[rune2008]

Great work! Your post was truly inspiring. Thanks a lot!

[Kodiak]

Thanks everyone, I'm glad you liked it.

shmooothsmoke, sounds like you did a good job training your hindu Kush, perhaps a SCROG net would be a fine addition to your grow.

I know what you mean moses224, getting tight buds on the haze is no easy task. They will fatten up and become tight with time. At the latest when the calyxes start to swell up. I had to top my mostly sativa haze a whole bunch of times and train it extensively in order to get tight nugs. Even then they were not as tight as the indica buds. If you intend to make oil out of your plants it really doesn't matter that much how dense the nugs are but the more bud the merrier either way.

With sativas like this one you could probably go as low as 10.5/13.5 or even 10/14 on the light schedule during flowering, but not much lower than that.

[Pittsburgh Kush]

One of may great guides to training. (topping ftw outdoors when running numbers)

[puffdragon]

Thank you from all of us dummies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Kirby_Tokin]

Have you tried to top,prune or train your autoflowers? Reason why i ask is because ive read a post that said the one auto that was trained gave more yield.. I can see why you should not top and prune it, but you could train it.. What are your thoughts Kodiak? My 5 Female Red Dwarfs are 16 days from seed today, would be fun to try it out.. Great thread..!

Kirby

[Kodiak]

Hi Kirby. I have not tried to top or train autoflowering strains yet as the Lowryders that I grow and breed have such a short life span that it never crossed my mind.

Sure, you could train the autoflowering plants but I'm guessing that you would get more bud by growing more plants. You could train one LR to cover the available space but harvesting the main cola from 5 different plants in the same space, would probably give you more bud. This is the reason why I make my own LR seeds and hybrids. I need a lot of seeds and cannot buy new ones every time. By creating my own hybrids I also get plants that suit my needs. I consider the selection process to be of crucial importance. The first parents chosen for the breeding project will define the entire seed line, so only the best will do. LR's and other autoflowering plants cannot be cloned so for every new generation of plants I have to start enough seeds to make sure that I will find at least one good male and one good female that I will use to make the next cross.

But to answer your question, yes, if you train your autoflowering plant, you will most likely end up with a greater harvest. Give it a shot, if you can slow down the flowering process long enough for the training to have any effect, you would probably end up with a bushier plant with more active nodes and therefore also more bud.

EDIT: I have now tried topping and training autoflowering plants and I can confirm that it works very well. I saw none of the problems that people are so worried about. Topping the AF's seems to delay flowering, which is a good thing because then they spend more time in veg. I would say that I got about 25% larger crops by topping and training the AF's, compared to earlier grows. Go for it, I say. Nowadays, I top and train the autos indoors every time during seed grows. I grow them in large numbers outdoors for bud so I don't really have to worry about the yield because it's usually more than enough.

If it was my plant, I would put it under a 24/0 or 20/4 light schedule and use either a MH or CFL bulb that emits light from the blue spectrum. Once the plant has reached the desired shape I would switch to the HPS and a 12/12 light schedule. The longer days and blue light will most likely encourage the plant to invest more energy into vegetative growth. When you switch to the HPS and 12/12 the plant will go into full bloom. Also, you might want to feed the plant mostly veg fertz until you put it into full flowering. The sum of all these things might tilt the growth to the vegetative side instead of flowering. The trick here would be to slow down the flowering process as much as possible until the training is complete or at least well on the way.

Hopefully that answered your question.

Good luck

[Kirby_Tokin]

Thanks Kodiak, good answer.. Im gonna try to train one plant if it looks good enough.. I got info on my grow in my log, just follow my signature.. I will be using one 150 veg cfl light 24/7 until they start to flower, then put them on 20/4 with my 400 hps.. I also plan to take the best female and make some seeds instead of buying them, then take those seeds outside in the summer..

Kirby

[Kodiak]

Sounds good Kirby, it will be interesting to see the results

Yeah, it's always a good idea to make your own seeds for outdoor growing since then you will have some control over the genetic makeup of the plant. You will have to figure out what sort of traits you consider important and then select the parents based on that criteria. Keep in mind that the physical appearance, scent and flower formation of the males will also affect the female offspring. What you want is a strong male with a good scent and tight clusters of male flowers. When it comes to selecting lowryder females the criteria is pretty straight forward; heavy resin production, tight internodes, nice scent, early flowering etc..

[Big swede]

I've just done 2 weeks at 12/12 with my Trainwreck and AK48's. I grow 20 plants in 7 liters buckets. The area is about 1 m2 (3*3ft). But I dindt pruned them under the vegg, and now, some plants are going to be very bushy with a lots of low branches that overlaping each other and the only thing they do is to shade the lower section of the plants. So I think the best is to prune all the low and shaded branch, but do I stress the plants too much if I pruning them at the begining of week 3 in 12/12? I can understand that topping the plants will disturbe and stunt the grow a lot, but how will it affect the health of the plants if I cut of all the lower branches?

[riskofwater]

bump!

awesome guide!