Every farmer aims to maximize production, and you, a weed grower, is no exception. Nothing makes a grower happier than harvesting frosty nugs. One way to increase your yields is by low-stress training. Low-stress training increases your yield by exposing the bud sites to sunlight. Encouraging horizontal growth, it also makes it easier to grow in spaces where vertical height might be limited. LST is more recommended for auto-flowers since they have little time to heal from high-stress training techniques like topping.
What Is Low-Stress Training
Low-stress training (LST) is a technique used to train cannabis plants to grow horizontally instead of vertically. Horizontal growth enhances the plant’s energy efficiency, resulting in better growth, and improved yields. It also allows the maximization of the growing area hence ensuring maximum harvest of your weed.
When to Start Low-Stress Training
Low-stress training can begin at any time during the vegetative phase. As soon as the plant has developed a few nodes, it will be ready for manipulation. The only time when you shouldn’t low-stress train your plants is during full-flowering. Then, the plant’s stems shall be too grown to bend easily during training, thus can snap— lowering your yield.
Also, at flowering, you want to limit any stress— low or high, since the plant might lose its energy in healing other than production.
Why Low-Stress Training
Since it is a yield-boosting training technique, low-stress training allows you to maximize the output yield while decreasing the vertical space needed to grow your weed. It also controls the stretching of the plant without using much stress. Also, LST allows for better light distribution since the bending breaks apical dominance hence evening the canopy’s height. Therefore, it means that all areas of the weed plant will be exposed to light, creating more bud sites that will translate to larger yields.
Low-Stress Training Techniques
There’s more than one way to smoke your weed as there is more than one method to actualize LST. These techniques are;
The Tie-Down Method
It involves making holes at the edges of your pot and using a flexible string to bend and hold down the plant. Starting with the main branch, bend the branches and hold them to level them with the main cola. If done correctly, this technique can allow your plant to develop multiple bud sites. The tie-down method does not need planning and is thus cheap. It also allows you to move your plant around. However, tying each branch alone can be tedious and time-consuming.
The Screen of Green (SCRoG)
This technique spreads out your weed’s canopy, helping the plant develop more bud sites, hence increasing yields. However, this technique works better with shorter strains of weed.1 plant by the Scrog King! @thescrogking 🧤 #scrog#scrogging#scroglife#growplants 🌱 pic.twitter.com/FFo5HaCSYU
— Spliff Seeds ® (@spliffseeds) December 21, 2018
The Sea of Green (SoG)
It works the same way the SCRoG works but is more useful for weed growers who want to grow more plants with fewer bud sites as opposed to growing fewer plants with more bud sites. It involves planting more plants per square meter of the grow space. The plants create a collective canopy, thus more exposure to the light.
The technique also calls for early flowering. You will induce flowering barely two weeks into the vegging stage. Therefore, your plants will mature faster— unlike other methods that foster lengthy plant growth before initiating flowering.
Since the plants mature faster, growers who use this technique will have more grow cycles than those who employ other low-stress training techniques. However, it is relatively easier to get mold and bugs because the plants are close together.
In Conclusion
Low-stress training is a method that’s widely used in cannabis growing, thanks to its effectiveness in light distribution, space efficiency, and faster growth periods. Though widely used indoors, LST can be useful outdoors— especially in colder climates where light distribution matter most.
