Can someone school me on LST?

[budlover3388]

That depends entirely on how long you veg. Think on it this way: What you're doing is spreading the plant out, creating more than one primary shoot by tricking the plant into delivering more auxins to the secondary growth nodes. These, being level with, or higher than the main growth tip(which is bent over toward the soil). This tells the secondary nodes that they are at the top of the plant, causing them to branch like each of them are the primary shoot. The problem with this method though is that the growth nodes on the underside of the plant must be trimmed off or growth can become too tightly interwoven. This causes too much canopy interference and lower leaves get no light at all.

LST can be an extremely useful tool for certain types of growing, but I personally will not use it anymore. My new grow is light entirely from the sides, and thus will not need training. The secondary growth nodes will react to the light(and synthetic auxins from a foliar spray), and branch toward the lights.

If you can't grow with vertical lighting, or at least supplemental lighting on the lower parts of the plants, then I recommend you study a technique called FIM. This stands for "Fuck, I Missed". It was a technique probably discovered by accident. Unlike traditional topping, you don't remove the entire top growth node. You simply stunt it by removing up to 70-90% of it. In a lot of ways this is simply a more surgical version of a method called pinching, where you pinch the top growth node to stunt it. While the top node is recovering, the plant needs somewhere to dump it's resources, so it switches production to the secondary, lower nodes, which causes them to receive more auxins and trigger as primary nodes. These branch outward, and when the original main node recovers, it will form as many as 2-8 new branches where initially there as just one. How many it forms depends on many factors including the genetics of the plant and how precisely you performed your cut. This causes explosive, and symmetrical growth, rather than the off-set growth caused by bending your plant one direction or another.

Now once you have done the FIM, the numerous branches caused to become primaries will be dense and bushy. Now you can use LST to radially train the new branches away from the center of the plant, causing it to spread out even more. Once this is done, you trim off the growth on the bottom of the new branches opening up the canopy more and avoiding awkward branches that have to bend 180 degrees to grow up toward your lights from the bottom side of the branch. Do a Google Image Search on "LST" "marijuana". You'll find a lot of stuff covering this technique.

Once you have trained the new branches outward, then you can in turn FIM the end branch of each of those. With careful control, you can precisely govern the exact spacing of the vertical bud colas through careful training and trimming. Multi-approach training is the best way to go really. I've produced some amazing little bushes in the past this way. A lot of people kind of do this with their mom plants without even thinking about it or planning it real well, but it really can be done quite precisely. The combination approach makes everything so much more symmetrical. I can't stress that enough.

thanks a lot i will do a bit more research on this

 

[zolar]

you sound pretty new to this i'd suggest you wait to train your clone until it has roots and is at least 6 inches tall this will enable it to withstand more stress and not be too fragile

my LST method i use hex nuts like the ones on bolts or car lugnuts from the wheels for big plants and fat fuzzy pipecleaners for craft projects

i gently spiral wrap a plant tip either top or side branch about 2-3 inches from the growing tip and pull it sideways with
1-5 hex nuts on the other end of the fuzzy pipecleaner

i start with one nut on littler branches and add more weight depending on the size of the stem makes my plant look likr a motorheads xmas tree but that extra weight and or rubberband or string gently pulls /stresses the plant to change its shape and that top cola stops being lonely because the sideways pull tricks all those lower branches into growing up vertically like a top cola if you do it well you can have 10-20 or more growing tips that are pretty much in a flat plane so it is easy to lay a flat screen on top of the plant and maximize
your horizontal canopy where the buds form on top [ i use 1 foot square of chicken wire for screens these are light enough that a good compact plant with lots of branching from pinching or FIM pruning will support it with out extra help

typically in a 5 gallon pot my plants will be about 12-18 inches tall from dirt surface to canopy [that the top of the plant]
and the canopy will be 1-2 feet square when i put the screen
on them

my current plant i just screened is a widow clone and stats are

dirt to top 13 inches
39 growing tips from branchings go through screen
screen size 12inch by 12 inch
canopy top area 14 inch by 16 inches
stem diameter at dirt 1/2 to 5/8 inch

those 39 groqwing tips are all potential buds once flowering kicks in because they are in the screen they are all getting
about the same amount of light and wiil all act like a small top cola and other than the end tip of what was originally the top they will all be about the same size and the original top is usually about half again bigger

actually what i have just described is a SCROG in addition to a LST a couple post back theres a more technical explaination
about why the bending works with auxins etc

look up pics of scrog grows and check links and pics and tutorials

i don't have a digi camera but i hope my specs help the clone whose measurements i took is maybe month to six weeks from cloning and just went into flower cab maybe 10 days ago

the nut size i use for weights is 3/8 in the LST phase

 

