Plants Got Too Tall. Low Stress Training

BobChukowski

Well-Known Member
Here is the story of Obi-Wan and Berry White. Berry was always a little taller than her sister Obi. I knew when I selected two different strains that there would most certainly be differences in their development. I wanted and hoped to see Obi catch up in veg to her bigger sister Berry. In an attempt to temporarily slow Berrys growth, I decided to top her again at about 8 new points. This kind of worked a little, but in the end I only succeeded in creating an even bigger monster that has now taken over the tent completely. Poor Obi. She’ll be ok tho and I will enjoy her bounty in the end no matter what!

Never the less, Berry fired back up again as expected when I flipped her to flower. The stretch was on.

I raised my lights. I raised them again. And again. Each day I raised them a few clicks until the ratchet hangers clicked their final click and they reached their peak height.
Berry didn’t care that the lights wouldn’t go any higher. She wasn’t done yet. Closer and closer to the light she grew. “Don’t go into the light!” I murmured as I envisioned her hot crispy fate as she perused onward and upward. “She’s still got a week left in her stretch! A week at least! I exclaimed, to myself, silently in my head.

It was time for me to intervene. After a good feeding, when my girls cells were full of moisture and pliable, using only what I had at my disposal, I decided it was time for some low stress training (LST).

Very gently I pulled back her tallest tops toward the corners of the tent, away from the light and secured them there very gently with twine (with room for the stems to fatten).

Berry is now happy and much cooler and in less danger for now. She still has some growing to do still and she has appendages all over the place. I’m going to have to step in again with more twine in the days to come. I can only hope that her sister Obi forgives her and finds the light she needs to live a happy fulfilling life of her own in this crowded world.

Here are some pictures showing the difference that 9 days of stretching can produce! Most places I’ve read say the plants could double in height during stretch over a 3 weeks period. These girls have about a week to go still.

this photo was taken January 20th, 5 days after flipping to flower.

A7C4CFB3-B9F6-4F9B-965F-22BD18B9026C.jpeg

Here they are after 9 days of stretching. Photo taken today January 29th.

D24AFEAA-746F-4CCE-A183-F9447A45A26E.jpeg

Let me know what you all think of how this is going for me. This is only my second grow.

Cheers!
Bob
 

Doug Dawson

Well-Known Member
Here is the story of Obi-Wan and Berry White. Berry was always a little taller than her sister Obi. I knew when I selected two different strains that there would most certainly be differences in their development. I wanted and hoped to see Obi catch up in veg to her bigger sister Berry. In an attempt to temporarily slow Berrys growth, I decided to top her again at about 8 new points. This kind of worked a little, but in the end I only succeeded in creating an even bigger monster that has now taken over the tent completely. Poor Obi. She’ll be ok tho and I will enjoy her bounty in the end no matter what!

Never the less, Berry fired back up again as expected when I flipped her to flower. The stretch was on.

I raised my lights. I raised them again. And again. Each day I raised them a few clicks until the ratchet hangers clicked their final click and they reached their peak height.
Berry didn’t care that the lights wouldn’t go any higher. She wasn’t done yet. Closer and closer to the light she grew. “Don’t go into the light!” I murmured as I envisioned her hot crispy fate as she perused onward and upward. “She’s still got a week left in her stretch! A week at least! I exclaimed, to myself, silently in my head.

It was time for me to intervene. After a good feeding, when my girls cells were full of moisture and pliable, using only what I had at my disposal, I decided it was time for some low stress training (LST).

Very gently I pulled back her tallest tops toward the corners of the tent, away from the light and secured them there very gently with twine (with room for the stems to fatten).

Berry is now happy and much cooler and in less danger for now. She still has some growing to do still and she has appendages all over the place. I’m going to have to step in again with more twine in the days to come. I can only hope that her sister Obi forgives her and finds the light she needs to live a happy fulfilling life of her own in this crowded world.

Here are some pictures showing the difference that 9 days of stretching can produce! Most places I’ve read say the plants could double in height during stretch over a 3 weeks period. These girls have about a week to go still.

this photo was taken January 20th, 5 days after flipping to flower.

View attachment 4810535

Here they are after 9 days of stretching. Photo taken today January 29th.

View attachment 4810536

Let me know what you all think of how this is going for me. This is only my second grow.

Cheers!
Bob
Hey Bob, they look healthy. You may want to look into supercropping, you will likely run into issues with colas being closer than 20" to light
 

BobChukowski

Well-Known Member
Hey Bob, they look healthy. You may want to look into supercropping, you will likely run into issues with colas being closer than 20" to light
Hmmmm....I thought about super cropping. I just wasn’t sure if I was too late now and I’ve never attempted it before. It’s beginning to really flower now so I wasn’t sure what my window was for that sort of high stress training.

F5CD65FA-EF21-45E1-98FD-96DEA04B6B9A.jpeg
 

Chip Green

Well-Known Member
Many growers....nay, dare I say most growers, would be appalled, by some of the extreme, high stress "training" I have employed.
I have folded over pencil sized branches, deep into flower, on multiple occasions.
I'll do it again if I have to.
I suppose, it is plausible I've run lucky, dodged bullets, with stable genetics.
It's also plausible, that there are generations of boogeyman belief systems entrenched into cultivation culture.
 

bernie344

Well-Known Member
Here is the story of Obi-Wan and Berry White. Berry was always a little taller than her sister Obi. I knew when I selected two different strains that there would most certainly be differences in their development. I wanted and hoped to see Obi catch up in veg to her bigger sister Berry. In an attempt to temporarily slow Berrys growth, I decided to top her again at about 8 new points. This kind of worked a little, but in the end I only succeeded in creating an even bigger monster that has now taken over the tent completely. Poor Obi. She’ll be ok tho and I will enjoy her bounty in the end no matter what!

