# Cranker's Experiement: Cranking a plant



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

I've been working on a new type of combination topping and LST. First off, this started as a mistake that I ran with. Starting about week 4, I tied the main stem and slowly pulled it down to the side of the pot, then in successive weeks, tied the main stem loosely to the side around in a half moon shape. This put the stem to where there was a branch that was to the side and one going straight up. The branches that went straight up became colas, the ones to the side I lst'd to the other side of the pot. At the end of veg I left the main cola and 2 sets of side nodes grow straight up. At this point I had What looked like the main cola which was the bottom branch, and a very short bushy foot plant. I cut some of the middle lower side branches that had grown into the dirt, like I was going to clone them, and they rooted! So basically, I'm sitting here with a stem of Colas and secondary root systems growing all over the plant. This ended up resulting in a root lock out which I later fixed by trimming some of them, but if I had been in a larger pot and knew I was gonna do this, I think it would have turned out well. Alternatively, it could have been nute burn from over feeding itself from such a large root system divided over all the plant. I have yet to determine which exactly but it's stabalized now, granted it looks like it had some issues, but can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. So far the plant is 7 weeks into flowering and I will show pics when it's done and when it's trimmed, because I'm going to try and regen it. I'll also put up some pics in a few hours when she wakes up. Here is a pic from end of the veg stage, where you can see how bushy and compact it is. Lemme know what you think and if you wanna see anything in particular, I'll let you know the yield. Strain is Exodus Cheese by World of Seeds I believe, it was a UFO, 


P.S. I refer to this as Cranking a plant


----------



## bigbillyrocka (Sep 4, 2011)

that sounds rad. i think im going to try this too. maybe with one of the clones even. 
thats crazy they rooted when planted yet still attached. thats awesome. good job. cant wait to see and hear more.


----------



## cannawizard (Sep 4, 2011)

*ill follow along cranky


----------



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

I'm not gonna lie, the plant is ugly as hell. Trying to figure out how to feed it was a bitch, not to mention I think some of the roots were competing for food. A lot of the leaves show spots or burns where they were getting nutes from like 3 different places, but for the most part it's healthy. I have to count how many heady nugget spots there are, but it's all but eliminated popcorn buds.


----------



## amrcngror (Sep 4, 2011)

hey thats pretty sweet man, im curious how it yielded and the end results, awesome +rep


----------



## bigbillyrocka (Sep 4, 2011)

im sure it is ugly. kinda like an ostrich with its head in the ground.  lol
but im just thinking of all the possibilities with something like this done on a purposeful level.


----------



## woodsmantoker (Sep 4, 2011)

Sharing images at soil levels?


----------



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

woodsmantoker said:


> Sharing images at soil levels?


Got lights out for another 4 hours, then I'll take some. I took the ties off about 2 weeks ago, basically I slow pulled it when the stem was thick enough to not snap, every day pulled it more, usually at the node beneath the top node. Every time it grew longer I'd repeat. Like I said before the plant shows some signs of nute problems, I think I only chopped about 4 branches in total. You'll see what I mean when I get some pics up. If you get past the spotting and basic ugliness of the leaves the yield looks to be good for a plant of this size, and unlike topping it keeps all the branches/colas basically coming from dirt level. The biggest issue is that the way it played out I have nodes EVERYWHERE. I'm gonna try this again, I think it'd only work with a sativa cuz you need good height, but for an experiment on a ufo I think it has turned out pretty well.


----------



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

amrcngror said:


> hey thats pretty sweet man, im curious how it yielded and the end results, awesome +rep


She's not done flowering, close though, half milky. I'm just waiting for the final bud plump and a lil bit of amber.