[budlover3388]

you sound pretty new to this i'd suggest you wait to train your clone until it has roots and is at least 6 inches tall this will enable it to withstand more stress and not be too fragile

my LST method i use hex nuts like the ones on bolts or car lugnuts from the wheels for big plants and fat fuzzy pipecleaners for craft projects

i gently spiral wrap a plant tip either top or side branch about 2-3 inches from the growing tip and pull it sideways with
1-5 hex nuts on the other end of the fuzzy pipecleaner

i start with one nut on littler branches and add more weight depending on the size of the stem makes my plant look likr a motorheads xmas tree but that extra weight and or rubberband or string gently pulls /stresses the plant to change its shape and that top cola stops being lonely because the sideways pull tricks all those lower branches into growing up vertically like a top cola if you do it well you can have 10-20 or more growing tips that are pretty much in a flat plane so it is easy to lay a flat screen on top of the plant and maximize
your horizontal canopy where the buds form on top [ i use 1 foot square of chicken wire for screens these are light enough that a good compact plant with lots of branching from pinching or FIM pruning will support it with out extra help

typically in a 5 gallon pot my plants will be about 12-18 inches tall from dirt surface to canopy [that the top of the plant]
and the canopy will be 1-2 feet square when i put the screen
on them

my current plant i just screened is a widow clone and stats are

dirt to top 13 inches
39 growing tips from branchings go through screen
screen size 12inch by 12 inch
canopy top area 14 inch by 16 inches
stem diameter at dirt 1/2 to 5/8 inch

those 39 groqwing tips are all potential buds once flowering kicks in because they are in the screen they are all getting
about the same amount of light and wiil all act like a small top cola and other than the end tip of what was originally the top they will all be about the same size and the original top is usually about half again bigger

actually what i have just described is a SCROG in addition to a LST a couple post back theres a more technical explaination
about why the bending works with auxins etc

look up pics of scrog grows and check links and pics and tutorials

i don't have a digi camera but i hope my specs help the clone whose measurements i took is maybe month to six weeks from cloning and just went into flower cab maybe 10 days ago

the nut size i use for weights is 3/8 in the LST phase

thanks man i will search for that and thanks for all the help

 

[budlover3388]

quick question if i use a 400w HPS will lst still be needed? cause im not sure but isnt that enought light to get 3-4 plants all around?

 

[Harry Red]

It just depends on how large you grow the plants, which depends on how long you let them veg.

One larger LST'd plant under the 400w HPS would produce approximately the same amount as 3 or 4 smaller plants. You can grow one LST'd plant with multiple main colas or 3 or 4 non LST'd plants with their single main colas. Indoors, it's not really the number of plants that's important, it's the about of light you can get to budding sites.

I grow multiple plants for variety. I LST them to keep the canopy even and to limit the overall height.



Harry

 

[McBudz]

you sound pretty new to this i'd suggest you wait to train your clone until it has roots and is at least 6 inches tall this will enable it to withstand more stress and not be too fragile

my LST method i use hex nuts like the ones on bolts or car lugnuts from the wheels for big plants and fat fuzzy pipecleaners for craft projects

i gently spiral wrap a plant tip either top or side branch about 2-3 inches from the growing tip and pull it sideways with
1-5 hex nuts on the other end of the fuzzy pipecleaner

i start with one nut on littler branches and add more weight depending on the size of the stem makes my plant look likr a motorheads xmas tree but that extra weight and or rubberband or string gently pulls /stresses the plant to change its shape and that top cola stops being lonely because the sideways pull tricks all those lower branches into growing up vertically like a top cola if you do it well you can have 10-20 or more growing tips that are pretty much in a flat plane so it is easy to lay a flat screen on top of the plant and maximize
your horizontal canopy where the buds form on top [ i use 1 foot square of chicken wire for screens these are light enough that a good compact plant with lots of branching from pinching or FIM pruning will support it with out extra help

typically in a 5 gallon pot my plants will be about 12-18 inches tall from dirt surface to canopy [that the top of the plant]
and the canopy will be 1-2 feet square when i put the screen
on them

my current plant i just screened is a widow clone and stats are

dirt to top 13 inches
39 growing tips from branchings go through screen
screen size 12inch by 12 inch
canopy top area 14 inch by 16 inches
stem diameter at dirt 1/2 to 5/8 inch

those 39 groqwing tips are all potential buds once flowering kicks in because they are in the screen they are all getting
about the same amount of light and wiil all act like a small top cola and other than the end tip of what was originally the top they will all be about the same size and the original top is usually about half again bigger

actually what i have just described is a SCROG in addition to a LST a couple post back theres a more technical explaination
about why the bending works with auxins etc

look up pics of scrog grows and check links and pics and tutorials

i don't have a digi camera but i hope my specs help the clone whose measurements i took is maybe month to six weeks from cloning and just went into flower cab maybe 10 days ago

the nut size i use for weights is 3/8 in the LST phase

Thats funny. My last grow I ran out of the wire I was using to tie them so I started zip tying sockets to the branches to bend them over. Our trees would have made the perfect pair. Once the buds fattened up i removed the sockets as needed so the branches didn't split from the weight.