If you’re growing you likely have a few main goals for your crops. You want them to be healthy, happy, high quality, and definitely high yielding. The yield is the amount of cannabis that can be harvested from the plants. So whether you are growing recreationally or commercially everyone wants the most return for their money. Of course, using quality strains, seeds, equipment, etc will definitely help your plants produce plenty of little babies for you to smoke. However, there are lots of other ways that you can also help your plants improve their yield. So let’s have a look through at the easiest and most effective ways to ensure the largest possible cannabis yields.
Plant Training
There are lots of ways that plant training can increase your yields with minimal effort. If you don’t train your plants then don’t worry it’s really not too difficult as long as you pay attention to what you are doing. Just in case, let’s keep it simple and look at the main three training techniques the pros use to increase their yields.
Topping
I think I make a joke about this every time I mention it so I won’t today. If you don’t know why I’m always making jokes about it just google it. This form of topping is used to increase the bud sites on your plant. By having a snip of the main stem right near the top of the stem you’ll get the plant to create two separate branches instead of one. If you are confident you can do this a few times which creates multiple new bud sites and will increase the number of buds grown. It’s usually a good idea to do this during the vegetative stage as the plant will need to heal. There will be a few weeks of recovery time after the snipping.
Low-Stress Training
This is another super popular training method otherwise known as LST. This method is often preferable to normal pruning. Much like topping this is best performed during the vegetative stage because the stems are extremely flexible. This method is accomplished by carefully spreading the stems and tying them to encourage lateral growth. This means that the light hits more of the plant giving it more energy to produce buds. Depending on how much you play with the plant it will add a little stint to the vegetative stage, maybe a couple of weeks, but it can definitely be worth it.
FIM
FIM stands for F*ck I Missed It which is a slight variant of topping. Rather than creating two new shoots, the idea is to create four. The method is pinching the top third of the stem and remove it. It’s certainly not as pretty as topping with scissors but if you do it right it can really improve the yield. The name actually links to how sloppy looking the technique is because it looks like the person missed the section they were trying to top.
Strain Type
Of course, there is a lot to be said about the actual strain that you choose to grow. Some are just created to be higher yielding than others. Especially if you are planning on growing commercially there are strains that have been bred specifically for that purpose. I, unfortunately, don’t have space to list all the best strains but if you do your research I’m sure you’ll find the perfect seeds for you.
Environment
This is one of the most important factors when it comes to growing. The space being too cold, hot, dry, moist, light, etc can cause all sorts of growing issues that will stunt the number of buds produced.
Climate
Extreme heat and cold can really mess with your plant’s yield. If the plant is damaged it uses energy to try and survive rather than to grow lovely big resinous buds. The temperature of a growing room should sit at around 21 – 29 degrees C. During the night time when the lights are off this can go down to 14 – 21 degrees C. The other primary part of a plant’s environment is humidity. Too dry and the plant will suffer too wet and the plant will get moldy. 50 – 70% is what we are ideally looking for but this does alter slightly depending on the stage of the plant.
Light
Just like with the LST we want to have plenty of light getting to the plants. When plants are too bushy and the only light is overhead they can struggle to grow as well. The best way to combat this is to make sure light is coming from all angles and not just the ceiling.
Nutrients
If you want a little extra in the bud department make sure your plant has plenty of the nutrients it needs to be healthy. If your plant has all the water it needs as well as a good balance of phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium. You don’t want to overdo it because nutrient burn can be just as dangerous. Ideally, you want high nitrogen and potassium and medium phosphorus during the vegetative stage. Then in the flowering stage, the nitrogen should be low and the other two both medium-high.
PH
Finally, the PH of your soil is vital for a happy plant. It’s very easy to get instruments that measure the soil PH for you. You want your soil to be a little acidic, between 6.0 and 7.0 PH.
Journal
All of this relies on you as a grower learning and improving. It can be hard to just remember all the bits and pieces that have improved your plants over the crops. The best thing you can do as a grower is keep a journal with every last bit of information you could need to compare crops and see what helped and what didn’t. If you are altering various things and keeping others the same you can’t possibly mentally keep track of what does and doesn’t work.
Written by Tasha Porritt
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The post How To Ensure The Largest Possible Cannabis Yields first appeared on Cannabis Seeds News.
