’t designed for height-limited growing. In a mini tent like this, height is at a premium and a few inches can make a big difference. When you need to get your light all the way to the top of your tent, nothing seems to work better than industrial zip ties! Once you start using zip ties you end up using them for everything. They’re weirdly permanent and strong for something so disposable – $10

Learn about other cool growing tools.

Estimated Cost: $300-500

• Ultra budget (no smell filtering) – $300 plus the cost of seeds
• Only the necessary stuff + smell filtering: $420 (I swear I didn’t do “420” on purpose, it was fate)
• Get everything including the premium equipment and optional extras: $500

Check Out Different Grow Setups!

Carbon filter and fan (how to cool tent, remove humidity, and stop smells)

Notice the configuration of the carbon filter and fan. Even though this is a very small carbon filter, just 10″ long, there’s not a lot of extra room at the top of the tent. The configuration below seems to be the only way I can find to fit the carbon filter inside while still allowing the grow light to get to the top of the tent. This is not as effective as exhausting from the top of the tent, but it will work in this small tent.

Your other option is to put both the fan and carbon filter sitting on top of the tent, exiting from the top port. In that cause, you’d want the carbon filter to be the last thing before air escapes (carbon filters should always be at the ends of an exhaust system, either inside the tent at the beginning, or at the end on the outside).

You have to get creative to fit a carbon filter in this tiny tent

When set up right, you can produce a surprising amount of bud in a tiny space!

But not much room at the top

Growing a single Pineapple Chunk plant in the 3′ tall tent

Pacific Punch bud grown under the HLG 65 in this setup

How to Make Cannabis Plants Stay Small and Still Produce a Lot of Weed

You may know how to grow cannabis already, and there are lots of great tutorials on the site such as the 10-Step Cannabis Grow Guide, but here’s a super quick overview before we get into the details of how to keep your cannabis plants the perfect height in this setup.

Basic process of growing of an indoor cannabis plant

Germination – there are lots of ways to germinate seeds but the easiest is just to put the seeds directly in the dirt just below the surface (about a knuckle down) and give some water and warmth from the grow light. Seedlings should appear in a few days.

Vegetative stage – When cannabis plants are young, they grow branches and leaves but not any buds. Simply give plants water, light, and possibly nutrients. Nutrients are only necessary if you’re not growing in soil (for example in coco or hydroponics) but even in soil, providing nutrients makes plants grow faster. In the flowering stage, the right nutrients make buds get bigger.

Initiate the flowering stage when the plant is half the final size – Cannabis buds are actually flowers (isn’t that nice?), and you need to “tell” the plant to start making flowers by tricking it into thinking winter is coming. So once plants have reached about half the final desired size, a grower initiates the flowering stage by putting grow lights on a vacation timer so the light turns off for 12 hours a day. This 12/12 light schedule tricks the plant into “thinking” it’s the end of summer and it starts making flowers/buds. If you’re growing an auto-flowering strain, plants will automatically start flowering when they’re 3-5 weeks old, so you don’t need to think about this step or light schedules. This is a general overview. Read the tutorial below to learn exactly how to make cannabis plants the right size for this specific tent.

Flowering stage – Plants start growing white hairs (“pistils”) at the base of each fan leaf and at the tops of branches. These are are the first signs of buds. Plants will about double in height (more or less depending on strain) after the flowering stage is initiated. Auto flowering strains will double in height from when you see white hairs/pistils. But after about 5-6 weeks, the plant will stop getting any taller and the bunches of white hairs will start fattening into solid buds.

New buds look like white hairs

White hairs darken and curl in as buds mature. Buds often start to “sparkle” (depending on strain).

Harvest – The white hairs on all the buds will all darken and curl in when plants are ready to harvest. Check out pictures of ready-to-harvest buds or some people look at the buds under a magnifier to help decide when to harvest. When buds are ready, cut down the branches one by one and hang them upside down in a cool dark place with light ventilation. Often the place you grew the weed is also a great spot for drying it, for example the inside of a grow tent. There are also other ways to dry buds. Once buds are dry, they will easily pop off the branches. At this point the buds can be smoked but if you put them in glass jars the bud quality will continue to improve for several weeks. This process is known as “curing” and helps buds tighten up, smell better, be less harsh, and overall have higher “bag appeal” and be more pleasant to smoke.

Ready to harvest bud. Mature buds are solid with no white hairs. Leaves may turn yellow or purple like autumn leaves (especially directly under the LED grow light).

You can do it!

This infographic I made may be helpful as well (here’s a PDF version)

Now that you know the basics of growing weed, let’s get into the details of how to grow in this mini tent setup.

