Anthropolis
Canna Jedi in training.
Hello again friends, this thread will serve to document the process and results of my crazy/whacky/stupid supercropping experiment, along with tying down the resulting larger branches, and how I modded my fabric pots (smart pots) to do so.
For starters, why do this? I don't know, just for the sake of trying something lol. Thomas Edison supposedly said in regards to his many failed light bulb experiments before getting it right, "I have not failed. I have successfully found 1000 ways not to make a light bulb."
The strain is autoflowering Smurfberry x White Russian, 4 plant experiment, with 3 non cropped control plants. The control plants will be finished soon, while these 4 were massively delayed by this. Soil is organic, nothing magical, just my own mix in progress of getting right.
About four weeks ago, I noticed that I had two phenotypes among 7 plants: 3 faster with more sativa like leaves and little branching, and 4 were developing slower with fatter Indy/Rudy leaves and shorter/fatter with more branching. I picked the slow Indy leaning ones for a further experiment on making them more bushy or getting more colas. I ruled out fim'ing and topping because I just think it's too traumatic for these particular autos. So I went with the node pinching supercropping concept. I have no idea what I'm doing and probably did it all wrong lol. On each of the 4 plants, I used my index finger and thumb, and pinched the main stem directly and only at each and every node. Later on I read that not every node should be pinched, or some say that it should be pinched between the nodes not at the nodes lol. Whatever, it was done by then.
Few weeks later, they are looking great! It must have worked fairly well, because it stopped growing upward very much but the side branches shot outward faster than anything I've ever seen grow!! The big mega ultra super downside of this is that it had completely halted the flowering growth. They were in very early flower when I pinched them, and they should have some beautiful flowers by now like the other 3 do. Only just now today did I notice that flowering growth had resumed. So it has delayed them over a month. Unfortunately for all of us, they may hit senescence (natural death from old age) before they really get great buds.
The only good news is that they appear extremely healthy and show no signs of aging or being anywhere near senescence. This is unlike the sisters who've been in flower and are now consuming fan leaves, have milky trichomes, and are starting to show signs of aging and signs of heading towards senescence. Strange indeed....
It's almost as if everything was just completely halted except for the side branch growth. Now it looks as if they are back on course. Flowers are starting to grow nicely, ect. Perfect time to try to train it some more right??!! Lol!!
So now I'm going to take the improved side branches and tie them down for a little bit so that perhaps they each have a better shot at some light equally. That's the theory at least. I tied one a few days ago just to see how it responds, and to make sure that it's not tearing a hole in the time-space continuum lmao! The plant did just fine, and as expected, the buds are now facing up towards the light
Ok here we go! Peekture times! I sincerely apologize in advance for the cell phone camera pics and the clicky thumbnails, I just didn't want to fight with image hosting at the moment.
Here's the intro shot, the 3 on the left are the skinny sativa leaning ones, which look crappy due to a million reasons lol. They're basically a stick with a few buds along them lol. (oh, there's a White Widow auto back there, I didn't touch it. It's just doing whatever it's going to do. It's the one with its leaves raised up like a happy child haha The 4 on the right are bushier as you can see, and one was tied a few days ago as mentioned. Now the other three will be tied.
View attachment 376560
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Here's the one tied a few days ago, see the happy bud sites are now facing skyward, even more so than before actually :
----
Here's our next victim lol. I removed them from the tent and put on a tall box so I can sit on a chair and work with them at eye level:
----
Now for modding the fabric pots, I spent days thinking of ways to do this that would be semi permanent but very adjustable and yet removable. I knew that I wanted to use my soft cotton twine on the plant side. At first I thought of getting some nice wire and weaving some wire around the edges of the pots, like baseball glove stitching kinda. This would be semi permanent and allow infinite possibilities for places to tie branches to. If I were going to continue training plants with fabric pots, I would do this. For now, I decided on zip ties just where I needed them, and tying the twine to the zip ties.
