This Grow Guide consists of a comprehensive collection of different techniques that will help you elevate your harvest game.
You've mastered the basic skills of growing weed. With the Advanced Grow Guide, you'll learn techniques on how to get even more out of your harvest: higher yields, faster harvests, and improving the quality of your weed.
This guide is designed as a reference book for anyone who has grown cannabis before and wants to take the art of growing to the next level with special techniques. No growing experience yet? Then read our Grow Guide for Beginners first.
Before you apply the techniques below, you will need to know why you are doing this. Each technique is discussed in more detail here, but the underlying idea is that the final harvest will be more successful, the yield will be higher and the quality of your weed will increase.
Topping is cutting off the tallest shoot on your plant. This breaks the vertical growth direction and forces the plant to grow width wise.
By cutting off the top, you force the plant to grow wider and the side shoots will develop more fully. It also prevents the plant from growing (too) tall. Topping increases the number of buds, resulting in a higher yield.
Fimming is almost the same as topping, with the difference that you cut the top half off. This technique was discovered by accident and stands for: "Fuck, I Missed.", pardon our French. Afterwards, it turned out that the result is almost the same, but the plant experiences less stress. It is also more likely to produce four side branches instead of two as with topping.
By cutting off part of the top, you force the plant to grow wider and the side shoots will develop more fully. It also prevents the plant from growing (too) tall. Fimming increases the number of buds, meaning you will end up with more weed.
Low Stress Training, or LST, is a technique in which you slowly manipulate the branches by bending them and securing them. By doing so, you shift the peak of the plant to the side branches. Instead of a pyramid shape, the plant takes on a wider star-shaped appearance. This allows the leaves to receive more light and the plant to create more growing points. Low Stress Training is an effective, yet simple technique to apply. Moreover, you don't need many tools, which makes it an inexpensive method as well. You can combine this method with 'Topping'.
The ultimate goal of this training technique is to increase the yield of the plant. You can also use LST to shape your plant to fit better in a small growing space. In fact, with this training method, you control the size of the plant. The advantage of using this technique is that the plant is not disturbed while growing because it experiences little to no stress.
ScrOG stands for Screen of Green, which is a training method where you stretch gauze or rope over the plants. This inhibits vertical growth upwards and the plants will grow out wider. This method is slightly more complicated to apply than LST (Low Stress Training), but produces even better results. TIP: Autoflowers are less suitable for ScrOG. Choose feminized seeds instead.
As with many other training methods, the goal is to have your plants produce more buds, which will result in a higher final yield.
As the name might suggest, the Sea of Green method involves placing cannabis plants close together. This is in contrast to the ScrOG technique, where the plants are placed far apart. When you place cannabis plants close together, it looks like a green oasis. This way you can accommodate more plants if you do not have a large growing space.
By placing the plants close together in an indoor space, the growth phase is considerably shortened. The ultimate goal is faster harvests. An additional advantage is that this method allows you to grow all year round.
With the training technique 'Lollipopping', you remove the lower branches and leaves, allowing the plant's energy to be fully concentrated towards the buds. This technique changes the shape of the plant from a pyramid-shape with a bushy bottom, to the shape of a 'lollipop': thin stems at the bottom and beautiful full buds at the top. It is a simple method and causes the plant hardly any stress.
By applying 'lollipopping' you increase the number of buds at the top. Buds that don't get sufficient light won't become as thick. The whole idea behind this rigorous defoliation during the flowering stage is to increase the amount of light reaching the buds. The plant can now focus all its energy and resources on the remaining buds, ultimately resulting in increased yield.
Another additional advantage is that watering the plants becomes easier because there is plenty of room at the bottom of the plant, so you can reach it without any problems. By deforesting at the bottom of the plant, you also improve air circulation.
With 'Super Cropping' you bring your plants to a high stress level ('High Stress Training') which will cause them to develop huge amounts of buds. Hence, the name 'Super Cropping'. But beware, this is a very tricky technique. If you do it wrong, your harvest could be lost. With this training technique, you bend the plants so far (to an angle of 90 degrees) that the branches are damaged internally. The plant then shoots into "survival mode" and begins to repair itself. But if you damage the plant too much, chances are it won't survive. Practice makes perfect!
This training technique will cause the plant to develop multiple full buds. It is a risky method, but when you do it right, you will benefit from true 'Super Crops'.
Cloning your cannabis plant during the flowering phase is called 'Monster Cropping'. When the mother plant has reached the flowering stage, you cut off a number of branches that have buds. TIP: Autoflowers are less suitable for Monster Cropping. Choose feminized seeds instead.
'Monster Cropping' aims to grow multiple plants from the mother plant instead of starting the growing process from seeds.
Manifolding is a combination of several techniques: Topping, Defoliation and Bending & Fixing systematically and consists of several steps. In manifolding, the cannabis stem is split and a Y-shaped hub is created. The result is that nutrients and resources are diverted to several branches rather than just one central cola, resulting in multiple bud sites (mainlining). You only start 'Manifolding' when the plant has five nodes. The advantage of combining these training techniques is that the plant will develop a nice even foliage with fuller buds. You also prevent the plant from growing too wide.
With this technique, you focus on growing bigger buds in order to increase the yield in the flowering phase.
Defoliation, as the name suggests, is the removal of the leaves of your weed plant, but in a systematic way. It is a High Stress Training Technique and is not recommended if you have little growing experience. If you remove too many leaves, the plant can be damaged and may not survive. Defoliation should not be confused with ‘Lollipopping’. In this technique you only focus on the lower branches and leaves, while with Defoliation you cut away the leaves evenly all over the plant.
By removing the leaves from your plant, you improve light and air circulation, which will result in better growth and ultimately a higher yield.
As the name suggests, this training technique has to do with the light cycle. By adjusting it to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness, you speed up the growth process and therefore can harvest faster. DISCLAIMER While we want to be as complete as possible in this Grow Guide, we do not advise applying this technique to your weed plants. ‘12/12 from seed’ will often cause stunted plant growth and minimal yields, often less than 30 grams (1 ounce), even if you use very strong grow lights. If you want a quicker grow indoors, we would recommend growing autoflower seeds instead. You will have a shorter vegetative and flowering stage than with most photoperiod seeds, without a huge compromise on yield.
The purpose of this method is to accelerate the moment of harvesting rather than to achieve large yields. This method is only suitable for indoor growing because of the use of lamps. The advantage, however, is that you can grow in this way all year round.