Bonus Tips for this setup: 

• Choose the right strains – no cannabis strains that naturally get big!
  • Choose autoflowering strains that are ready to harvest 10 weeks from germination or sooner (these strains tend to stay smaller than longer-flowering strains), especially if it’s specifically listed as tending to stay short.
  • Choose photoperiod strains with a 6-7 week flowering period (you will initiate flowering when plants are about 3 weeks old for a total of 10 weeks just like with the autos) and also make sure you’re choosing a strain that says it’s short in the description. Even short strains can get tall, but they tend to grow more out than up compared to other strains.
• Small pots help keep cannabis plants smaller. Use a 2 or 3-gallon pot (or smaller if you don’t mind watering more often) to help plants stay small enough for this setup. Plants can still get big in small pots, but they will be smaller than the same plant if it’s allowed to grow without any restrictions on its roots.
• Follow the instructions below to get the most weed from this setup.

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

Tips

• 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 as if 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.

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!

Learn more about growing plants to be wide and flat.

Check out the results from a grow that followed this mini tent tutorial with many small plants instead of just one.

Example of a mini tent harvest

Purple Ghost Candy buds

Mandarin Cookies bud

Those Mandarin Cookies buds in hand.

The post How to Grow 3 oz of Cannabis in a $300 Mini LED Grow Kit – Shopping List & Grow Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Grow Journal is Finished! Go to the final entry.

April 9 – Extra mom plant put in a 2’x2’x3′ grow tent under HLG 65 LED and trained to be flat

I had a few extra plants (they were moms for clones for my defoliation side-by-side grow experiment). I also have an HLG 65 LED grow light (4000k) and a 2’x2’x3′ mini grow tent.

This HLG 65 LED grow light (4000k) only uses 65W and has a spectrum to help keep plants short.

A 2’x2’x3′ mini grow tent is pretty small for cannabis plants, but a fun challenge and easy to hide for stealth purposes. I’m using a tent by CoolGrows.

The HLG 65 puts out so little heat that unless your space is naturally hot you can get away using it in the mini tent without any kind of fan to vent heat. Here’s a picture of the last plant I grew in this setup. Big shoes to fill.

Grow Medium

• Mother Earth Coco plus Perlite grow media

Nutrients

• Vegetative Stage – Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro
  • 1/4 tsp per gallon for seedlings
  • 1 tsp/gallon after that
  • 6.1-6.3 pH
• Flowering Stage – Dyna-Grow Bloom
  • 1 1/4 tsp per gallon for the first 4 weeks after plants start flowering
  • 1 tsp/gallon after that until end of grow
  • 6.1-6.4 pH
  • Give plain water for 1-2 waterings before harvest

I decided to take one of the extra plants and train it to grow extremely short like the example I just shared. The 4000k light has a lot of blue which reduces yields a bit but helps to keep plants short, which is the toughest part of growing in this tent. I thought it might be fun to see if I could break my old yield record for this 65W LED (a little under 4 oz).

Here’s the mom plant

I bend all the branches over and tied them down. This plant had an odd structure because it was a mother plant that had many clones taken from her. To make things easier to spread out, I removed a bunch of extra branches that didn’t seem to fit the shape of the inside of the tent.

I tried to fill the entire grow tent in a flat table shape. This plant structure tends to increase overall yields because it helps produce many big buds that are all about the same size throughout the grow tent. That way all the buds get lots of direct light.

This above-view helps you see how I bent everything to fill the space.

April 10 – The next day I initiated 12/12

This is what the plant looked like the next day after all the leaves turned back up toward the light.

Today I initiated 12/12 to get the plant to start flowering (making buds). My goal is to try to get to harvest as quick as possible so it doesn’t have any time to get tall 🙂

April 15 – Starting to see flowers

This plant was germinated a little over two months ago, had many clones taken, and here she is. Plants that are older tend to start flowering fast and this one is no exception.

I can already see flowers (buds) popping up everywhere. Cannabis buds start out looking like little bunches of white hairs.

April 29 – Buds are developing nicely

I’ve just been giving this plant nutrient water and other than that I’ve left it completely alone. It’s developing perfectly. It received vegetative nutrients for the first 2 weeks after initiating 12/12 and in week 3 I switched to flowering nutrients. The extra nitrogen and potassium in the vegetative nutrients help cannabis plants develop well during the flowering stretch with lots of bud sites, but from now on until harvest the plant needs much lower levels of nitrogen.

I’ve noticed over the years that cannabis plants tend to need lower levels of nutrients overall when they’re growing under a smaller/weaker light like this little HLG 65. Less photosynthesis requires less nutrients. The leaves on this plant look a little dark in natural light so I’m now giving nutrients at 1/3 strength. I’ve been giving enough nutrients for one gallon, but mixing it in 3 gallons of water so the plants are receiving 1/3 strength compared to what’s on the official schedule. I’m growing a clone of this plant in another tent under a bigger 300W LED grow light and that plant can handle much higher levels of nutrients.