----------



## cannawizard (Sep 4, 2011)

*sup cranky, wheres the pics you promised!? huh huh uh huh uh huh huh?? Lol


----------



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

Here's the pics. I circled the spot where I had it tied at one point, also you can see where I pruned one side of the branches. The other side you can see partially in a few places where I had the other branches rooted, but as you can see this was giving me problems late in flower, they are plumping, I tried to get every big nugget cluster. If I knew what I was going to do before hand I think the colas would have been a lot bigger, but I think it definately shows progress. Also I think using a 2 1/2 gallon pot was part of the problem.

Cheers, I'm gonna try it again with a NLxBigBud see how it goes.

All the wires are loosened now, I had it tied almost directly to the side most of the grow. There are several off shoots with new flowering growth coming out that I should have taken pictures of, I'll try to get one of the whole plant but it's hard to move around in there. I think it's already regening where I broke off the branches in a few places and there are some good 1-2g buds in that one pic of the middle, well the bubble in the middle, of the plant. Like I said, could have done better if I wasn't making it up as I went along, and I was working with CFL's (my hps is sitting ready to go in when I get the cool tube) so take that into consideration.


----------



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

cannawizard said:


> *sup cranky, wheres the pics you promised!? huh huh uh huh uh huh huh?? Lol


Light timer is off by a half hour I think, and my camera takes gigantic pics. Here's where I tried to get a bunch of tops in the pic, looks shitty I'll have better looking ones after harvest it'll be easier to tell wtf is going on. Wish I'd taken some during the grow, or before I quit feeding them.


----------



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

Anyone? Questions? Comments?


----------



## cranker (Sep 4, 2011)

mmk guess I'll just go back to my regularly scheduled program


----------



## kevin murphy (Sep 5, 2011)

subbed......


----------



## pandan (Sep 6, 2011)

Burnt tips and curling does seem like nute burn.

Interesting you chose to wrestle it down like that


----------



## cranker (Sep 6, 2011)

pandan said:


> Burnt tips and curling does seem like nute burn.
> 
> Interesting you chose to wrestle it down like that


Yeah in retrospect I don't think I'd try to root other branches, but funny thing is I had new growth even now coming up in the weirdest places.


----------



## bigbillyrocka (Sep 6, 2011)

id like to do this. maybe make 5 main stems/colas. itll look like a hand crawling.


----------



## cranker (Sep 6, 2011)

bigbillyrocka said:


> id like to do this. maybe make 5 main stems/colas. itll look like a hand crawling.


I keep wondering what would happen if I added extra soil and kept the main stem buried the whole time. It looks like the plant itself can't tell where the main colas are. If it weren't for the various issues I had I think I would have had about 10, I was going to reveg but my dog's love of bringing moths into the house bit me in the ass now I'm picking caterpillars off them all day, they haven't done much damage but I swear this has been the roughest grow as far as ridiculousness goes lol.


----------



## kevin murphy (Sep 6, 2011)

new update on mi thread pal take a look mate...


----------



## cannawizard (Sep 6, 2011)

*crank out some updates cranky  more experiments~ hehe


----------



## bigbillyrocka (Sep 6, 2011)

cranker said:


> I keep wondering what would happen if I added extra soil and kept the main stem buried the whole time. It looks like the plant itself can't tell where the main colas are. If it weren't for the various issues I had I think I would have had about 10, I was going to reveg but my dog's love of bringing moths into the house bit me in the ass now I'm picking caterpillars off them all day, they haven't done much damage but I swear this has been the roughest grow as far as ridiculousness goes lol.


haha ridiculous is always good when experimenting.


----------



## cranker (Sep 6, 2011)

kevin murphy said:


> new update on mi thread pal take a look mate...


Will do 



cannawizard said:


> *crank out some updates cranky  more experiments~ hehe


Problem is experimenting never yields what proven methods do, but since I grow for myself I know i'm getting at least a qp off the widow so I was just playing games with the cheese. I had an idea that I tried with one of the cupped seeds, tried to see if I could force a twin stalk from a seedling by splitting them and coating them with a combination of super thrive and bud blood and molasses (to keep out the bad stuff) but it failed, one side managed to pull through, so I'm trying to figure out a medium that it would work on. Having a twin stalk and tying each to a side of the pot then tying them down in a circle would had ridiculous potential. Think 20 colas. I also should have used a larger pot but oh well. Thing'll go better with the hps/mh anyway.



bigbillyrocka said:


> haha ridiculous is always good when experimenting.