Never the less, Berry fired back up again as expected when I flipped her to flower. The stretch was on.

I raised my lights. I raised them again. And again. Each day I raised them a few clicks until the ratchet hangers clicked their final click and they reached their peak height.
Berry didn’t care that the lights wouldn’t go any higher. She wasn’t done yet. Closer and closer to the light she grew. “Don’t go into the light!” I murmured as I envisioned her hot crispy fate as she perused onward and upward. “She’s still got a week left in her stretch! A week at least! I exclaimed, to myself, silently in my head.

It was time for me to intervene. After a good feeding, when my girls cells were full of moisture and pliable, using only what I had at my disposal, I decided it was time for some low stress training (LST).

Very gently I pulled back her tallest tops toward the corners of the tent, away from the light and secured them there very gently with twine (with room for the stems to fatten).

Berry is now happy and much cooler and in less danger for now. She still has some growing to do still and she has appendages all over the place. I’m going to have to step in again with more twine in the days to come. I can only hope that her sister Obi forgives her and finds the light she needs to live a happy fulfilling life of her own in this crowded world.

Here are some pictures showing the difference that 9 days of stretching can produce! Most places I’ve read say the plants could double in height during stretch over a 3 weeks period. These girls have about a week to go still.

this photo was taken January 20th, 5 days after flipping to flower.

View attachment 4810535

Here they are after 9 days of stretching. Photo taken today January 29th.

View attachment 4810536

Let me know what you all think of how this is going for me. This is only my second grow.

Cheers!
Bob
Some of these hybrid strains are pathetic the way they stretch and end up with long gaps between nodes.
A good strain the nodes get closer when maturing.
 

ptrzm

Well-Known Member
Even supercropping may not save you here! Honestly never let mine get this far gone and don't know what to do with that. If I were you I'd just let it be.

Advice for next time though. If you want to grow plants that might get large, get a scrog net and position it a couple inches short of your minimum flower distance to lamp (when the lamp is at maximum height). This way if things get out of control in stretch you can use it to your advantage, and if the plants never grow that high it won't matter anyway. A literal safety net!
 

BobChukowski

Well-Known Member
Offtopic: how big is your tent and how old are these two plants? They're beautiful, I guess they're from seed.
Yes they were from seed and we are on day 60 today so the images were taken on day 59 from seed. My tent is a 32”x32”x62”. Just a small one. I’m growing in 80% coco coir and 20% perlite. Feeding with General Hydroponics Flora series nutrients and watering with a PH of around 6 which I check and adjust every feeding to make sure I’m at least somewhere between 5.5 and 6.5 when I measure my run off. I always water to a minimum of 20% run off each time. Right now they each take roughly 4L a day. I test my run off to make sure that the PPM coming out is less than the PPM going in and if the run off PPM gets too high I feed it plain ph 6 water with no feed until the next day when I resume regular feeding.
 

BobChukowski

Well-Known Member
Well, I did it. I super cropped my Berry White on all of her tallest tops about 3-5 nodes down to attempt to even out the canopy, give her some more space to grow and hopefully I didn’t stress her too much. I figured it’s at the very least a good learning experience. I gently squeezed and rolled the stems between my fingers loosening up the inner fibres without breaking the outer fibres until they bent over in the direction I wanted them to.
Now we see what happens.

Before
22FD86E4-D74B-4AA0-BBAA-4302A4B5D341.jpeg

After
DC7FBAB4-B2D8-41E8-9D79-C5D2974801A5.jpeg

She looks like she got hit by a truck, but hopefully in the end she will thank me for it.
I saw a YouTube video of someone supercropping at about the same stage in flower as me so I went for it!
 
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Star Dog

Well-Known Member

BobChukowski

Well-Known Member
A quick update on the plants. They are doing well since the super cropping. I’ve used some soft rubber ties to sort of pull down the taller cropped tops by tying it to a lower one which then pulls up the lower one. I’m sort of letting the taller ones reach down and pull up the shorter ones. I don’t know if this kind of Low Stress Training method has a name but both tall and short are lending their aid to one another and levelling the field a bit more.

They are still pretty close to the light tho and I’ll have to pull some more down. What do you think? Way too close?

I’m just over 3 weeks into flower now so I’m hoping they don’t get too much taller.

on a side note, I have some slight yellowing and browning tips here and there. It’s not serious yet but I’m sure it could be soon. My run off ppm is close to the ppm that I feed it and usually a little lower so I know the plant is up taking some nutrients. My ppm is like 500-600 when I feed.

What do you think it could be? I gave it just PHd water a few times between feedings with extra run off but still I get these little tips showing up.

2B19A86E-F9A4-40A9-A6CE-37748C3CAA98.jpeg
 

BobChukowski

Well-Known Member
UPDATE: The big one is still big, the short one caught up and stretched higher so I supercrooped that one too since it was clear that it’s stretch and flowering stage was moving at a much slower rate. It’s still recovering from that and it’s taking some time, so we’ll see what happens. No bananas so far.

I don’t really have the smaller one in this picture so basically everything you see here is the one plant I originally supercropped to get away from the lights. The other one is off to the right out of frame.

I got a few brown tips a few weeks ago and I’ve since been flushing between feeds with PH water and I’ve stopped it from spreading/worsening. Under control for now. I just thought I would put today’s progress picture up. 5 weeks into Flower

01220FCB-3070-437D-AEB7-0190DAD1C722.jpeg

Cheers
Bob
 
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