I’ve started to notice sparkly trichomes forming near the bud sites. The next post will include closeups of the buds. See you soon!

May 6 – Wow, lots of bud growth!

Buds have fattened quite a bit since the last post. I haven’t done anything but give nutrient water every few days and let the plant develop.

Here’s a closeup of a bud. I’m pretty pleased with the trichome development so far. I initiated 12/12 about 4 weeks ago and nearly all the pistils (hairs) are still white, which means this bud is still young. But I see a few hairs starting to darken and curl in, which is a sign that the buds are maturing. Inside the bud, the plant is ramping up THC development. Buds will get steadily more potent until harvest time. Based on appearance, I’d guess we’re about 5 weeks out from harvest.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for the next update!

May 20 – Buds are thinking about harvest + experiment time!

These buds are starting to look ready for harvest. I am always so amazed when I grow with this 65W LED grow light in this tiny tent. They are a perfect combo.

I thought you might think this was interesting. The buds directly under the grow light are taking on purple tones, while the buds on the edges are staying the more standard orange/green color of buds.

Buds directly under light have hints of purple

Buds on the edges getting less direct light are staying “standard” bud color

Experiment: How does 3-day dark period before harvest affect THC percentages?

I decided to do an experiment with these buds to test how THC changes during the last few weeks before harvest, as well as test whether a 3-day dark period significantly changes the THC percentage of buds.

So today I’m taking a sample of buds and drying them. I’ll take another sample in 1-2 weeks when these buds are ready to harvest, put the plant in a 3-day dark period, and take one more sample. Then I’ll get it all tested in that lab!

Check back for the results!

May 28 – Harvest day (before 3 day dark period)

I took a few samples for lab testing last update, but most of the plant is still here. Here’s how it looks before being put into a 3-day dark period.

I took a few more samples for lab testing. I’ll check back in 3 days!

June 1 – Harvest day (after 3-day dark period)

Half of the plant is gone from the first half of the harvest, but after 3 days in the dark, the parts of the plant left don’t look any different that I can tell.

I took the opportunity to take some bud pictures.

I love how all the buds are not just sparkling but super dense and heavy.

Check back in a few weeks for…

• Pictures of dried buds
• THC and Terpene lab results (including samples from before and after 3-day dark period)
• Dry yields
• Final thoughts!

July 30

I just realized I never updated this journal on the website so here are the belated results of this grow journal!

Total Dry Yield: 83.87g (2.96 oz)

That’s about 1.3 grams per watt for a 65W LED grow light. Not too shabby!

Lab results

• Before 3-Day Dark Period: 19.83% THC (20.45% total cannabinoids). Terpenes were 13.65 mg/g.
• After 3-Day Dark Period: 21.86% THC (22.5% total cannabinoids). Terpenes were 13.25 mg/g

Wow! Although this is just one test (and it’s important to remember that the THC varies naturally between buds on the plant), it’s pretty stark how much higher the THC tested after the 3-day dark period.  Frankly, this is such a big difference I am absolutely going to have to run more side-by-side experiments to see if this is a fluke or not. The terpenes seemed about the same before and after, so I don’t think they were affected much by the dark period.

Final Thoughts

I absolutely love this little HLG 65 4000k grow light. I truly believe it’s the answer to a lot of growers who are looking to make a true microgrow. I want to try growing with it again, but this time with no fan or carbon filter. Just the tent with the light in it. I’m curious how well that would go since that seems like the ultimate in easiness and I think the light puts out so little heat it would work well.

When it comes to the effects of the 3-day dark period, it’s hard for me to even believe how much the THC increased after the dark period. I am already planning the follow-up experiment, which will be much more detail-oriented and based purely on testing this one thing. For example, I will grow separate clones so I can harvest one plant fully and then the other, as opposed to having to cut off buds from the same plant, which could affect the results. For example, what if it wasn’t the dark period but harvesting half the plant that caused it to increase THC in the other buds? Such an exciting time to be a grower!

Check out more side-by-side cannabis growing experiments.

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If you’re just getting started on your weed-growing journey, it can feel totally overwhelming. Where do you start? There’s so much to know, so what should you focus on first? Get the answers to all your questions in this straightforward tutorial. I’ll show you exactly what needs your attention, so you consistently get the harvest results you seek.

What should a beginner focus on to achieve great results on their first grow? Find out today!

If you read this article and follow the three steps, you’ll produce exceptional weed (and tons of it) even if you make a bunch of mistakes.

These techniques also increase overall marijuana bud quality, looks, and potency, so your homegrown buds look like this!

Today I’ll break down the 3 things you need to get right to become a legendary grower. If you understand these three aspects of growing, you will get good results. Yes, even if you mess up quite a bit!

