Bushes are ideal plants to grow for anyone who has a small HID flower light (under 400 watts) or uses fluoros. Smaller lights and fluoros emit the most intense light for only a short distance, so keeping as much vegetative growth in the lights sweet spot is a must to make your lights most efficient. SCROGgers take maximum advantage of this by weaving tops through a screen so only tops are exposed to the light. Well, training attempts to achieve the same goals only with a less work intensive method that will make more use of your small lights limited effectiveness

In the first pic, the plant is tied over so the top is beyond a right angle to the soil. This redistributes a hormone called auxins which are responsible for the dominant growth on the plant. Sending auxins to all branching along the stem makes most if not all nodes grow out evenly.



After a week, you can release the plant from it's inverted position. Then tie the plant back down to a planter with screws or something in the side as tie down points. This pic shows the verticle support



The second tie again makes it horizontal to maintain auxin distribution to branching (planter is reversed)



After a few days, the top has raised itself over the nodes



Raise your base tie a node and pulling the plant over so the top lifts almost upright again. Note that branch on the very bottom for later. It is now receiving it's share of auxins, something it usually would never see and be trimmed out by any grower seeing it on a single cola plant



Then tie your top back below the next highest node



Once again, after a couple of days, the top has worked it's way up




Raise the base tie and pull the plant up




Raise the top tie a node and pull horizontal



Several days later, re-training will not be necessary since the top isn't growing over the nodes anymore. This is a very dry plant in these pics and I will be watering her tonight. The growth spurt in the next few pics should be impressive.



An example of the auxins at work. Here is that lowest node on the plant, almost buried under the topsoil. No untrained or topped plant would grow nodes out so uniform that even this would be weakling could join the harvest party..

This plant is now ready for flowering even though the last pics show my new clone mother. The same size rule applies to growing bushes, expect each branch to grow 2-3 times as large in the stretch as it is when you switch.

The time to leave bushes in veg is determined by your flower light and how tall you want the plants to grow. The plant in the last pics took 19 days to reach the point you see in the last pic. With an 8 week fowering period, thats only 10 weeks (or so) from cutting to harvest.

[sm0kateer4204]

yeah lst is great for any small scale grower ive been thinking of doing somthing different lst worked great for me but i may try supercropping

LST (Low Stress Training) is supercropping perfected. This is by far a better way to train plants then snapping the hurd or stem crushing.

Caprichoso,

Your threads are always so informative. Great stuff. You're a very good teacher.

Keep the good stuff coming.

Thanks E

[friendlyfriend]

I crush stems incessantly, masochistic perhaps but I like your method becuase it does have extraordinairy results.... think you get more than a scrog? that would be interesting to compare yeilds based on two identical grows one scrog and one LST to the max ala capri! wut a concept

[PassTheDoobie]

I started bending stems and flower tops from my first grow and got pretty good at it. I had no idea it was a technique called LST. I use pipes cleaners, rather than little ropes. Does it matter how you achieve the manipulation of the auxins for the technique to be LST?

Originally posted by friendlyfriend
I crush stems incessantly, masochistic perhaps but I like your method becuase it does have extraordinairy results.... think you get more than a scrog? that would be interesting to compare yeilds based on two identical grows one scrog and one LST to the max ala capri! wut a concept

Crushing the stem was how I got a multicola plant for the first two years I was growing. Do a side by side comparison and see the difference in how even the branching grows out. It became obvious to me that when crushing or snapping the hurd, there was a significant delay in the growth of the nodes above the damage, two or three days. That's a lot when your clones only spend 18-20 days in veg after rooting. True, the branching below the damage took off as compensation, but that led to my plants being very uneven during the stretch and having to do a lot of work to keep an even canopy. LST makes everything grow out so evenly, you swear the entire plant is in stasis for a few days until you see things like that lowest branch seen above growing out like it is.

Originally posted by PassTheDoobie
I started bending stems and flower tops from my first grow and got pretty good at it. I had no idea it was a technique called LST. I use pipes cleaners, rather than little ropes. Does it matter how you achieve the manipulation of the auxins for the technique to be LST?

Not at all. What matters is that you don't damage the plant when doing the initial training to get the branching to grow out. I've seen many ways of training, including using hooks and fishing weights to lower branches (plant looked like a X-mas tree)

I have a slightly different opinion of hurd snapping after the initial training is over. In fact, snapping the hurd on stretching branches is my favorite way to control height without more ties. Ive been known to top them as well. When it's done for individual branch training and height control, hurd crushing and topping both have a place in my room. I just wont do them for axial growth.

[bartender187]

Check out my Black Chunk thread for another look on the benefits of LST