@Graysin
Apparently @Docnraq thinks he has a life outside of being a fountain of knowledge for us newbies 
so I was wondering if you could be so kind as to assist me? I’m going to be feeding later tonight and if I need to be pruning sites I’d rather it be today. I’m just nervous about my light causing me to not producing much more than what’s already on there in terms of overall mass of the sites. I know it still has a while to go but with the way everyone talks about the light I’m using that’s kind of the impression I’m getting. I’m trying to get my expectations to be realistic and being as I’m a first time grower I’m super nervous. Also I can finally notice resin production on my Wedding Cake today but still nothing like my Blue Lights.
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Blasphemous.
Patience, grasshopper. It will come.
The light will limit the overall yield, no sugar coating that fact. However, if you can bring yourself to strip off the lowest 1/3rd of the bud sites, starting from the soil and working your way up, you will help the plant shift her energy to producing heartier buds up top. So while the number of bud sites won’t ever increase, by decreasing total number of sites, you can increase the size of the yield from the upper sites.
Think of it this way - the buds are designed to catch pollen in the wind. The uppermost colas will always develop more robustly than the lower stuff, it’s the nature of the way wind/pollen carriers work. Highest top will have most exposure. If you eliminate the lowest buds which were never going to develop into much of note, you save her the energy production she’d have expended on that larf and popcorny sh!t. The earlier in the process that you eliminate the small stuff, the longer she has to devote her energy to the upper growth.
I laughed entirely too hard at that gif
So this brings me to my next question. So I have about 5 branches in the 19-20” range, another 6 in the 17-18” range and I have a handful of branches that are either from the stalk, or branching off of other colas that are like 11-12”. The bottom 1/3 if we’re going from my tallest would be 6-7”. Now I have branches that are branching off from this point but the more themselves are in the 11-12” range. So would I cut those bc they start that low? Or leave them bc the sites are half way?
So the 2 branches circled on the left, on is to the stalk, on is a branch from the cola next to it. The big on circled has branches starting at 6-7 and sites in the 11-12” range.
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Dealer’s choice, but personally I’d get a laser level or something, point it around the bottom 1/3rd of the majority of the plant (sounds like we’re talking about the lower 6 inches or so) and start removing bud sites at or below the line. Idea being anything below the mark is going to get similar levels of nutrient and energy dedication from the plant, so if it would be not-useful on the taller cola, it will be similarly not-useful on the shorter ones too.
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Yeah I’m just over thinking it lol but I did hear a guy explain it in terms of plants only have so much energy, the same as humans, so the less energy spread out the more it can focus. One more question my good sir, do the amount of stigmas is a bud site determine how big the buds are going to be? Bc I have a few that only have like 4 or 5 vs others that have at least 20.
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Not necessarily. More faster means it’s more likely that bud site will develop quicker, and thus grow larger over the flowering period. However, you may also encounter curious phenotypes that have “waves” of development. By that, I mean you’ll see a bunch of pistils from the original bud sites, and they will seem short lived, almost. They’ll brown and begin to recede and then bam you get a fresh round of new pistils from the same bud site, ultimately increasing the bud size of the site that seemed fairly fixed. I’ve had plants that do two waves (first flip and one additional about 5-6 weeks into flowering), and I’ve had plants that have had as many as four waves - they partly were just genetically prone to foxtailing, so I eventually cut them out of sheer exhaustion waiting for them to finish.
I’m not sure I answered the question very well.
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I definitely understand what you were trying to explain but I’ve noticed just about everything that has to do with marijuana while the answer is simple, you open the door to about 15 more interesting things to learn about thankfully I’m here for the long haul and want to learn every bit I can. I’d love to start breeding at some point, and even have strains I’m interested in trying, and then potentially crossing. But I’m trying not to get too much into that so I can focus on getting the basics down it’s just all so interesting it’s hard not to learn about. Like I haven’t even had a harvest yet and I was wondering if anyone had tried grafting a super cropped limb onto so veg root stalk to help with the rooting process as well as maybe even speed up the reverting. Of course people have done this but when I enjoy something my brain like to push limits. The problem is if I’m not interested i essentially loathe something
Truest story. That’s probably part of what keeps me going. I’ve been at this for about 15 months now and I’m no closer to having it all figured out.
I think grafting would take the same amount of recovery time as just revegging the monster cropped limb (fyi “supercrop” and “monster crop” are two distinct things, while they sound related). I could be wrong. Someone around here just posted their grafted mother plant with 4 strains on her - I don’t recall who. So I know it’s possible, just only plausible in limited circumstances (genetic preservation of strains in limited spaces, for example).
A supercrop, by the way, is just the practice of bruising your stem tissue so badly you can bend the plant at a 90° angle. Often times it’s done in flower to avoid hitting your lights, but isn’t exclusive to flowering. A monster crop is cutting a clone that has begun the flower transition - and is actually a way to improve a strain’s hardiness - at least that’s the theory of some breeders.
