Preface:
Having grown up and lived in Silicon Valley I was exposed to some of the finest bud available during the 70's, 80's, and 90's. The plants we grew came from bag seed. Some were Columbian, Acapulco Gold, Humbolt Indica, Santa Cruz Sensimilla, and Thai. There weren't very many of these seeds so a lot of grows were from less fancy strains. All grows back then were covert so a grower needed to be creative.
By the mid eighties I was growing " designer weed". This was basically plants that were exposed to a variety of different growing conditions and harvest times to arrive at a preferred affect ( speedy, munchy, couch potato, a blend of different types). Some of the conditions were in the shade, partial shade, against a wall, tying down, topping, de-foliating, etc.
Here would be a good place to coin a term, CST, or Constant Stress Training. More on this a little later.
In the mid nineties a friend's parents gave him a birthday gift of a European trip (2 months worth!). He spent the last couple of weeks in Amsterdam comparing the different coffee shops. When he returned he gave me a couple of pure Sativa seeds. I cannot remember the strain. He asked me to grow the " baddest " plants I could. Unfortunately, one turned out to be a male. As it turned out, that didn't matter.
I will explain the set-up and the techniques, as well as the reasoning behind them.
The Set-up:
I had been trying to duplicate hydroponics outdoors for at least ten years and growing vegetables, herbs and designer weed successfully.
The grow container was a raised bed 2' x 3' x 16.5" ( three 2x6 boxes stacked on top of each other and secured in the corners by a vertical 2x6 14" long).
IMPORTANT.... there was NO sealant used between each layer. This was to allow air to be drawn into the grow medium as the water soaked through. CURRENTLY air pots use this same strategy.
The raised bed is set directly on the ground and has no bottom. This is to allow all of the water to escape and not puddle ( no root rot).
This raised bed holds 8 cubic feet of soil, ten times as much as a five gallon bucket ( .7 cubic feet). This allows the roots "free range" to grow wherever they want and to find water, nutrients, and air wherever they grow. This is similar to the " free range " experienced in DWC. Following harvest, I removed a center root 14" long with a diameter of about two inches. The remainder of the raised bed had a uniform mat of thin roots throughout the entire box. There was no rootball.
One of the unanticipated advantages of a raised bed was access to the plant from the bottom.
Irrigation:
The plant was watered for twenty minutes every day. Since the sides and bottom were not sealed, it was impossible to over-water. The watering system was simple 1/2" black irrigation hose with (4) 180 deg, 1/4" sprayers set 12" apart on top of the long sides of the container ( two on each side). these were directed to water the entire surface of the container. The goal was to create a " sheet of water" that would soak through the medium uniformly, moistening ALL of the medium and drawing air in behind it. Think aeroponics or flood and drain. The spray that hit the stalk would run straight down the main root, think drip hydro.
The growing medium:
I used a potting soil from Orchard Supply that consisted of top soil, peat moss, some vermiculite, and some mulch. The soil was slightly acidic but was not " fortified " ( no nutes). The soil already in the container was seasoned, meaning I had already grown in it for a couple of vegetable harvests and the wonderful organic bacteria, microbes, and earthworms were already present. The soil in my raised beds is turned top to bottom and added to following every harvest.
The environment:
Perfect Mediterranean weather. Never above ninety and never below 50. Direct sun thirty degrees to a hundred and fifty degrees.
Fertilzer:
After the second week of flower I mixed a couple of gallons of Super Bloom in a watering can and sprinkled it over the entire bed every five days or so.
Training:
This wonderful plant we all love is a glutton for punishment. Stress only makes it grow stronger, with one exception. Unless you are intentionally trying to stunt growth, NEVER INTENTIONALLY STRESS THE ROOTS !!
Back in the day .....LST was called tying down, HST was called topping (it now includes manifolding as well as a couple of other techniques). What I use I'll call CST ( constant stress training).
CST consists of topping (HST), highly focused de-foliating, and redirecting branching (a form of LST, more or less). This is a very time consuming procedure that needs to be exercised daily.
Topping ( part of CST ):
This plant was topped at three nodes when five were showing. When the two new secondary shoots showed four nodes they were topped at two and all of the other secondaries were then topped at three.
Branch redirecting ( part of CST ):
When any, and all, branches have three nodes a weight is hung (I use bent paperclips with fishing weights of differing values) on the branch to make it parallel to the ground. As the branch grows the weights are moved toward the end (usually within two nodes) to maintain the parallelism. This procedure is performed daily ON EVERY BRANCH until flowering stretch. The reasoning is...with free swinging weights the plants must make the branching stronger due to the wiggle and sway. The branches must also handle the increasing leverage as the weights get further from the stalk. Also, every secondary branch is trained perpendicular to the main branches so the plant must handle the "twisting" caused by those weights. This results in turning the main branches into limbs. When flowering starts, the weights are no longer moved toward the tops and the tops are allowed to grow vertically. As the flowers develop and the branches show signs of lowering, the weights are moved back towards the stalk until they are finally removed. The result was branches that required no support during the entire grow and harvest. This technique can be used in place of super-cropping at any time during the grow and does not require a recovery period.