I just got in my new lighting system, but I'm gonna try the same thing but top it at 5 nodes, with the half branches sticking up. I'm also gonna try burying the main stem after I cut one of the branches. I can see this potentially being a good way to keep a level height without a scrog netting, but it's having some troubles staying up so I'm looking into how I can fix that. I'm keeping the main root and going to see if it starts to regen, it's already regened a branch but it was during flowering and it's not looking like it's gonna yield anything. if I can get it to regen and fim the new branches I could end up with a monster.


----------



## cannawizard (Sep 6, 2011)

cranker said:


> Will do
> 
> 
> 
> ...


*sounds good brah, im gonna do a thread on grafting'.. havent seen too many threads on it @t RIU


----------



## smokebros (Sep 6, 2011)

I always like to: top, supercrop, repeat if necessary.

Very interesting stuff cranker.


----------



## cranker (Sep 6, 2011)

smokebros said:


> I always like to: top, supercrop, repeat if necessary.
> 
> Very interesting stuff cranker.


The interesting thing is where I cut the branches on the bottom, it looks like the ones up to grew a lot thicker then normal, and they all put out additional branches like they were topped. I think what this did was to trick the plant to thinking there was a new main cola every week or 2. I got a larger pot for the next grow gonna veg it and play around with the nutes, see what I can do. I don't think I'm gonna learn anything overwhelming, but if I find out I can top each branch....that could be a massive yield increase, imagine a plant with 20 colas....and all of them having nothing more than the stress of a topped plant.


----------



## alan whittington (Sep 7, 2011)

this being an experiment i hope you're open to suggestions. you madde some interesting discoveries. anyways as to your rooting, the bigger the root system the bigger the plant. well i was watching a video by soma on some grow tips while he was in amsterdam. the pulled the plant soil and all out of the pot he was using, filled it up half way and put the plant right back in the same pot. he effectively gave the roots growing room, and he also discovered that some 'dry roots' are good, as they keep the plant from acquiring root rot. he removed the top layer of soil exposing the roots. anyways i'm just saying experiments yield interesting results. now as to the topping why not FIM, you could FIM, LST, and super crop all at once. as well as build a good root structure. and i'm sure we all know there are plenty of things out there to amp it up even more. hit me back anytime..


----------



## max316420 (Sep 7, 2011)

you can root clones while their still on the plant. Take the part of the stem where you want your roots and shave the outter skin off it, next get some rockwool and cut out a strip that is about 6 inches long. Now wrap the strip of rockwool around where you shaved it and secure it with some twist ties. Keep the rockwool damp and youll have roots growing from anywhere on the plant you like without even chopping the cutting off the plant until its rooted. Don't know if this even pertains to what your thread is about but thought i'd throw my 2 cents in


----------



## cranker (Sep 7, 2011)

Thanks for the suggestions. There's a lot I would like to try. I did try to shave it, I do that with tomato plants, but it didn't seem to like it as well as trying to root the branches, although I did it late in the grow and I loosened the ties when it started to stress a little. Next time I do this (probably not the next grow I have some really nice seeds for it and not enough room to toss a UFO in) I'm going to use a bigger pot and try to FIM the branches. That is an interesting idea about rooting the clones while they are still attached, I could lst them to the other side of the plant and have them fill the middle. So many ideas, I'm installing new lighting too, I had these under cfl.


----------



## cranker (Sep 7, 2011)

Plant just plumped up so should be chopped in about a week. I'll weigh up the yield when I do.