Growing cannabis doesn’t have to be as complicated as a lot of people make it out to be. Typically, when growing weed feels difficult or frustrating, it’s because you lack the information on what to direct your efforts toward. You just need to know the following three things, and you’ll be able to grow exceptional weed and get the yields you want.

1. Understand the cannabis life cycle
2. Use the right equipment
3. Start with quality genetics

Get ready to transform into a legendary indoor cannabis grower!

1.) Understand the basics of a cannabis plant’s life cycle

A solid understanding of a cannabis plant’s life cycle will make everything a million times easier for you! This cannabis life timeline is a quick overview of the main aspects you should know as a cannabis grower.

Seed Germination – Seeds germinate into seedlings.

Tips:

• use a proven germination method
• keep seeds warm and moist but not soaking

I love modern versions of the classic OG Kush strain. Easy to grow, lovely unique “kush” smell, with excellent bud effects.

Vegetative Stage

Plants grow only leaves and stems at first. Since all growth is vegetative, this is known as the vegetative stage. On average, plants gain half their final size in this stage.

Tips:

• Pay attention to the environment – If it’s comfortable for you, it’s comfortable for your plants. Learn about the optimal cannabis environment. Getting your environment right now makes things easier when buds start forming.
• Watering habits – Learn how to water your plants perfectly, and pay attention if you notice drooping or signs of overwatering.
• Vegetative nutrients – Give all-purpose or “grow” nutrients in the vegetative stage. In soil, wait four weeks before giving nutrients. However, in coco or hydro, give nutrients from the beginning. An example of a extremely simple vegetative nutrient that works great for cannabis plants in any grow medium is Dyna-Gro Grow (give at 1 tsp/gallon). For more advanced growers, Fox Farm nutrient trio (for soil) or General Hydroponics Flora trio (for coco or hydro) offer professional results. Learn about cannabis nutrients.
• Plant training (optional) – Helps increase yields and maximizes the size and density of buds, but plant training is not necessary for success. Skip this if you feel overwhelmed! Learn about plant training.
• Start flowering/budding at the right time – Move on to the next stage when you cannabis plants reach about half the final desired size. They will about double in size after they start budding in the flowering stage, which is their next stage of life. Initiating flowering at this point sets you up so your plants are the perfect size (not too big, not too little) at harvest, so you get max yields but not overgrown plants.

Flowering Stage

Initiate the flowering stage by giving plants a 12/12 light schedule (except auto-flowering strains, which start flowering on their own after 3-4 weeks). Once plants get a 12/12 light schedule, they start growing flowers/buds within 1-3 weeks. Plants can double in size after getting 12/12 on average, though the amount of “stretch” depends greatly on the strain. Once buds form, the time until harvest is determined by the strain.

Tips:

• Initiate a 12/12 light schedule when plants are about half the final desired size. Learn about “12/12” and cannabis light schedules.
• Pay attention to the environment (especially make sure it’s not hot or humid) – Learn about environment effects on bud quality.
• Watering – Watering techniques should be about the same as before, though plants will be drinking more overall. The main thing that changes is the amount of nutrients you provide.
• Nutrients– Switch to flowering or “Bloom” nutrients. Dyna-Gro Bloom (at 1 tsp/gallon) is super simple and effective. If you’ve been using professional nutrients like Fox Farm nutrient trio (for soil) or General Hydroponics Flora trio (for coco or hydro), switch to their included “flowering schedule” which will change up the ratios to give plants what they need while buds form.
• Plant pruning (optional) – These two main techniques increase yields by ensuring all buds get tons of direct light. As a bonus, the top buds on the plants get the biggest, densest, and most potent, so these types of training maximizes bud quality, too, since all your buds will be top buds.
  • The first technique is to keep flowering plants flat like a table as opposed to a Christmas tree shape, which is done by bending tall branches over and tying them down.
  • The second technique is to remove excessive leaves to make sure all buds are exposed to direct light.  Learn about how to prune flowering cannabis plants.
• Problem resolution – Many growers notice leaf symptoms in the second half of the flowering stage because plants are much pickier than in the vegetative stage. This is normal and a common issue for beginner growers. Don’t panic, but don’t ignore problems either. Check the plant doctor for help diagnosing the cause, and then fix the issue before it affects your harvest. Also, here’s some help on controlling height.

Plants are a bit more picky about the environment and nutrients in the late flowering stage, but they’ll reward you if you follow the above tips!

Harvest

Harvest cannabis buds when they’re mature, dry them, then jar them for storage and curing.

Tips:

• Pick the right time to harvest. Here’s what to look for.
• Proper drying is crucial – Drying buds makes a huge difference to final bud quality.
• “Cure” the buds! Store dried buds in jars and burp occasionally. Bud quality improves for weeks.

Harvest cannabis buds when they’re ready!

Time for a quick review!