So I made a tiny hole with one scissor blade (anything would work, just be easy with it) and about a half inch to an inch down from the edge. Then I put the zip tie in and zipped it so the excess is down the outside for easy removal. As such:
---
In thinking that this would be the least stressful, I draped the twine over both sides of the branch thus pulling it down uniformly, instead of just tying one end right to the branch:
And then through the zip tie, then pulled and tied in a bow for easy later adjustment. Halfway through the bow knot, you'll be able to pull the branch down carefully by tightening the first knot half. Don't get to crazy here on the pulling, I did crack a couple branches partly away from the main stalk
perhaps they will heal and still be viable, or perhaps not. I'm not losing sleep over it lol.
---
Then I just continued around the plant as needed, but as a safety measure, I went crisscross such that I would do the matching branch on the other side of the node next before going on to the next node. I could imagine that plant all lopsided if I just tied all of one side down then the other lol.
Once ya get the rhythm of it, it goes pretty quickly. First half of the bow knot where it can be tighten to bring the branch down:
---
More:
---
Annnnnd done! How much needs tying and how much modding to the pot just depends on how much and what shape of the plant. On two of them, I did not tie the top two shoots as they were not mature enough and looked like they will have no trouble with light.
Happy time!
As you can see, there is really not a lot of competition in the tent right now and soon to be even less lol, so perhaps the whole thing is a dumb idea but hey, I'm having fun
Problems: I can tell ya already that this was not the right strain to try this with. I don't know what is, maybe some of the XXL's or something idk. Furthermore it completely halted flowering which was just beginning. This delay will probably cost me a great deal of yield and/or quality. I broke a couple branches, a hairline fracture where they meet the stalk, this could cost anything from those branches.
Potential benefits: in a perfect world, those new modified branches should make nice beautiful flowers of about equal maturity and about equal access to light. In some photosensitive strains, this could improve yields theoretically, depending on light amount and original direction. This may not, and most say will not, apply to autos for several reasons including the shorter and set lifespan.
What now? The three unmolested lol Smurfberry and the WW will be finishing up in the next couple weeks, despite crappy yield sizes, they're cloudy and headed to amber soon. The experiment will continue and we will see what the modified plants do! Whatever they do, they do. I'll be documenting here and posting pictures, so please stay tuned My hope, although the chances are slim, is that the plants keep on going well and make us some purdy colas.
Now if you'll excuse me for a moment, it's nightly medicine time
For starters, why do this? I don't know, just for the sake of trying something lol. Thomas Edison supposedly said in regards to his many failed light bulb experiments before getting it right, "I have not failed. I have successfully found 1000 ways not to make a light bulb."
The strain is autoflowering Smurfberry x White Russian, 4 plant experiment, with 3 non cropped control plants. The control plants will be finished soon, while these 4 were massively delayed by this. Soil is organic, nothing magical, just my own mix in progress of getting right.
About four weeks ago, I noticed that I had two phenotypes among 7 plants: 3 faster with more sativa like leaves and little branching, and 4 were developing slower with fatter Indy/Rudy leaves and shorter/fatter with more branching. I picked the slow Indy leaning ones for a further experiment on making them more bushy or getting more colas. I ruled out fim'ing and topping because I just think it's too traumatic for these particular autos. So I went with the node pinching supercropping concept. I have no idea what I'm doing and probably did it all wrong lol. On each of the 4 plants, I used my index finger and thumb, and pinched the main stem directly and only at each and every node. Later on I read that not every node should be pinched, or some say that it should be pinched between the nodes not at the nodes lol. Whatever, it was done by then.
Few weeks later, they are looking great! It must have worked fairly well, because it stopped growing upward very much but the side branches shot outward faster than anything I've ever seen grow!! The big mega ultra super downside of this is that it had completely halted the flowering growth. They were in very early flower when I pinched them, and they should have some beautiful flowers by now like the other 3 do. Only just now today did I notice that flowering growth had resumed. So it has delayed them over a month. Unfortunately for all of us, they may hit senescence (natural death from old age) before they really get great buds.
The only good news is that they appear extremely healthy and show no signs of aging or being anywhere near senescence. This is unlike the sisters who've been in flower and are now consuming fan leaves, have milky trichomes, and are starting to show signs of aging and signs of heading towards senescence. Strange indeed....
