Increase Your Yield and Maximize Your Plant Count
Bad stress in flowering can stem from many sources: overwatering, underwatering, pests, topping, light leaks, and late transplanting.
- Don’t transplant once you start flowering, your plants should live out the rest of their lives in the container they are in on Day 1 of flower.
- Pests can cause a plant to quit focusing on production and finish early due to the plant’s belief that it is in danger.
- Light leaks into your dark cycle during flowering will cause a plant to become confused about the season that it is in and that is the absolute biggest culprit for a female plant to produce seeds.
- It will, in a last-ditch effort to survive, produce seeds and drop them to try and further its lineage throughout what the plant will consider, an apocalyptic solar phenomenon.
- Light leaks are complex and I will go into more detail in the future.
Stress is a part of life, but when harnessed can maximize your yield and plant health, if introduced correctly.
Patrick Waibel | GamebredGenetics
Low-Stress Training
It’s important not to break branches or top your plants once your plants start flowering. This can cause stress that leads to seeds or overall low yields on the branch that becomes damaged.
It is a great practice, however, to low stress your branches underneath trellis nets. Trellis nets have more benefits than just plant and branch support, they can also keep an even canopy if used correctly and allow for even light distribution to each of your buds and they can keep your canopy low and away from your lights which will keep your plants from burning or becoming completely unruly. This method can mimic the benefits of topping your plant in the vegetative state because it can promote more of your branches to grow up from the bottoms of your plant to become more top bud sites.
Evening out your canopy can also keep plants from shading each other and diminishing production. Plants undergo a stretching period in the first few weeks of flowering where it is not uncommon for them to increase their size anywhere from two to ten times. This is the optimal period where low-stress training can be maximized.
Gently bend your growing branches underneath the trellis net every couple of days in outward directions and your plant will respond by sending each bud site upwards in search of light. In this way, you will go from having main bud sites and a full stem of lower bud sites, to having most of your bud sites become main ones, increasing yield and bud consistency.
Patrick Waibel | GamebredGenetics
Tricking Your Plant Into Resin Production
The trichome production on your plants increases potency, but in nature, it has the added advantage of turning your plant into a sticky trap for pests. Whereas a real pest invasion will create plant health issues, a simulation of a plant infestation will trick your plants into producing resin in order to fend off the imaginary pests without the negative side effects.
The ingredient in some of my favorite resin boosters is Chitosan, which is the jawbones of certain insects, which mimic a pest invasion without damaging your plants. The completely organic and powdered version, which is appealing to a lot of growers, is Insect Frass.
Resin producers are an additive that blends seamlessly into any growing style and nutrient line, there are liquid, organic, hydroponic, and soil applications and if you haven’t tried it, it’s a fun one to use to level up your growing game. We have them at the shop and encourage you to come in and do a side-by-side on your next grow.
Colder Climate Means Denser Buds
Plants, not unlike people, don’t care for the cold. Plants are green only because they are supposed to be, it is the exact color they need to be to attract exactly enough light and heat from their position on the earth relative to the sun. If they were any farther away they would be darker to attract more heat, any closer and they would be white to repel excess light (sun bleaching).
The strains of cannabis that are from the Kush Mountain Region which makes up most of the Indica lineage, tend towards dense and purple buds for that very reason. These strains have acclimated to colder environments and have a gene that can turn purple when triggered so that in nature they were able to stay warm.
Bud density is a product of genetics, but also something that can be harnessed by the environment, or added to your nutrient regimen. The tighter formation of buds is simply the plant’s attempt to maintain its own heat by bundling up. Genetics from plants that are acclimated to colder regions can give newer strains the ability to be dense without much effort on your part, but cooler nighttime temperatures can turn your plants purple and make your buds dense.
There are products on the market that are high in Phosphorus and Potassium that can make your buds dense even with heat in your environment. These are commonly called Bloom Boosters and can make a huge difference in appearance and overall plant health.
Stress is great, in the right applications. It can make plants stronger, bigger, prettier, and more potent. It is all just a matter of harnessing it correctly and understanding what is helpful and what is damaging. You can do none of these things and still pull down a successful harvest.
I do know firsthand though, that improving and experimenting is part of the fun, so if you haven’t tried some of these methods just know that they are out there and that they are worth exploring!
Happy Growing Everyone. Congratulations on your outdoor crops if you are partaking this season!
Come see us at our 2021 CroptoberFest Event at the shop and see all your favorite local vendors, live music, and some of the best names in nutrients.
Olivia Sobelman has been a cannabis grower for 10 years and was part of a team that won the US Cannabis Cup Awards three times. Sobelman and her husband, Tyler, own and operate The Grow Depot Hydroponics Store in Mid-Missouri. Fast becoming “The Plant Doctors,” The Sobelmans’ mission to educate and destigmatize cannabis is at the root of their business. Grow depot offers access to free consultations for patients and growers, both in-person and by phone, to diagnose and mend many issues in the garden. Visit Grow Depot for grower tutorials, past articles, and to learn more about the services they offer and their contributions to the cannabis community.
https://www.patientsmagazine.com/2021/09/05/cultivation-corner-with-olivia-sobelman-good-stress-in-early-stages/
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