This infographic shows the whole life cycle with a timeline of what to expect

2.) Get good equipment

Now that you understand the most important aspects of what it takes to grow cannabis, let’s talk about setting up so that nature does most of the work for you. That way you get to focus on enjoying the process and looking at your beautiful, healthy buds forming.

• Environment – Your setup should make it easy to maintain comfortable temperature and humidity for your growing plants (a grow tent with fan pointing out works really well!). You can hang a grow light from inside a closet and use a fan to help blow air around. Just know that you may have more trouble controlling the environment than if you get proper equipment.
• Grow light – For beginners, I recommend a 200-300W LED grow light like the Spider Farmer SF2000 (200W) or Mars Hydro TSL2000 (300W). These LEDs get excellent cannabis growth, yields, and bud quality. If it tends to get cool in the grow room (for example you’re growing in a basement, or during the winter), then a 400W MH/HPS may be a better choice because it’ll help heat up the grow space.
• Grow medium – Examples are rich fluffy potting soils (Coco Loco, Ocean Forest, Roots Organics, etc.), coco/perlite potting mix (Mother Earth Coco plus Perlite mix is what I use, and it’s fantastic), and lastly, water for hydroponic setups. If you’re not sure, you can’t go wrong with simple old soil! Learn more about grow mediums.
• Nutrients – Nutrients are necessary for the best yields unless you’re growing in a super soil setup (which slowly releases organic nutrients over time throughout the plant’s life). Use an all-purpose/grow nutrient formula for the vegetative stage, and flowering/bloom nutrients for the flowering stage. With soil, you should start giving nutrients about 4 weeks after plants have been in the same pot. With coco or hydro, give nutrients from germination or the plants won’t grow (coco and hydro don’t naturally contain nutrients, so the plant only gets what you give in the water).

See examples setups that work well for growing cannabis.

Get a setup that fits your yield goals, space limits, and budget.

3.) Start with good genetics

I highly recommend beginners starting with feminized seeds from a trustworthy breeder. Feminized seeds means 99.9% of seeds will produce female plants, unlike regular seeds, which produce male plants roughly half the time. Since male plants don’t produce buds, starting with feminized seeds means you can feel confident that every seed you germinate will produce buds.

Ideas for genetics:

• Highest THC –  Check the list of American strains and seed banks. I’ve found that American strains tend to have the highest THC levels, though not always.
• Therapeutic use – High CBD, low THC, symptom-specific strains. Use the filters on this feminized seed selector tool to help find what you’re looking for.
• Biggest yields – Choose a high-yielding strain. Here’s a list of high-yielding, feminized strains on Seedsupreme.com. I set the filter on that link so the highest-rated strains appear at the top.
• Easiest to Grow – Stick to established strains that have been stabilized to produce consistent results. Avoid “crosses” (usually with a name like STRAIN x STRAIN). Crosses result in a variety of different types of plants. Crosses are great for breeders looking for the next big strain, but not necessarily the best choice for someone who just wants to grow weed and know what to expect.
• Low time commitment – Autoflowering strains mean fewer steps to get plants to make buds, plus you’ll get to harvest quicker than with other strains.
• Bag seed? I’ve seen growers get good results with bag seed (seeds they find). If that’s all you have, that’s what you have to use. Just know that the results can turn out extremely different from the weed it came from, and you’ll have no idea what to expect as far as growth patterns or how long it will take before it’s ready to harvest. Bag-seed really makes you appreciate breeders. If you can afford even a few cheap seeds, you’ll be a lot more prepared! I highly recommend Seedsupreme strains if you’re looking for something inexpensive but generally dependable.

Learn how to find the right strain.

I recently grew these two Critical Kush plants and was beyond pleased by the yields, ease of growth, and potency! I highly recommend the strain if you’re not sure what to get.

Closeup of a Critical Kush bud (click picture for full-size version). Although the buds look pretty typical, don’t let that fool you. The yields, smoothness, smell, and effects are outstanding.

For auto-flowering strains, Dinafem genetics have never done me wrong!

About the Author Nebula Haze

I’ve grown a lot of excellent weed since I started in 2008! After struggling to get started growing, my goal in life became to help other people grow as much weed as they want, and grow better weed than they can buy. That’s why I co-founded GrowWeedEasy.com in 2010 and have been teaching growers ever since.

If you liked today’s article, sign up for our weekly newsletter and get a new growing article delivered to you every Sunday.

Happy growing!

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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.

This tutorial is a condensed version of the classic “How to Keep a Bonsai Mum” article written by the legendary Oldtimer1. Although the original article was published in 2000, this bonsai training method recently resurfaced and has become popular for hobbyist cannabis growers without a lot of space. With so many people growing at home these days, this technique is more useful now than ever.