It's almost as if everything was just completely halted except for the side branch growth. Now it looks as if they are back on course. Flowers are starting to grow nicely, ect. Perfect time to try to train it some more right??!! Lol!!
So now I'm going to take the improved side branches and tie them down for a little bit so that perhaps they each have a better shot at some light equally. That's the theory at least. I tied one a few days ago just to see how it responds, and to make sure that it's not tearing a hole in the time-space continuum lmao! The plant did just fine, and as expected, the buds are now facing up towards the light
Ok here we go! Peekture times! I sincerely apologize in advance for the cell phone camera pics and the clicky thumbnails, I just didn't want to fight with image hosting at the moment.
Here's the intro shot, the 3 on the left are the skinny sativa leaning ones, which look crappy due to a million reasons lol. They're basically a stick with a few buds along them lol. (oh, there's a White Widow auto back there, I didn't touch it. It's just doing whatever it's going to do. It's the one with its leaves raised up like a happy child haha
The 4 on the right are bushier as you can see, and one was tied a few days ago as mentioned. Now the other three will be tied. View attachment 376560
----
Here's the one tied a few days ago, see the happy bud sites are now facing skyward, even more so than before actually :
----
Here's our next victim lol. I removed them from the tent and put on a tall box so I can sit on a chair and work with them at eye level:
----
Now for modding the fabric pots, I spent days thinking of ways to do this that would be semi permanent but very adjustable and yet removable. I knew that I wanted to use my soft cotton twine on the plant side. At first I thought of getting some nice wire and weaving some wire around the edges of the pots, like baseball glove stitching kinda. This would be semi permanent and allow infinite possibilities for places to tie branches to. If I were going to continue training plants with fabric pots, I would do this. For now, I decided on zip ties just where I needed them, and tying the twine to the zip ties.
So I made a tiny hole with one scissor blade (anything would work, just be easy with it) and about a half inch to an inch down from the edge. Then I put the zip tie in and zipped it so the excess is down the outside for easy removal. As such:
---
In thinking that this would be the least stressful, I draped the twine over both sides of the branch thus pulling it down uniformly, instead of just tying one end right to the branch:
And then through the zip tie, then pulled and tied in a bow for easy later adjustment. Halfway through the bow knot, you'll be able to pull the branch down carefully by tightening the first knot half. Don't get to crazy here on the pulling, I did crack a couple branches partly away from the main stalk
perhaps they will heal and still be viable, or perhaps not. I'm not losing sleep over it lol. ---
Then I just continued around the plant as needed, but as a safety measure, I went crisscross such that I would do the matching branch on the other side of the node next before going on to the next node. I could imagine that plant all lopsided if I just tied all of one side down then the other lol.
Once ya get the rhythm of it, it goes pretty quickly. First half of the bow knot where it can be tighten to bring the branch down:
---
More:
---
Annnnnd done! How much needs tying and how much modding to the pot just depends on how much and what shape of the plant. On two of them, I did not tie the top two shoots as they were not mature enough and looked like they will have no trouble with light.
Happy time!
As you can see, there is really not a lot of competition in the tent right now and soon to be even less lol, so perhaps the whole thing is a dumb idea but hey, I'm having fun
Problems: I can tell ya already that this was not the right strain to try this with. I don't know what is, maybe some of the XXL's or something idk. Furthermore it completely halted flowering which was just beginning. This delay will probably cost me a great deal of yield and/or quality. I broke a couple branches, a hairline fracture where they meet the stalk, this could cost anything from those branches.
Potential benefits: in a perfect world, those new modified branches should make nice beautiful flowers of about equal maturity and about equal access to light. In some photosensitive strains, this could improve yields theoretically, depending on light amount and original direction. This may not, and most say will not, apply to autos for several reasons including the shorter and set lifespan.
What now? The three unmolested lol Smurfberry and the WW will be finishing up in the next couple weeks, despite crappy yield sizes, they're cloudy and headed to amber soon. The experiment will continue and we will see what the modified plants do! Whatever they do, they do. I'll be documenting here and posting pictures, so please stay tuned
My hope, although the chances are slim, is that the plants keep on going well and make us some purdy colas. Now if you'll excuse me for a moment, it's nightly medicine time