----------



## max316420 (Sep 7, 2011)

Can you give me a quick breakdown of what your doing? Sorry i'm a little burnt


----------



## cranker (Sep 7, 2011)

OK...basically...I'm combining LST and supercropping, sort of. I'm tying off the main stem to the side of the container. Then breaking the lower branches growing toward the bottom and treating them like planting a clone, having them root, basically ending up with a circle (I stopped at a half circle cuz I was in a 2 1/2 gallon container and I was kinda making it up as I went) where the lower branch of the node began feeding the upper branch. It basically ended up having what looked like a really thick stem connecting a bunch of single cola indicas. They all developed solid side branches, and if it was in a bigger container I would have topped them. Basically an extremely over complicated way of planting. Between the extra roots causing nute problems, and at the end a caterpillar invasion thanks to my dog's love of moths, I'm not gonna really be able to tell what type of yield it is gonna put out, but I'm gonna try to trim it in a way that I can show exactly what I did.


----------



## max316420 (Sep 7, 2011)

ahhhhhhhh I see... 5 gallon bucket next time?


----------



## cranker (Sep 7, 2011)

max316420 said:


> ahhhhhhhh I see... 5 gallon bucket next time?


Yeah, at least....I really want to try 2 3 gallons see if I can actually bend a plant from one pot and re-root it into another pot and grow it that way, I think that'd just be a cool thing to try. Get like 5 good colas on each pot and top them all. Who knows I have a lot of ideas, stuff I've done with tomatos (I grew a cherry tomato plant between 50 and 70 feet long).


----------



## max316420 (Sep 7, 2011)

Tomato cages might come in handy


----------



## SirLancelot (Sep 8, 2011)

ah man I like that! good shit brother


----------



## cranker (Sep 8, 2011)

SirLancelot said:


> ah man I like that! good shit brother


Well I certainly don't see it becoming more than a curiosity in growing techniques, I think it would be a good thing to do with an auto-flower looking it over, a lot of the limbs have regen'd already and are (uselessly) flowering into 3 hair nodes but I can see the potential on an auto.


----------



## dirtysnowball (Sep 10, 2011)

holy crap you already made a huge leap forward in cannabis growing! i was planning on doing this dam you must have discovered my secret plans! im on to you crankster lol just messin.

that method you did on accident is called "layering". by combining it with all that topping and LST'ing your bound to get a huge bush!! i hope you've heard of re-vegging after you harvest cuz that sucker needs to go into the ground outside next year!

and yes i will be doing this to my plant, when i take her out of the bucket(which shes getting root bound in) im going to keep her laying down, and im gonna bury the main stem and a lot of the plant, its gonna be 8" below the surface

shes gonna be a moster omg i cant wait!!!



just imagine where instead of the wood its gonna be dirt instead! and this thing is gonna have its personal 6'x10' prepped soil grow space 

i want to see you doing this to your plant too crancker


----------



## nog (Sep 10, 2011)

what is this Exodus Chees?e, is it what Moses had with his Matzo???


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

nog said:


> what is this Exodus Chees?e, is it what Moses had with his Matzo???


It's probably the most revered strain in the world? Except this isn't true exodus it's a pretty good cheese though I smoked a test nug and I got pretty blitzed.


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

dirtysnowball said:


> holy crap you already made a huge leap forward in cannabis growing! i was planning on doing this dam you must have discovered my secret plans! im on to you crankster lol just messin.
> 
> that method you did on accident is called "layering". by combining it with all that topping and LST'ing your bound to get a huge bush!! i hope you've heard of re-vegging after you harvest cuz that sucker needs to go into the ground outside next year!
> 
> ...


Yeah I do this with my tomato plants for fun. Half the stem has been buried for some time. I'd love to see how yours turns out, I have a very small garden area probably 10x10 so I can't really try this outdoors but I'm psyched that you're gonna. Can call it Cranking Dirty Snow! I'm probably gonna start my next attempt at this around January because I already had my next grow planned. I was planning on revegging this one because I keep getting branches popping out of the ground lol. The one I try in January should finish about the time to transplant it outdoors so come May I'll be ready for it.