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So the thought behind it was that there’s going to be recovery time regardless in terms of roots have to be developed, and the graft taking hold. The question is if those 2 are similar in timing. Bc if so then in theory it would be better to start off with an entire root system vs freshly grown roots? Just bc you can take up more nutrients and not waiting for the plant to root and then grow. But you’d have to have a plant pretty deep into veg to match that branch size right so at that point could you graft a few monster crops onto one well established plant and create an absolute monster? Or would each one be trying to go so hard that it wouldn’t be able to sustain more than 1?
I plan on doing this to my Great White Shark. I heard it also helps with resin production but idk how proven that is other than the fact the right amount of stress period does. The other techniques I’ve been looking into is manifolding and mainlining. So manifolding just looks like topping and LST’ing the two branches that sprout if I’m not mistaken. Mainlining on the other hand isn’t necessarily confusing I’m just not sure what the point is? It says to keep the 1st and 3rd node and trim the second? And then what just let it grow? I be confuzzled my guy.
Mainlines and manifolds are the same thing, I think. Well. Maybe not technically but the point is the same. You start with the main stem, top it - end up with nothing but 2 branches. You split those to opposite sides. Then wait for them to grow out and top each side once more (at least). That way, you have 4 colas on each side - a total of 8 colas where your plant originally would have only had 1 plus the offshoot branches. The purpose of a mainline and a manifold is to break the plant’s apical dominance. It allows the branches you create to be uniform in size and height, so each cola has uniform light exposure and is level with the canopy.
I know @Arrow was the pro - his journal is still here and it’s worth a read. @kaptain3d and @AfgVet are both experienced plant trainers, and can probably describe the difference in technique better than I can. There is also such a thing as “too many” colas - eventually you get diminished returns if you get greedy. I think 6-8 colas is the sweet spot, if I recall correctly.
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Thank you for the explanations as well as more people to learn from! I appreciate everyone who has and will share their knowledge with me greatly! And I hope one day to return the favor or at least pay it forward.
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Good morning @JordabGrows !
@Graysin 's got you very well covered. She’s a trove of knowledge 
One thing I’d like to add is : With these 2 methods (mainlining and manifolding) you want to use HST (High Stress Technique) instead of LST. By supercropping your branches to place them where you want them to go. When you bend them , you’ll feel/hear a small pop/crack. That’s the cambrium (cambria?) breaking. This will open up and “enlarge” the pathway for the nutrients to travel in the branches…
And, if I can help, just tag me. It will be my pleasure to help.
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Ahhhhh I’ve been wondering what technically makes supercropping beneficial other than space management and making knots to help with branch strength.
Well thank you for telling me @Graysin is a she. Pretty sure I’ve already called her my guy like 5 times
Oh most definitely will be. Still gotta try and get through yours and @Arrow threads going 2 years back with 3k-5k comments 
and I haven’t even started on @AfgVet but I can only assume I’m going to be looking at a similar thread there lol
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Well, she’s more than “just” a woman or a man, she’s an amazing grower and a really generous human! 
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Kap summed it up nicely! I’ll tag along and help anywhere I can
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I really dont, have a life outside of this digital space. Im a homebody, and have more digital friends then real life ones. Im highly outspoken. I think I put people off. Ive been told I can be abrasive. My political views make some people nervous also 
I have had a bunch of stuff that I hate doing (anything not related to growing and smoking weed) that I put off till the last minute, and was left no choice but to handle. Then I had to plant new plants and sleep. Im sorry I missed out but am glad the community was here. One if the best parts about this particular forum. @Graysin is a diamond in the ruff and knows a thing or 50 about growin weed, amiright!!! Its funny @JordabGrows I thought graysin was a dude at first too. Does that make us sexist? I hope not…
Needs to be more vocal female growers for sure cuz the godess energy rules the garden. Let’s hear it for @Graysin , Hip Hip hooray! I love how everyone that chimed in is so knowledgeable, truly the best grow forum anywhere. Thanx ILGM for payen the bills and supplying the space for homegrown to continue to be.
So, anything I can answer you didnt get? Seems the community has you covered. I am thinking of doing a mainline on my first photo grow. Good info here, as usual.
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I just say my guy so much it’s like second nature lol but I do wonder every time I post if I’m offending someone but given we’re all stoners I doubt anyone has been, at least I hope not lol
That is a big factual my guy I see her posting on everyone’s stuff, just as I saw you doing lol
I think everyone pretty much got everything I needed in terms of actual help. I am however still interested in the grafting and stuff so if you know any threads that are about grafting that would be awesome!
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That’s just a couple of them… The search option is great when you’re looking for something specific
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If only the real world opperated the same way as this forum does.
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Also just realized why you clarified the difference between super and monster cropping and that was definitely a brain fart when I was typing .
Mushrooms and marijuana. If we could just get everyone on board lol
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