Unlike other crops that you can simply put in soil, water, and watch blossom, cannabis plants need a little more care to give you the high yields every grower dreams of harvesting. Training your cannabis plant is essential in your pursuits for branch-burdening yields.
There are several ways of training weed to ensure maximum yield. These include Low-Stress training and high-stress training techniques. Like the names suggest, the amount of stress administered to the plant differs. With practice, you can perfect either of the methods for a thriving weed plant and ultimately a happy grower. When it comes to super cropping, all you need is a safe pair of hands, duct tape, and strings.
What is Super Cropping?
Super Cropping is a high-stress training technique that involves bending the plant to damage the plant tissues purposely. Super cropping works by stressing the plant enough to hasten growth and spur bud production.
Unlike other training techniques like topping that involves cutting out a part of the plant, super cropping involves damaging only the inner tissues, leaving the outer part intact. Still, if you happen to injure the outside part, you can tie duct tape around it until the plant heals and the bent part hardens into a knot.
The more that hurt, the more the stress and the better the results. Super cropping feels like flogging your favorite child for flouting house rules—except this girl has flouted no rule, but you’re stressing her to grow into a high-yielding bride.
How Super Cropping Works
Cannabis plants produce the highly-sought THC, not as the valuable produce it is to humans but as a defense mechanism. Herbivores in the wild are likely to chew up the leaves and the buds before the plant produces its seeds. To keep the predators away, the plant produces THC, which tastes bad, and when eaten, produces psychotic effects.
And it works. No animal wants to get high!
When stressed, the marijuana plant will hasten its growth and produce more buds in a paranoid attempt to leave the seeds for posterity before the enemy eats it whole. Super cropping is a superb way to initiate this heightened feeling of insecurity that makes the plan grow faster and yield more.
When to Super Crop Your Cannabis Plants
Unlike most training techniques, super cropping requires patience. You will have to wait until the weed plant grows and reaches a height of at least 30cm. This should be approximately three to four weeks of vegetative growth and before blooming since weed plants undergo hormonal changes as they transition, making super cropping riskier.
Once the plant begins to bloom, the shoots are usually not bendy enough and thus easily snap. The plant’s focus also shifts from growth to flower production, making late super cropping hazardous to your plants.
Why Super Cropping?
Super cropping improves the volume and quantity of your yield. The stress super cropping causes the plant scares it, forcing it to produce more THC to ward off the ‘predator’. Funny, the THC that scares the predators of the wild makes weed prey to humans.
Super Cropping Main Stem of Cannabis Plants https://t.co/ibdbv9jPV2 pic.twitter.com/lE3BnrtsKx
— GrowingMarijuanaTips (@GlobalGrower) A
The THC production burst aside, super cropping fosters horizontal growth, giving your plant better exposure to light— an essential growth factor.
Super cropping is relatively easy to perform since you do not need a lot of tools. You’ll mostly need your forefinger, thumb, and strings. In case you slightly hurt the outer layer, you’ll need duct tape to hold it into place as it heals.
When your weed plants are growing too tall for their space, super cropping can reduce apical dominance and maximize space efficiency.
Disadvantages of Super Cropping
Though an effective, high-yielding technique, super cropping can hurt your plants and minimize your yield. Here are some risks associated with super cropping;
Possible infections— Super cropping makes your plants more susceptible to infections. When you crush the plant’s core, it emits fluids which attract flies and insects that might infect the plant.
It is not suitable for unhealthy plants— Super cropping is highly stressful, and if you attempt it on plants with weaker immune systems, they might not heal in time for proper bud production.
Not good for autos— Autoflowering strains don’t allow you the convenience of flowering them when you want. They also take a shorter time to mature. Autos don’t have the time to heal from the stress. Super cropping will interfere with their bud production, giving you small yields.
In Conclusion
Super cropping is a clever way to spur the growth of your plant and improve your yields. When done right, the bent parts heal into hard knots that support the bulging buds. However, if you’ve never grown weed before, it might be tough vetting the health of your plants for the procedure.