----------



## edsweed (Sep 10, 2011)

max316420 said:


> Can you give me a quick breakdown of what your doing? Sorry i'm a little burnt


so are the plants...lol


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

edsweed said:


> so are the plants...lol


yeah, that was explained in the post, what's your point?


----------



## edsweed (Sep 10, 2011)

nice grow anyhow,,,
sheesh, chill bro. thought it to be a wee bit funny is all.
wanna pet another puppy?


----------



## dirtysnowball (Sep 10, 2011)

i guess the point is that hes snappy...

im gonna call it cranking too, my plant is gonna be ranking out the fat colas


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

edsweed said:


> nice grow anyhow,,,
> sheesh, chill bro. thought it to be a wee bit funny is all.
> wanna pet another puppy?


I frankly just thought that the fact that I'd put this all together and I had said it had nute problems because of the over rooting didn't merit a cheap shot at the grow. So far even with the issues the plant has actually done pretty well and I'm happy with what I've learned and what people have learned from it.


----------



## CR500ROOST (Sep 10, 2011)

post some new pics up.


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

CR500ROOST said:


> post some new pics up.


I'm going to when I harvest which should be in the next 2-3 days, I'm gonna try and trim it so you can see kinda how it worked, about 6 inches of stem is still under the soil.


----------



## cannawizard (Sep 10, 2011)

*the advanced cannabis forums looks tidy.. i like it that way.. wassup cranky


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

still findin' friggin caterpillars, fortunately they've only been eating the leaves and the buds plumped, harvesting tomorrow or the next day


----------



## cannawizard (Sep 10, 2011)

cranker said:


> still findin' friggin caterpillars, fortunately they've only been eating the leaves and the buds plumped, harvesting tomorrow or the next day


*check this out brodo.. i got the caterpillar-bitch-be-gone-spray.. 

---get some (ghost peppers), toss those in a pot, add some h20, boil for 30mins on high heat, filter-- put in spray bottle.. and unleash holy pepper hell 

--o yea, MAKE SURE.. to wear plastic gloves and alteast a goggles for your eyes, if that stuff gets sprayed there accidentally.. well lets just say... its gonna suck 'ass'.. lol



goodluck w/ your caterpillar prob budd... but that ghost pepper remedy works.. just saw it in action.. 

View attachment 1780334​


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

If you look at the pictures with the circles, you can see where the plant has started revegging straight into flowering. I've picked about 40 3 hair bud sites off the stem and lower branches. I'm thinking if I could get a smart pot that was about 20 gallons but only say 2 feet high, I could eventually stretch the main stem all the way around and loop it and have a perpetual reveg/flower of epic proportions that I wouldn't have to worry about anything but topping and pruning.


----------



## cranker (Sep 10, 2011)

cannawizard said:


> *check this out brodo.. i got the caterpillar-bitch-be-gone-spray..
> 
> ---get some (ghost peppers), toss those in a pot, add some h20, boil for 30mins on high heat, filter-- put in spray bottle.. and unleash holy pepper hell
> 
> ...


Well, I hadn't seen one in about 5 days, killed about 15 the first day, 2-3 the 2nd and 3rd day, then 1 the 4rth day. Then nothin for a while then today I found a monster. Basically just following the trails of eaten leaves and shit. Funny thing is, none of them have touched the blue widow.


----------



## cranker (Sep 11, 2011)

I'm gonna go look for a kiddie pool on clearance and see if I can transplant the stem, I just gotta figure out if it'll hold that much dirt and drainage and finding a place big enough is gonna be a bitch...This is akin to perpetual SoG without a mother plant!