Free Clones Forever! (How do I make clones?) These 8-month-old marijuana bonsai mother plants are based on this tutorial. In addition to the sunny window, a bright lightbulb shines nearby for 14+ hours a day to keep them in the vegetative stage. An easy and fun way to hold onto genetics! ~Nebula Haze

This tutorial will teach you how to turn a cannabis plant into a bonsai mother (giving you access to unlimited free clones!)

But what is a mother plant? A “mother” is a plant you keep alive so you can take clones whenever you want (the clones are the “children” which is where the term “mother” comes from). Learn how to clone cannabis plants in a cup of water (easiest but slow), with seedling plugs (almost as easy but faster), or in an aerocloner (fastest). One common reason growers keep mothers is to save money by producing new cannabis plants for free (or at least basically free). The other is to hold onto good genetics. If you have a plant that grows beautifully and produces good yields of high-quality bud, you may want to save the genetics so you can grow the plant again in a future grow. A clone will grow the same as the mother plant.

Instead of having to pay for each seed from a seed bank, a mother plant can be used to create almost unlimited new clones of itself. In addition to not costing anything, new clones are more predictable than seeds from random crosses. Seeds carry a mix of traits from both parent plants, some of which may be recessive attributes, while each clone consistently grows just like the mother.

Taking clones can save a ton of money versus buying seeds because each new plant is simply cut off the mother and grown into a full plant

Cloning can be a big money saver over buying individual seeds, but frugality isn’t the only reason to keep mother plants. Sometimes it’s about saving great genetics. Certain cannabis plants are so special they beg to be cloned so more people can enjoy them. If you ever identify a particularly great plant, you can actually take clones of it and turn them into mother plants. You can even take clones in the flowering stage if you just can’t let a certain plant go. 

Clones are made by cutting off the ends of branches and planting those pieces so they grow roots. These “cuttings” grow into full plants that are a genetic clone of the mother. When you grow and harvest them, the characteristics will be basically identical to the mother plant.

Why would you want a bonsai mother?

Unlike a commercial grower, most home growers don’t have a lot of grow space to dedicate purely to housing mother plants. Keeping each mother small, like a bonsai tree, lets you maintain a huge selection of genetics in a small grow space without very much electricity. 

The bonsai mother technique has become a staple for indoor growers who want to keep a huge variety of genetics in a small cannabis garden. This version of the tutorial cuts out extra discussion and leaves just the instructions with pictures. This way you can get straight to bonsai-ing. But if you ever have a little extra time for some fun and interesting discussion, I highly recommend reading the original article in its entirety by Oldtimer1.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create and maintain many small mother plants in a tiny grow space. Each mother plant can produce hundreds of new clones over time, so you basically gain the power to produce unlimited new plants for free! 

Example of a bonsai plant by Don de Marco

Part 1: How to Create a Bonsai Mother Plant

This tutorial will show you how to create a fully established bonsai mother plant.

This bonsai mother, if well-fed, will be able to produce 10 to 30 good cuttings every 14 days under an HID grow light, or every 20 days under a fluorescent grow light. This means a 4 ft x 2 ft shop light with 18 mother plants could produce an output of over 9500 cuttings a year.

Typical Bonsai Mum

That’s not intensive production, but it allows the connoisseur to keep a good selection of strain varieties in a relatively small space.

1.) Put Chosen Mother in a Square Pot

Let’s start by turning a rooted cutting into a mother plant. This is simple. With every batch of clones, there are always a few that stand out because they generally appear sturdier and better looking overall. Pick one or two of these to make your mother plant. Remember this mother plant will provide you with cuttings 4 to 18 times a year for the next 3 to 15 years, so only the best will do.

Note: I find square pots are much easier to deal with when it comes to root pruning, as you will see later.

Pick a fully rooted through cutting and put it in a 2.5-inch square pot.

2.) Cut the plant short so it only has 3-4 growing tips left

Once you’ve chosen your cutting, trim its top back to leave 3 or 4 side shoots.
Top view

3.) Manipulate the plant into an “open cup” shape (open up the middle as the plant grows)

The little branches you left from before will become the main framework of your mother plant. The goal is to try to get them to form an open cup shape as they grow. The top 2 branches usually grow the fastest unless you take steps to even everything out. The following sequence helps you create a more symmetrical plant.

• “Top” the two tallest branches when they get to about 5 inches long (pinch or snip off the growing tip just above a leaf node).
• Once the remaining branches catch up to the same height as the ones you just topped, top/pinch the growing tips off them as well.
• This process of topping multiple branches will encourage side shoots to form.
• Remove any branches that grow into the central cup shape.

4.) Take first set of clones

After completing the last step, you should have 6 to 8 leading branches coming up. When they reach 4 to 6 inches long, they can be taken as your first set of clones.