Focused defoliating ( part of CST ):
I am a firm believer that the plant needs leaves to provide enough energy to grow, handle stress, and make flowers. I also remove between thirty and fifty leaves every day. Once the plant has recovered from topping I remove upper, non-mature leaves that shade anything below them. I remove them two or three times a day but never all at once. As far as the plant knows it is in a perpetual state of healing. The plant will create a root system that can handle the healing as well as the stress from all of the weights and never being able to grow vertically. Once flowering began, only old, yellowing leaves and those that shaded buds were removed, allowing to root system to focus on flowering.
ELIMINATE THE STRESSES ONCE FLOWERING BEGINS. YOU NOW HAVE A ROOT SYSTEM THAT FAR EXCEEDS THE PLANTS NEEDS.
The goal was to grow a plant covertly that would be twice as wide as it is tall. The final result was a plant five feet above the soil with a ten foot diameter. The "happy" person in the photo is there for size reference. He is about six foot tall and is between the plant and the camera so the plant is a little larger than it looks. (the only photo I have).
Harvest:
It took about four weeks to harvest this lady ( top down ) due to drying restrictions. It was dried in a refrigerator box on its side in the attic, with a four inch fan exhausting into the rafters through a dryer hose with moth balls in it. There were four neighborhood volunteers that came by nightly to help trim her into pipe bowl size buds (no stems allowed). They were free to sample as much as they wished during the trim. A friend from work helped me dismantle the plant, wet trim and hang the branches for drying.
The final result:
This plant yielded nine pounds and thirteen ounces of hyper-manicured, pharmaceutical grade bud. (definition of pharmaceutical grade = one hit and for the next four hours you are the only one that knows you are stoned).
Christmas, following curing:
The friend that supplied the seeds was gifted a pound
The four trim volunteers were each gifted a quarter pound
The buddy from work was gifted a half pound.
The wife and I had smoke for the next five years.
Following curing, the buds were stored in unopened mason jars in the dark at about 60 deg. They were turned and lightly shaken once per month. We witnessed no degradation of taste or quality. Nice genetics!
Please ask questions, ask for clarifications, offer suggestions, whatever. I will do my best to provide whatever I can.
Having grown up and lived in Silicon Valley I was exposed to some of the finest bud available during the 70's, 80's, and 90's. The plants we grew came from bag seed. Some were Columbian, Acapulco Gold, Humbolt Indica, Santa Cruz Sensimilla, and Thai. There weren't very many of these seeds so a lot of grows were from less fancy strains. All grows back then were covert so a grower needed to be creative.
By the mid eighties I was growing " designer weed". This was basically plants that were exposed to a variety of different growing conditions and harvest times to arrive at a preferred affect ( speedy, munchy, couch potato, a blend of different types). Some of the conditions were in the shade, partial shade, against a wall, tying down, topping, de-foliating, etc.
Here would be a good place to coin a term, CST, or Constant Stress Training. More on this a little later.
In the mid nineties a friend's parents gave him a birthday gift of a European trip (2 months worth!). He spent the last couple of weeks in Amsterdam comparing the different coffee shops. When he returned he gave me a couple of pure Sativa seeds. I cannot remember the strain. He asked me to grow the " baddest " plants I could. Unfortunately, one turned out to be a male. As it turned out, that didn't matter.
I will explain the set-up and the techniques, as well as the reasoning behind them.
The Set-up:
I had been trying to duplicate hydroponics outdoors for at least ten years and growing vegetables, herbs and designer weed successfully.
The grow container was a raised bed 2' x 3' x 16.5" ( three 2x6 boxes stacked on top of each other and secured in the corners by a vertical 2x6 14" long).
IMPORTANT.... there was NO sealant used between each layer. This was to allow air to be drawn into the grow medium as the water soaked through. CURRENTLY air pots use this same strategy.
The raised bed is set directly on the ground and has no bottom. This is to allow all of the water to escape and not puddle ( no root rot).
This raised bed holds 8 cubic feet of soil, ten times as much as a five gallon bucket ( .7 cubic feet). This allows the roots "free range" to grow wherever they want and to find water, nutrients, and air wherever they grow. This is similar to the " free range " experienced in DWC. Following harvest, I removed a center root 14" long with a diameter of about two inches. The remainder of the raised bed had a uniform mat of thin roots throughout the entire box. There was no rootball.
One of the unanticipated advantages of a raised bed was access to the plant from the bottom.
Irrigation:
The plant was watered for twenty minutes every day. Since the sides and bottom were not sealed, it was impossible to over-water. The watering system was simple 1/2" black irrigation hose with (4) 180 deg, 1/4" sprayers set 12" apart on top of the long sides of the container ( two on each side). these were directed to water the entire surface of the container. The goal was to create a " sheet of water" that would soak through the medium uniformly, moistening ALL of the medium and drawing air in behind it. Think aeroponics or flood and drain. The spray that hit the stalk would run straight down the main root, think drip hydro.
