A Brief Guide to LST

NoDirtWeed4Me · 11-30-2006, 09:45 PM

Low Stress Training (LST)

There is little if any recovery time because you are not damaging the budsites of your plants. When you tie the top grow tip below the rest of the plant the plant has the same reaction as topping and the axial growth tips are redistributed. The key to LST is to create a horizontal plane of buds so that they all get the same light and grow at the same rate. You end up with a bush of many colas instead of the traditional christmas tree bud plant with one main cola.

There are many ways to LST using steaks, chicken wire screens are common, many other I probably dont know about.

First step is to get a large pot the final size you want your pot and put a bunch of screws arround the lip of the pot I used 8 screws. These are the tie points for your training

Second Step. This next step is CRITICAL!!! I cannot stress this enough. This is the countertie. It is used so that the bottom part of your plants stem stays straight and in place. Without a countertie you are likely to uproot your plant because training usually occurs when there about a month or so old and not extremely established. Its simple just tie a piece of twine from one of the screws arround the bottom of your plant. Make sure that your twine is tied above the first leaf pair so that it doesnt slip all the way down to the bottom of the plant.

Third Step. The next step is to tie the main growth tip down so that the plant will release hormones that cause all the other growth tips to start functioning like the main cola. I use a simple overhand knot and tie my twine UNDER the highest set of developed leafs. Once again you need to make sure that the knot doesnt slip off of your plant. Then i tie a slip knot arround a screw. I use slip knots so i can just tighten the string as the plant grows. You can retie it everytime but im super lazy and that wouldnt cut it.

One last comment....one thing that wasn't mentioned above was the ability to tie shade leaves out of the way to get more direct light to the budsites.

Pictures Below show the tie and counter tie as well as other branches being tied down.

<hr>

Eyeless · 12-01-2006, 02:05 AM

great post NDW

just to back up your counter tying...this is what happens if you don't counter tie properly on weaker plants

i tied her to one side...then the opposite side of the stem starting to crack open...so i gelled her up nicely and tied her the opposite way to close the wound and taped her for around 3 days
this is what she looked like after

surprisingly she didn't suffer much and with the extra care didn't stop growing

P.S. becareful when tying growers