• Cut them back to just above the first leaf node of the new growth

Note: Check out Part 3 of this tutorial (below) for more details and pictures of taking clones

After the cuttings have been taken, the mum is only a tiny bit larger than the last time she was cut back but the main branches will be starting to get thicker.

5.) Move mother plant to bigger pot

After you’ve taken the first set of cuttings, it’s time to move up to the next pot size. A 3-inch sq pot is ideal.

6.) You’ve got a bonsai mother!

You should now have 12 to 16 leading shoots, as well as others coming up from lower nodes. In total, there may be 30 potential clones or more. Any really thin ones or any growing into the center, either cut back to one node or remove altogether instead of taking cuttings.

Here are bonsai mothers at different stages

In the picture:

1. The trimmed cutting from above.
2. Has had 2 sets of cuttings taken off and is more than ready to move to a 3-inch pot. As you can see it is a little short of Nitrogen, which is why it’s better to transplant to fresh soil after the first set of cuttings.
3. This mother plant is in a 3-inch pot. 12 cuttings have been taken with 2 left on to show where to cut back to.
4. This is a five-year-old Mum that has just had 32 cuttings taken off and could do with some more small twiggy bits removed. She is in a 1-liter pot and has been since she was 3 months old.

Note how all have an open center; this allows light to both the center and the outside. It will fill in between taking cuttings but if pruned back to this form, makes better and more even growth giving more good cuttings each time.

General Care and Maintenance

The mother plants need just enough nutrients to keep them healthy. Feed nutrients at half-strength twice a month. This keeps them in good general health but doesn’t overfeed them. If you want faster production at any point change to a full-strength feed once or twice. Every 2 to 4 weeks a new batch of cuttings are taken even if they are not needed and just put in the worm bin. You can think of it as being like having to mow the lawn and keeps the mum the same size and form for years. Because so much is taken away they can get short of macronutrients so every month or so give them a foliar spray or light dose of nutrients. Judge this by how the plants are looking not by a timetable.

One of the main things that all growers need to learn is regular close observation to know when they are healthy and notice the first signs of deficiencies appearing.

Part 2: Root Pruning (Renovation and Maintenance)

Bonsai mother plants will need root pruning once or twice a year to stay healthy. The frequency depends on how intensively they are fed and how good your water quality is.

Note: The root pruning method stays the same whether it’s being used for routine maintenance or renovation of a sick plant.

Here we are dealing with a 7-year-old mother plant that hasn’t been root trimmed for nearly a year and was deliberately neglected for the last 10 weeks so you could see the recovery.
First, trim back nearly all the top growth back to the main framework of branches. Leave one or two tiny shoots at the tip of each branch to draw sap and keep the branch alive.

Don’t remove all the shoots and buds because this often causes “die back”. Once that starts the whole plant usually dies within a month or two. But you’re good as long as you leave a few small shoots, even if they’re yellow from lacking Nitrogen. They will soon start to grow and green up as the new roots start forming!

Next, the rootball should have 3/4 of an inch cut off each side and an inch off the bottom.

This reduces the 4.5 x 4.5 x 4.5 inch rootball to 3 x 3 x 3.5 inches high after the loose soil is scraped from the top.

This means that two-thirds of the soil is being replaced. A good full strength organic compost is used when repotting and it only takes a day or two for the roots to really start growing into the new compost.  It is very important to make sure there are no voids or air gaps left when packing the sides, use a pencil or small dibber, fill slowly and firm lightly.

Set the bottom of the rootball on about 3/4 of an inch of compost then pack out the sides and finally cover the top with a 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch. This means the mother is planted 1/4 inch deeper every time root pruning is done about 1/2 an inch a year. In a couple of years from now I will cut down vertically and split the plant in two as the side branch will have a root system of its own. Using this method the roots are constantly being replaced and as well the main trunk replaced slowly. This seems to keep the bonsai mother plants healthy for many years.

The last picture is 12 days under an HPS light after the root and top pruning. It tells its own story! Already there are enough nice leaders to make 10 good cuttings.

The second mother of our selected “ES” line lasted for just over 15 years using this method. I have also kept prized males for breeding (bonsai father plants) in this pot size and some are over 5 years old.

That’s it. You should have all the info you need to make and root cuttings in compost and make and maintain bonsai mother plants. It’s easy, give it a go!

Part 3: How to Take Clones from Bonsai Mother Plants

This section covers my cloning system in detail, along with a brief outline about our mother plants. Every grower can get the same results by imitating this easy organic system.

Mother plants are kept so their roots are restricted using standard bonsai methodology and techniques. It is an excellent method for keeping mother plants long-term and has proved a very reliable system since we developed this method 24 years ago (editor: from the year 2000, so around 1976). The longest I’ve kept a mother like this without having to be replaced is just over 15 years.

On average….

• Replace pure indicas every 3 years
• Replace hybrids every 4 to 5 years
• Replace pure sativas every 6 to 7 years.

