Thank you for your help. What's LST? Your is humongous. Correct me if I'm wrong ok. Next season let the plants grow taller before blooming them right?
LST .. low stress training. There are actually different ways to low stress train but many people do not consider them to still be low stress training, even though they are.
Part III - Low Stress Training
It is easy to get confused about low stress training when you are first exploring cannabis training. This is because the acronym for low stress training (LST) also happens to be the name coined for a particular type of low stress training. No one is quite sure of the source, but many attribute it back to Delta or myMUSICveins (thanks greenisgold) for popularizing the name and the technique.
There are two main types of low stress training:
1) The tie-down method
2) Screen of Green (ScrOG)
Low stress training does not require any mutilation or damage to the plant which, for some, is the sole reason to use it above high stress training methods. Low stress training is done by tricking the plant into thinking the apical tips are no longer able to be the apical tips. In nature, if a branch gets blocked by another branch, or a large leaf from another tree, the plant will do it's best to navigate the growing tip so that it can continue growing upwards.
If, however, the plant cannot easily find a way to make that growing tip go back towards the light, the level of auxins will shift, and the lower sites will be called upon to try and stretch up to become the next apical tip.
This process can be repeated over, and over again in our controlled, indoor environments: apical tip grows up, apical tip trained down, other tips grow up, other tips tied down, more tips up, and so on.
Now, let's look at the two approaches to low stress training.
First we'll explore the tie-down method that is also just known as LST. There are a couple different approaches to LST.
a) Constantly training a single apical tip
b) Training every apical tip
The first approach involves constantly training, and untraining, the main apical tip so as to utilize as much of the growing pot as possible. TillthedayiDIE420 from rollitup has a great image detailing this method:
In the image, the 1st large number represents the week. The second large number represents the size of the pot in inches. Although it does not need to be followed exactly, the idea is there.
The second approach to LST is simple: train every apical tip down until you are happy with the bush you have.
There are many different ways to attach the training to the pot and the plant. In addition, there are many materials that you can use to apply the training.
I prefer using clipped pieces of shielded copper wiring. This reduces the amount of time you have to fuss with knots and the pieces are easily reusable.
For attaching, you can attach the tip to the base of the stem to begin with. From there, you can either put holes in your containers, or tie some rubberbands around the outside and pull the training medium down to them. They just snap in place. Very handy and easy, though the rubberbands have to be replaced:
Now that we've gone over LST, we can look at the Screen Of Green method.
The ScrOG method is almost identical to the LST method. Instead of using string or wire, a screen is fastened to the pot, buried along the edges of the pot and stretched up across the plant, or built separately from the plant. Once the plant has reached suitable height, training can begin. Once the screen is above the plant and the apical tip is long enough, it is bent down and pushed beneath the screen. This will cause the tip to grow horizontally. In addition, it will promote new tips further down the stem. These tips can then be trained downwards for horizontal growth, or trained to grow upwards in the hole of your choosing after some horizontal growth.
Eventually, the main tip will find it's way to a hole in the screen and start to grow up again. Depending on the size of your screen, you can push it back down and under to promote more growth further down the stem, or allow it to continue upwards with the new tips that you have created.
ScrOGs can be done for single plants, 2-3 plants or multiple plants in a SoG-style setup.
Once you have a nice screen of tips, or a jungle of trainings from string/wiring, you can send the plant into flower and watch the magic happen.
Now that we've looked at the different types of LST, let's look at the pros and cons of each.
LST (Tie-down method)
-Pros
Requires very little materials
Can be moved from pot to pot relatively easily
Easy
-Cons
Time consuming (especially if using string)
Materials may be harder to reuse
Harder for larger applications
Screen Of Green (ScrOG)
-Pros
Easy to train once setup
Screens can be easily reused
Can be done for large applications w/out requiring much time
Cool as hell to look at
Easy to harvest
-Cons
Requires setup
Hard to transport or move from pot to pot
Requires a bit more learning
Requires planning ahead of time for best results
Since both methods are so similar, it really ends up coming down to a matter of style and preference more than anything. Both produce excellent results and can greatly increase your harvest. This is especially true for micro-growers where every bud-site counts.
Speaking of every bud-site counting, we're going to explore the last bit of "training" for this guide. I put quotations because, well, it's not really a type of "training" at all. Follow along and you'll see what I'm talking about.
and thay fucking "EXPLODED" during the 5th 6th and 7th week there small in this early pic
