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GrowFAQ : Vegetative growth :
Training/Pruning

How do I prune and start supercropping ?

Added by:
10k  Last edited by:
~shabang~  Viewed: 598 times

Rated by 41 users:
9.37/10

Contributed by: Crazy composer

How I like to prune...

This
branch's top is less than half the way to the top, so
it's useless to me.
First, I like to start at the
bottom of the plant. I make sure that there's nothing to
stop airflow under the plant. Air flow is extremely
important in getting healthy plants with good yields. As
the leaves use up the CO2 and produce O2, small pockets
of useless O2 are collecting under the leaves. If your
garden has good circulation, this won't be a problem,
the air is constantly moving throughout the entire
surface of every leaf, however gently. So, I start by
cleaning up useless leaves and branches that are at the
bottom four to five inches of the plant. NO GREEN will
exist here except for the branches themselves.

Snip the bastard right off!

I
am not very conservative in my pruning. I will attack a
healthy plant just as it shows first signs of flowering.
This is also the last time I prune any branches. I know
at this point how much taller they will get, and I am
trying to keep them at a certain height and a certain
thickness.

This is a better scene,
but...

I
will go on to make sure that none of those tiny branches
starting at the bottom of the plant remain. NO GREEN!

This is also when I attack the
leaves...

All
I am interested in at this point (first signs of
flowers) is exposing as many bud sites as possible here
in the first stages of flowering. This exposure to the
light source early on will establish many more prominent
bud sites than just letting the plant overgrow itself.
Carefully look at the plant from the top, where the
light comes from, and look for bud sites that are not
exposed to your line-of-sight because of a leaf. Take
that leaf off.

All this vegetation will return soon, don't
worry about that.

Can
you see what was stuck in the shadow of the leaf in the
above picture? Not any more! Notice the lighter shade of
green the shaded leaves and bud site have. That's from
lack of direct light. This should darken up and fatten
up now that it has access to more light.

This is an example...

of
what happens when you prune branches for the effect of
making your plant bushier. Notice I sniped the center
branch about a week ago. Back then, those two side
branches were just barely visible tufts of green, not
yet leaves or branches. Now they're doing exactly what I
had pruned for, to produce two branches at the same top
level where before there was only one. Access to the
greatest amount of light by the greatest amount of
branches, and therefore bud sites, is a way to ensure
heafty harvests in healthy plants.

I supercrop to increase
yields

I
have supercropped before and have recently come to the
personal conclusion that it does really work. My largest
and most developed colas last crop were on supercropped
branches. Just take a tender branch in your fingers and
pinch and twist at the same time until you feel the
insides start to collapse under the pressure of your
fingers. The branch might droop slightly, but this is
what you want. You're actually damaging the insides of
the branch. We are trying to damage the vascular (water
and nutrient carrying "veins") tissues so that they
double in size after a week or so of healing themselves.
As in human muscle, we must slightly damage our muscle
tissue (by exercise) before it heals, larger and better
able to move fluids to and from places in the body that
need them. So by supercropping, you're creating body
builder Pot plants!

This is the flowering...

area
after pruning leaves, branches and supercropping. I
didn't take a picture before, but if I had, you'd see
that they used to be very very cluttered with light
blocking leaves and useless bottom branches which never
catch up to the producing branches, and actually cause a
drain on resources more than anything. In a week these
will be covered in young but well-lit bud sites. The
front half of these girls are Yankee Platinum clones the
back are NL.

To help increase yield...

and
to decrease overall height of the plant, I top (snip the
main growth shoot) when the plant has four to five sets
of leaves. This is at the fourth set. This action will
cause your plant to react by extending those tiny green
tufts of green on the side of the stem into full-blown
branches.

Proof that it works...

This is what happens after about 5
days to a week after topping. You can see the great
increase of side shoots. These will, with some training
and future pruning, all compete for light at the top of
the plant, instead of being relegated to the middle or
bottom of the plant, shadowed by the main cola that you
didn't snip when you had the chance to do
so.

Last modified: 12:11 - Jul 20,
2002

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