Super Cropping Marijuana: Simple Secret to Bigger Yields
What You Need to Super Crop Marijuana:
Your fingers
Duct tape
The knowledge of what to do (jump to super crop tutorial)
Cannabis is the only known plant that naturally creates THC (which, along with CBD and other cannabinoids, make these plants of particular interest to humans).
THC is the principal 'thing' in the cannabis plant that causes the plant's well-loved psychoactive effects. THC is produced mostly in the flowers of the female cannabis plants.
But cannabinoid-like substances are abundant in almost all plants and animals, including humans. In fact, humans and mammals naturally have a ton of receptors for cannabinoids throughout our brain and bodies.
If you've ever slept, eaten, forgotten, or relaxed, then you've used your Endocannabinoid system (yay for being a mammal!) and natural cannabinoids.
Ok, yet why does the cannabis plant produce THC, which causes major psychotropic effects?
Did you know that THC is produced by the marijuana plant for protection?
Obviously it's not doing a great job protecting the plants from humans! (Or maybe it is good for them since we keep cultivating these plants...)
In the wild, deer and many other creatures might eat marijuana flowers, which would prevent the plants from making seeds and reproducing.
Yet, as far as we can tell, most animals won't strip a whole marijuana plant of ALL her buds. Either they think cannabinoids taste terrible, or maybe they hate the effects. Therefore we believe the plants use THC as a way to deter predators.
Maybe the animals just forget what they're doing and wander off...
Because these plants use THC to protect against predators, when marijuana plants are stressed, they'll put their bud and cannabinoid production into overdrive as a last ditch effort to protect themselves.
Why is that all important?
For a marijuana plant, creating the prized cannabinoid-laden buds (which are used to make seeds) is their life's work.
As a marijuana farmer, it's your job to understand what causes marijuana plants to produce the biggest, most potent buds possible.
So I'm going to let you in on a big secret to getting the biggest, best buds when growing marijuana...
While marijuana growers want to make sure that these plants survive until harvest, keeping them as absolutely healthy as possible in a 100% perfect environment won't get you the best results.*
Instead, the best buds are produced when you learn how to stress the plants in just the right way to increase bud and cannabinoid production.
Which brings me to super cropping, one of the easiest, most effective ways to stress your marijuana plant for better harvests.
This remarkably simple technique will dramatically increase your yields, and all it takes is your fingers, duct tape, and the knowledge of what to do. It's based on the idea we just discussed of stressing the plant so she goes crazy with bud production.
What is Super Cropping?
Super cropping is the name for a High-Stress Training (HST) technique when you stress the plant by slightly hurting it in a planned way.
As a result, the plant will grow bushier, with more buds, and higher THC levels. This is the plant's natural response to protect herself in the wild, in case things go wrong.
How to Super Crop Marijuana
STEP ONE: Choose the branches you would like to super-crop.
Super-cropping is best done during the vegetative stage, once the plant has grown a few healthy branches and is growing vigorously, but before she is full into the flowering stage.
For super-cropping, you want to choose parts of the plant that are old, but still bendy. The parts you use this technique on should still be green, and not wood-like the bottom of the main stalk.
When there are multiple colas, you should super-crop the same location on multiple colas. When there's only one main cola, you supercrop the bendy, greener growth towards the top.
STEP TWO: Grab the branch and squeeze with firm pressure between your thumb and forefinger.
Maintain this pressure as you slowly bend the branch back and forth until you hear a or feel a slight snap. When possible, try to bend the marijuana plant in the direction that you would like for her to grow. The idea is to damage the inner tissue of the plant as much as you can without causing much damage to the outside 'skin.'
Some growers *just grab each branch and snap them quickly, but doing this makes it more likely you'll snap the outside tissue and need tape
With that being said, these plants are surprisingly resilient. If you don't bend the super-crop site hard enough, she will just bounce back to where she was in a few hours.
You know you've succeeded when the plant now appears somewhat 'broken' and now rests at a 90 degree angle where you bent her, and the branch stays down.
This illustration shows a perfect example of a super crop, one that
doesn't even need tape. Use tape if you go a little overboard.
If you bend her the perfect amount, her outside tissue will be mostly intact, but the branch will not be able to stand itself up, which is the best case scenario.
But even if you super crop too much or too gently, this process will cause her to grow a whole bunch of new colas, and leaves, because she doesn't want to put all her effort into one branch that has probably just been attacked by animals.
Cont.
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