Training new seedlings

[Beaker]

Hi guys,

 

What is the best time to start training your plants ? (keeping in mind that this is from seed and not a clone)

 

This is being done for outdoor stealth, so please feel free to post ideas on that too.

 

Cheers

 

Beaker

[Buddy]

You can keep them short by topping them, thats pulling off one or both of the new growth tips as they start to grow.

This will make the plant short and bushy and give a bigger yeild providing the lower stems receive enought light.

If they start to reach for the sky and become obvious, you can tie them down with some string and a brick

[Luke Skywalker]

Yeah, tipping's good, although you want to remove the smallest amount of the meristem (the very tip stem tissues which are like little leaves folded over each other) to reduce the shock. The more material you remove, the longer it takes to recover. I use curved cuticle scissors to do my tipping, make sure you clean and sterilise before using, and before using on different plants. If you like, you can use a little paintbrush to paint some wettable sulphur dust to prevent infection of the wound, but that's not usually necessary, only really for removing large branches or sealing large wounds. Useful stuff tho.

 

Training can be done from just about any time, but tipping should be left until there are at least 3-4 nodes on the seedlings, as they aren't very strong before this time, and tipping could be a rather shocking experience. If training, don't bend the stem right to the ground, although you can tie them fairly low... just remember that whatever position you put the plants into, they'll spring back and aim their tips to the sun. So you need to keep training to keep branches growing horizontally.

 

As for more specific training ideas, well, you could tip at a young age, then train two main branches out, keeping their tips at the same height if possible, so as to prevent either from dominating growth. Then train these out and away from the plant, and try and get the most light you can to each. You can keep them quite low this way, although you may need to stake the branches up if they go too far away from the main stem and are a heavy yeilder.

 

Anyway, hope that's helped mate, I'll look forward to seeing your ladies grow should you get your hands on a digicam.

[Beaker]

Some very good info there... thanks guys.

 

I will need to find a digi though ... mine is dead ... as soon as I do, you'll see the pics

[dexo]

tieing a plant down is common for the backyard grower. In my younger days, we found that plants tied down with stockings were harder to ripoff than ones tied with rope or fishing line. not attach the ties to bricks, a star picket rammed fully into the ground is better. an indica variety i grew once I had to tie up, not down--but thats a diffrent story

[wassily]

I seen someone use that green garden square mesh, the holes are about 2 inches square. They planted a plant about 1 m high on an angle in the ground so it was almost flat, than they pegged about 2 metres of the mesh over it at a height of about 20 cm. Then they just trained the plant into this massive low screen. It stretched in bloom but it was pretty neat.

V