Low Stress Training

[Reverend]

 

 

Light Brown : Pot Outline

Green thick Lines : Main Stem

Small Thin Lines with Green Balls on top : Fan leafs

Yellow Lines : Side Branches

Red : Tiedown Metal Hooks (or thread whichever item you use, i use Hooks its easier)

 

STEP 1 : Grow your plant from Seed or Clone to 3 or 4 leaf sets, some use 5 but i always use 3 because after 3rd leaf set the main stem starts to harden and it will be harder to bend over your plant properly without breaking the main stem.

 

STEP 2 : Using a metal hook (i cut small sections of cloths hanger and bend a U shape at the end as a hook) bend over your plant with metal hook at the last internode (space between the last set of fanleafs and the next to last) and stick the metal hook into your dirt to hold down the stem.

 

STEP 3 : This is really not a step, just waiting time... Take note of how the top of the plant that was bent down will bend back upwards towards the light, this could take anywhere from 3 hours to 1 day. Under my 1000 Watt Metal Halide light it does it in under 3 hours.

 

STEP 4 : Veg and dont tie down until you have a new leaf set. You will notice Side branching has started already because good light is getting to the main stem areas next to each fanleaf stem intersection with the main stem.

 

STEP 5 : Depending on your starting pot size you may have to transplant. If you started out with a large pot, repeat step 2 over and over again holding the main stem down with hooks until you reach the end of the pot. In this illustration to save time and drawings, i started out with a small pot and it reached the end of the pot after the first tiedown. I repotted it into a 10 inch pot which will be my final pot size for this plant in order for me to continue the LST Bends around the inside edge of the pot.

 

STEP 6 : Now that your new leaf set has formed you have enough length in growth since the first bend(s) to allow you to start bending the stem horizontally around the inside edge of the pot. Use metal hooks again to keep this bend in place. Side branches should be coming along very nicely.

 

STEP 7 : Continue repeating steps 4 and 6, allowing the plant to grow and then keep tieing it down along the inside edge of pot using metal hooks (or whatever your using) Side branches should be forming and growing up towards the light.

 

STEP 8 : Continue to repeat step 7 until you are all the way around the pot... when you reach the point where your plant first met the edge of the plant Top the plant (cut off the very top of the plant ) and hold it down horizontally with a metal hook.... During all this time of repeating step 7 you should also be tieing down horizontally the new branches that have formed from the main stem as much as possible until you use up as much space as possible inside the pot as well , the outter branches growing over the outside edge of the pot you can hold down as well with string to keep those tops even with the inner branches.

 

STEP 9 : After you have used up all possible space inside the pot (or your eggcrate) its time to just let it flower.. This is a side view of how it will and should look by that time with all the side branches growing upwards towards the light.... these will all become Collas unlike a non LST plant will only have one colla.

 

During flowering and even before due to lack of light on the main stem fan leafs which is all the way to the bottom almost against the soil those fanleafs will die off anyways, i usually cut these off the main stem right after the branch has grown out in that area, keeps things neat down below where you will need good airflow during flowering.. so go ahead and take off any fanleafs coming off the main stem that is going around the inside edge of the pot.

 

Set your timer to 12/12 and watch it bloom

 

There is no Step 10 in the picture but we all know what that is HARVEST!!!

[nouseforaname]

hey gills,

 

Heres a few pics of what i call low stress training.. that design above could be done thru light positioning which i will try to get to in a few weeks.. Hope you can make sense of it if not ask, will try get the video aswell at some stage.. The idea is to grab then stem you are working on between the thumb and index finger right hand above and left hand below a node along the stem.. then gently working opposite directions you twist the stem and it weakens then breaks the outer fibre on the stem(like rolling a fan leaf stem between thumb and index finger that swinging twisting motion is what you are looking for... After 10-15 seconds of working side to side you can twist one way continuously till it wont go no more.. Work back the other way if needed but plant should be limp... Thus allowing the lower branchs to catch up and slowing the upward growth of your plants...

 

It took less than thirty seconds to turn the plant from standing tall to limp stage in third pic.. Its your choice whether you want to lst the plant then screen tie down or just whenever you see something too tall just twist it till it bends back to normal canopy height...

[Stoney]

hmmmm good idea there cloner

 

im more of pinch and bend and tie down with string man myself but will be giving this method a try maybe tonight on these malawi golds i got happening

 

cheerz

[Reverend]

Cheers cloner, understood perfectly.

[loylty gets u nothing]

more like supercropping that technique isnt it cloner?

thanks for sharing

bil

[nouseforaname]

hey,

stoney yer each to their own but only problem with tieing down is when the plant eats the string.. Back in the day all this was just thinkin in the plants best interests of low stress so pinching or snapping was wrong... but only to the way we were thinkin at the time..

billo by supercropping do you mean like fim ? if so nah because all im doing is breaking the stem's fibre wall the twist is just something i found along the way mainly for looks and to keep me interested .. great for making the taller shoots limp.. then can tie down if needed.. Im not actually removing any nodes or anything just spinning the stem...

[nouseforaname]

hey,

Just a dodgy edit in paint but should be able to see why id use light manipulation to achieve results in first pic.. so the plant grows to where u need not being tied there... so less stress

[Pam]

Nice work on those pix Gil! And thanx Cloner, good idea! I may just do this to a few and then kink others to see which works best for me.

[loylty gets u nothing]

no not fiming cloner

i do the same tech u use

it basically assists in the lower nodes

catching up with the top node

i like to do it threw out vege

thanks for sharing man

bill

 

gotta go but ill get some pics later

[Reverend]

can't take credit, I did steal it.