Love your choice of strains. I have seeds for both of those. Ever grown them before?Tuesday 10th August.
Blue dream auto
Day : 15
L.S.T
Light stress training.
Having a small space to grow in I like to train the plants to spread them out, making the most of limited space. The main way of doing this is stopping the main stems apical dominance, then allowing lower shoots to accelerate growth. There's a few ways of doing this : topping, fimming and LST are the main ways.
I've topped and trained autos in the past and works brilliantly, But over the past year I've settled on lst. It feels to me as though you can keep the progression going smooth like a wave
With LST the apical dominance is broken by bending the main stem over, keeping it lower than the other lower shoots. The plant then sends out a chemical to the other shoots telling them there is no main stem and they should go for it, reach for the sky, become dominant. You then keep managing the plant so all branches try for this dominance without letting any fully achieve it. It's important however to always keep the original main stem lower than the rest.
I usually start LST when the 5th node has fully appeared and the plant is working on the sixth. The blue dreams stem was quite thick, so I started on the fourth node this time before the stem became to strong to bend.
I use plastic covered garden wire as pins.
I start with an M shape for the base pin to hold the stem upright at the soil level. This stops force being applied to the roots when you bend the plant over and trying to pull the plant from the ground, a brace.
Then I use a long pin to hold the bend.
I use a long pin to hold this first bend as if you use a short pin the plant can pull it from the ground, stand back up and laugh at you.
gently bend the plant over, I use my thumb and forefinger to suggest, pin it at a full showing node with a further node past the pin. This is to stop the top mode flicking/springing back out, standing back up and laughing at you.
Some people use straps to tie to the outside of the pot to achieve this, but I prefer pins in a large pot.
It will take a few days for the lower nodes to get going, until then it looks like a clump of leaves or a confused cabbage.
Thursday 12th August
Blue dream
Day: 17
When you've pinned the main stem down it imediatley grows back up to the light, to regain dominance. I pin down each full node as it grows to stop this and carry on pining each node horizontally to the edge of the pot.
I find it easier to do each node as the new growth us pliable. If you leave it to grow more nodes then pin it the growth can get to rigid, form a swan neck shape causing a pressure point for a snap stem. So I pin each fully grown node.
