Snapping Stems WORKS!!!

My buddy has a rather large plant, and when moving it around to water it ect., he broke a few stems . This happened around the second week of flower. He didnt think anything of it and thought they would repair themselves. They ended healing in an L shape with nodule where the snap was, in the bend of the L. Well, they are about 6 weeks into flower, and the places where the snap occured has explosive bud growth. Its like the areas below the snap and the main bud above the snap just blew up . The buds are rounder and fatter than the other buds in the same place on the plant, and below the snap the buds are more abundant. Since he stumbled onto this he snapped a bunch of his other plants that are about two weeks into flower. He broke them on nodes right where the budsites are. I will let you know how this turns out.

I use a similar method with selected strains Headees.... I call it supercropping. Basically, I'll pinch the major colas at strategic points in mid-to-late bloom... sometimes even tying said cola back until the stem has been trained to the desired stature. It has a very positive effect on the entire plant, including the main colas that had been pinned back... thicker, heavier and seemingly more lush. Some folk like to perform the 'supercrop' during the vegetation stage, as it keeps some of the larger sativas fairly managable for the smaller indoor farmer.

Is this better to do in mids or late flower?Do you find that the pinched areas become more trich coated?

sure does work , thats how i grow these babes , you can do the process right the way through veg , and several weeks into flower , definately increases amount of bud sites and overall yeild by quite a bit ...

its also a great way to fix vertical problems in small grow closet. did my first time this around. twisted 1 White Lighting x G13 Clone & a cross of my own called Skubble. ( SK#1 x Bubblelicous.......

an for the twisting method. i see major changes on the main cola on my clone. the Skubble did out. had both ladies flowering under a 250w HPS. so the watt per plant wasn't there....

I do this too but only on the main growing shoot in veg before flower i didnt realise u cud keep doing it gonna have to do a bit more experimenting

I pick the nodes I want to see develop and pinch and bend it there. In days the elbow is better and stronger than before. I love supercropping now. It works for virtually every strain out there. It sure makes my day a lot more fun and the yield a lot bigger!

Good Luck with supercropping!

Avid

I do it too it works wonders in veg or flower .I always get bigger buds than if u just let it grow.Later Bm357

I am really stoned right now. I am not sure if I am getting this right. Is snapping the same as pinching?

no , call it more bending / training ,, i only tip the plants once on the first few nodes , from there on in i train the branches horizontal rather than letting them go vertical .. is easy with a few plants ... and man the amount of area one plant can cover without shading itself out at all is amazing ,, see pics ...

It would really go well indoors then. As it would keep the light from haveing to go thru
3-4' of plant. Instead only having to go thru 1-2' of bush spread out would be more intense light on the nugsz yes?.. Still learning here...peace..

Sack's First Outdoor Grow
Baby nugsz now here LQQK see... Now in 12/12
Sack's Bubbledust Outdoor Grow

sack :friends:

just took a few snaps of mine, iv been thru most of my plants and supercropped them then im proceeding to the lower branches





the top plant is my RUM x Skunk#1 as soon as i supercropped the main stem the side branches started to shoot up...the last pic is Maroc iv bent the stem and supercropped the top which is still recovering...i think its better if get a slighty thicker part to bend than i have here i found it recovers quicker and u can just squeeze and bend/snap rather than rubbin the stem until it flops...peace

This is very interesting to me as i also did not realize peeps had carried it to doing it in flower. I do some heavy training in flower but never intentionally break any herd (sp) anyway heres a pic of a 5ftr' that i just did a bit of work tieing down...should yeild fat with any even canopy. Peace everyone i'll be tagging along





actually theres 2 different plants there both have been getting tied down since the last week of veg

Wow, been tying them down since last week of veg and you still got a 5 footer? What are the two strains you are growing?

so after you snap the stem you just let it hang there? and it gets better? do you tie it or wire it up or anything?

You pinch the top growth over, squeezng the stalk it betwen your finger and your thumb, flatening the stalk and pinchng the stalk with your thumbnail. The node will lean over, but not fall off. Pinch in thge direction you want the cola to move towards . This technique also is done on branches to increase branch nod as well, thereby increasing the available bud sites and amount of bud development.

I have a fantaseeds Special Skunk, very Indica-like, and I have at least ten main cola's and one main cola that is amazingly large. Next week I am harvesting it and will give some pics than.

Good Luck with Supercropping!

Avid

WOW I have got to try that I am at week 2 into flowering is it to late?

HELL NO GO FOR IT BRO..........

i swear by it! been snappin for twelve years now!

This was posted on another forum.

I have a theory about what is happening here, but first some very general statements about energy and whatnot that I'm in part basing this theory on.

I think that the max that a plant can yield is limited by the amount of light and nutrients the plant receives. "Energy in, bud out", in a sort of rigid mathematical way. The size of the plant affects the yield only because it is able to absorb more energy. I'm talking about perfect conditions here btw, if a plant is given the perfect conditions for it to grow, then the yield will be determined entirely by the amount of energy (light and nutes) the plant absorbs.

Ok, given that premise..

I think what's happening when a stem is broken is that the plant kinda freaks out and sends more of it's "growth energy" to that part of the plant to heal it. A side effect of this is that the plant grows more in that part. I think this is kinda self-evident as being the mechanism which causes a snapped branch to have a bigger bud on it.

A human example of this is a rather bizarre treatment for hairloss. There's some stuff made from hot peppers or whatever which tends to irritate the skin when you put it on. This irritation causes an increase in circulation to that area (as the body tries to heal the irritation) and a side effect of this is more blood/nutrients to the hair,which causes it to grow faster. Think about this in relation to the stem snapping, doesn't it seem like that's the exact same mechanism at work?

Now to put it all together: snapping the stem causes trauma which the plant responds to by increasing "circulation" (or whatever) to that area. BUT, the max the plant can yield, all other things being equal or ideal, is determined entirely by the amount of energy it can absorb. So I think that causing trauma to a part of the plant doesn't actually increase the yield, it only causes some of the growth energy to be taken from the rest of the plant and sent to the damaged part. Therefore, the buds on the undamaged stems will be smaller than they would've been otherwise, and the overall yield of the plant will be pretty much the same, or maybe slightly less, since the plant had to put some of it's time/energy into healing itself, energy it could've used for bud formation.

Of course, the only way to know for sure is to run some experiments with identical clones of the same size/age, snap one, don't snap the other, and see if the OVERALL yield of each plant is different. I would be surprised if there was a noticible difference either way. Energy in, bud out.

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