The growing medium:
I used a potting soil from Orchard Supply that consisted of top soil, peat moss, some vermiculite, and some mulch. The soil was slightly acidic but was not " fortified " ( no nutes). The soil already in the container was seasoned, meaning I had already grown in it for a couple of vegetable harvests and the wonderful organic bacteria, microbes, and earthworms were already present. The soil in my raised beds is turned top to bottom and added to following every harvest.
The environment:
Perfect Mediterranean weather. Never above ninety and never below 50. Direct sun thirty degrees to a hundred and fifty degrees.
Fertilzer:
After the second week of flower I mixed a couple of gallons of Super Bloom in a watering can and sprinkled it over the entire bed every five days or so.
Training:
This wonderful plant we all love is a glutton for punishment. Stress only makes it grow stronger, with one exception. Unless you are intentionally trying to stunt growth, NEVER INTENTIONALLY STRESS THE ROOTS !!
Back in the day .....LST was called tying down, HST was called topping (it now includes manifolding as well as a couple of other techniques). What I use I'll call CST ( constant stress training).
CST consists of topping (HST), highly focused de-foliating, and redirecting branching (a form of LST, more or less). This is a very time consuming procedure that needs to be exercised daily.
Topping ( part of CST ):
This plant was topped at three nodes when five were showing. When the two new secondary shoots showed four nodes they were topped at two and all of the other secondaries were then topped at three.
Branch redirecting ( part of CST ):
When any, and all, branches have three nodes a weight is hung (I use bent paperclips with fishing weights of differing values) on the branch to make it parallel to the ground. As the branch grows the weights are moved toward the end (usually within two nodes) to maintain the parallelism. This procedure is performed daily ON EVERY BRANCH until flowering stretch. The reasoning is...with free swinging weights the plants must make the branching stronger due to the wiggle and sway. The branches must also handle the increasing leverage as the weights get further from the stalk. Also, every secondary branch is trained perpendicular to the main branches so the plant must handle the "twisting" caused by those weights. This results in turning the main branches into limbs. When flowering starts, the weights are no longer moved toward the tops and the tops are allowed to grow vertically. As the flowers develop and the branches show signs of lowering, the weights are moved back towards the stalk until they are finally removed. The result was branches that required no support during the entire grow and harvest. This technique can be used in place of super-cropping at any time during the grow and does not require a recovery period.
Focused defoliating ( part of CST ):
I am a firm believer that the plant needs leaves to provide enough energy to grow, handle stress, and make flowers. I also remove between thirty and fifty leaves every day. Once the plant has recovered from topping I remove upper, non-mature leaves that shade anything below them. I remove them two or three times a day but never all at once. As far as the plant knows it is in a perpetual state of healing. The plant will create a root system that can handle the healing as well as the stress from all of the weights and never being able to grow vertically. Once flowering began, only old, yellowing leaves and those that shaded buds were removed, allowing to root system to focus on flowering.
ELIMINATE THE STRESSES ONCE FLOWERING BEGINS. YOU NOW HAVE A ROOT SYSTEM THAT FAR EXCEEDS THE PLANTS NEEDS.
The goal was to grow a plant covertly that would be twice as wide as it is tall. The final result was a plant five feet above the soil with a ten foot diameter. The "happy" person in the photo is there for size reference. He is about six foot tall and is between the plant and the camera so the plant is a little larger than it looks. (the only photo I have).
Harvest:
It took about four weeks to harvest this lady ( top down ) due to drying restrictions. It was dried in a refrigerator box on its side in the attic, with a four inch fan exhausting into the rafters through a dryer hose with moth balls in it. There were four neighborhood volunteers that came by nightly to help trim her into pipe bowl size buds (no stems allowed). They were free to sample as much as they wished during the trim. A friend from work helped me dismantle the plant, wet trim and hang the branches for drying.
The final result:
This plant yielded nine pounds and thirteen ounces of hyper-manicured, pharmaceutical grade bud. (definition of pharmaceutical grade = one hit and for the next four hours you are the only one that knows you are stoned).
Christmas, following curing:
The friend that supplied the seeds was gifted a pound
The four trim volunteers were each gifted a quarter pound
The buddy from work was gifted a half pound.
The wife and I had smoke for the next five years.
Following curing, the buds were stored in unopened mason jars in the dark at about 60 deg. They were turned and lightly shaken once per month. We witnessed no degradation of taste or quality. Nice genetics!
Please ask questions, ask for clarifications, offer suggestions, whatever. I will do my best to provide whatever I can.
Thanks for the info. Looks like we have a lot in common. I remove immature leaves to increase stress levels during veg. I will remove any below the first SCROG in a couple of days.I doubt if I will ever have the opportunity to do another outdoor grow. I live in the Phoenix area where we get 100 days over 38 deg. C every year and quite a few over 43 C. My "realistic" goal for the cabinet is more than a pound.