Of course, it depends on the care they are given, and every strain is different. These days most plants are hybrids and you don’t find much “pure” anything, but this can be a helpful guide. Male plants can be kept in the same way and in fact will stand more abuse than mother plants.

My Clone, Mother and Father box

It’s a double deck with two 4ft x 2 ft lights each with 4 x 40w cool white fluorescent lights.

Clone, Mother and Father box

270 rooted cuttings, in plugs ready to go into pots. Close-up of top tray right

One of the big advantages of using bonsai mother plants is that each only needs a maximum of 8 x 8 inches. So a 2 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft high box with a 4-tube fluorescent shop light can hold 9 mothers. We call the plants we keep Mums and Dads; not to be confused with chrysanthemums 🙂

I once read a quote in High Times that said you get genetic degeneration by keeping mother plants long term – this is total rubbish!

Degeneration can certainly occur if a mother plant gets infected with a reversion virus, but the buds produced today from our mother plants is just as potent and good-smelling as when it was first grown out from seed many years ago. In fact, it is better now. We have better lighting and superior growing techniques, allowing the clones to express their potential more fully.

This is our largest mother plant in a 1-liter pot (the largest size used). With all the top growth pictured she is about 13 inches tall and ready to take cuttings. Inset is a cutting being clipped out see below.

I use fine-point scissors for trimming the plants, they are fast and easy to use. Quick enough to do 2 to 3 cuttings a minute. Forget the stories that they bruise the stem and cause rot, it’s rubbish! They do need to be sharp, so buy a new pair and keep them just for this task. As far as hygiene is concerned, providing all your mother plants are free of virus, simply put them through the dishwasher after every session to get rid of the sap build up. This keeps them free and easy to use.

How to prepare the cuttings (refer to picture below)

1. This tip is ready to get prepared for rooting
2. Snip off the side shoot and leaf the node you want to root.
3. Cut just below the node you want to root.
4. Dip the trimmed node in rooting hormone.

How to Insert the Cuttings

1. Use a 3.5-inch square pot to root in
2. Fill with half perlite and half universal compost or rich potting soil
3. The mix is pre-soaked with water dosed with 1 ml of 35% or 2ml per litre of 17.5% H2O2 and 5 ml of Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed
4. Then the cuttings are dibbed into the compost, 9 to 12 per pot
5. The dibbed cuttings are then watered in using a fine rose same mix as above to settle them in.
6. Cover with a plastic bag and put under constant 24-hour lighting
7. Preferably cool-white fluorescent lighting at 20 w per sq foot and a temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

Inserting cuttings and covering with bag

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“There are a number of reasons for not rooting directly into plug trays.”

Let’s look at what we need from a rooted cutting… We want one that is suited to growing in a confined space i.e. a pot. They are as closely matched as possible. To get good yields from a grow, uniformity is the rule. It is no good having one plant that produces 50 grams when its 2 neighbors only produce 15 grams each. They are identical stock but this is what is often seen in grow after grow. It is much better to try and get all the plants averaging 35 grams well within the capacity of the stock line of a plant that can make 50 grams.

Remember we are talking about growing in soil-based or soilless compost mixes. The root type that the cutting produces is very important, lots of fine feeder roots are the ideal, anchor and tap roots are totally unwanted when growing in a pot. Remember the amount feeder root mass directly effects the potential crop weight

The 3.5-inch pots are 4 inches high; the rooting mix is very open with low nutrient content. This encourages early taproot development. Not all the cuttings will have rooted at the same time, so when they are transferred to the plug trays the root balls are trimmed to the same size and the tap root is removed, this goes a long way towards equalizing the clones. Once they are transferred as below they tend to stay pretty even and grow on rapidly. To show what we are looking for some equalized clones grown on and just put into flower. There are several varieties in this grow and there is not more than an inch or so between plants in each variety. They are placed by variety to make a stadium effect and make maximum use of light.

Around ten days later the cuttings will have rooted through. The rootball is gently broken up, each cutting has its roots trimmed back to equalize the cuttings and make them fit the plug tray! Full-strength peat or coir compost using organic base fertilizers are used for this.

Then they are put back in the Clone/Mother box for about 5/6 more days until thoroughly rooted through, this is very important at all stages of repotting! Fully rooted plants just jump ahead when moved on– we have found that plants moved into bigger pots too early typically produce 25% to 30% less final crop weight!

Moving the rooted cuttings to plug trays.

Cuttings in plug trays a few days later ready to move on to their first pots.

Showing a cutting out of the plug tray, fully rooted out and ready to go.

Cuttings like this can be taken from any plants in the vegetative stage.

That’s it… you are ready to grow!

(by Oldtimer1. Foreward and adaptation by Nebula Haze of GrowWeedEasy.com)

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