----------



## cranker (Sep 11, 2011)

After battles with nutes, caterpillars, root locks, this is the pic of the trimmed stem, I didn't dig up the stem that's buried, there's about a foot under soil. Yield pic doesn't include about 14g of popcorn nuggets and smaller stems I'm drying separately. Total yield was about 4 1/2 ounces wet, so not terrible. (the 2 biggest colas are overlapped there)


----------



## cranker (Sep 11, 2011)

View attachment 1781713

One of the buds from the popcorn stems....looks like it's sexy


----------



## kevin murphy (Sep 12, 2011)

nice cranker mate...


----------



## cranker (Sep 12, 2011)

thanks


----------



## CR500ROOST (Sep 12, 2011)

looks dank,good job.fuck i hate caterpillars,i spray safer caterpillar killer and i still have them.


----------



## cranker (Sep 12, 2011)

CR500ROOST said:


> looks dank,good job.fuck i hate caterpillars,i spray safer caterpillar killer and i still have them.


Yeah, they came in fast and furious, basically woke up to them attacking, they bore through the branches on 3 of the medium colas, I harvested them but the smaller nuggets hadn't matured at all at that point. Granted I'd already lost a lot of growth from the various nute and root problems but my dog and his moth fetish

I took a hand 10x magnifying glass and got most of them in about 4 hours. I was afraid to spray being 2 weeks from harvest, and I have a blue widow that is almost done that I just did plain and simple grow that they didn't even touch. Funniest thing is, I found 2 that were dead after eating the sugar leaves, I think they OD'd lol.


----------



## jonblaze420 (Sep 15, 2011)

nice you should get about an ounce dry


----------



## cranker (Sep 15, 2011)

jonblaze420 said:


> nice you should get about an ounce dry


Yeah, maybe a little more. It's a good smoke, I wish the stupid caterpillars hadn't wrecked it but I still got a decent chunk of bud out of it. My blue widow is coming down soon, I've had to flower that one way too long, 50-55 days my ass it's been like 12 weeks.


----------



## truepunk87 (Sep 16, 2011)

How long did you flower you Exodus for?


----------



## cranker (Sep 16, 2011)

truepunk87 said:


> How long did you flower you Exodus for?


Around 9 weeks maybe


----------



## cranker (Sep 21, 2011)

lil update on the cheese...after curing for a bit it's proved to be as good a bud as any anyone's called cheese, but no where near what I'd expect from something named after a legendary plant.


----------



## CR500ROOST (Sep 21, 2011)

cranker said:


> Yeah, they came in fast and furious, basically woke up to them attacking, they bore through the branches on 3 of the medium colas, I harvested them but the smaller nuggets hadn't matured at all at that point. Granted I'd already lost a lot of growth from the various nute and root problems but my dog and his moth fetish
> 
> I took a hand 10x magnifying glass and got most of them in about 4 hours. I was afraid to spray being 2 weeks from harvest, and I have a blue widow that is almost done that I just did plain and simple grow that they didn't even touch. Funniest thing is, I found 2 that were dead after eating the sugar leaves, I think they OD'd lol.


 They OD'd lmao...


----------



## cranker (Sep 21, 2011)

I wrote a smoke report somewhere but I forgot where. It's curing with a really really piney smell, which I was expecting but it's a pretty decent sativa high.


----------



## kevin murphy (Sep 22, 2011)

mornin cranker...


----------



## cranker (Apr 22, 2014)

jonblaze420 said:


> nice you should get about an ounce dry


after the re-rooting the plant kept growing for 3 years, I have gotten about 14 oz out of it.


----------



## cranker (Apr 22, 2014)

Also I tried it in a 5 gallon bucket with tangerine dream and the vine rooted all the way around so I spiralled it and it rerooted to the middle, gave it extra nutes, ended up FIMing all the stems that grew up and cut off the ones that went down. I don't have pics unfortunately I moved and had to nuke the plant but it ended up with about 15 solid colas and a good 50 side colas. I used the cloth vented 5 gallon plant pots which made it easy to pull it and cut the roots to encourage growing. Unfortunately I was only able to grow this plant solo because of the maintance but if you're looking to grow just one it worked out spectacular.


----------

