What was your biggest plant training mistake?

[NebulaHaze]

When it comes to plant training, is there anything you did that you regret? Things like...

• Not training
• Training/topping too early or too much
• Screen of Green gone wrong
• Plants stayed too small or got too big
• Any other type of plant training problems!

I'd love to hear everyone's personal experiences I'm trying to put together an article and want to make sure I cover the most common mistakes!

[Canuck147]

My biggest plant training mistake was by trying to LST a white widow auto too early. This plant was about 8 inches tall and 5th node. Tied it down for one day when I realized it was mostly a sativa plant and was going to grow much taller. 5 weeks old now and 46 inches tall, very lanky.
I also had 6 other plants trying to keep the canopy to the same height, so just doing one plant would have been ludicrous. All or none.

[NebulaHaze]

Wow, that is a crazy tall plant at such a young age! When I first started growing I had a "Grand Daddy Purple" plant that grew the same way. It got HUGE overnight, and towered over the other plants

[Canuck147]

Nice to hear from you Nebula, she grew recently 13 inches in 4 days.

[Jibblerjoe]

Mine was Lst too early also. I got 18 grams dry, autoberry. Was like a head of Cauliflower.

[Jibblerjoe]

Smokes excellent though. Thank you Nebula, and also GWE community.

[NebulaHaze]

It looks like the buds turned out beautifully!

[Jibblerjoe]

My second big mistake was a 400 hps too close to the plants while young

[NebulaHaze]

I've done the exact same thing!

[growgreenjr]

I have not 'trained' any of my plants (first attempt at growing) but I've got a list of mistakes I've made already. My plants (at 9 weeks from seed) SEEM to be doing very well but they also seem to be much shorter than others on the forum (about 2 feet tall now). I have done some major defoliation about 3-4 times, usually 10-14 days apart, and the plants have rebounded vigorously each time, but I'm sure the plants were stressed and possibly stunted as well. I defoliated to provide more light to node sites and to encourage more bud locations, it seems to have worked well. I 'topped' all plants at about 4-5 weeks and that worked out well. I'm thinking now that the plants may be 'root bound' in 5-gal smart pots and 3-gal plastic pots. I'm growing in soil (50/50 happy frog/organic, 10% pearlite) and would do so again, but I think I need more pearlite to keep the soil from compacting, seemingly a serious problem right now. I'm considering trying to loosen the soil somehow but don't want to damage the root system. Loosening the soil would also allow more efficient watering IMO, as the water would get into all parts of the soil bucket. I'm not complaining B/C I'm extremely excited by what I've achieved so far, and truly believe I'll be harvesting some fabulous home-grown flowers soon. I'm growing mostly sativas along with a couple of mostly indicas. Planning to flip to flower at 10 weeks or so, just want a little more height from these girls before that. I actually didn't need to 'train' for height (my tent is 7ft tall at least) and my light footprint seems adequate. I would consider jumping from 600W MH/HPS to 1000W MH/HPS though.

[growgreenjr]

Excellent point about the growth rate between hydro and soil; I had not thought of that. I love the smart pots; really thought 5 gallon would be plenty but maybe a little bigger would really help. Smart pots over hard side plastic any day. Moto, I'm going to try the method of soil de-compaction you described; thanks for the tip!

[vazaha]

I am quite new to growing but i think that maybe repotting your plants should sort out your problems with the compacted soil.

[4barrel]

click on my icon.
got some pics ya mite find intresting.
I've incerted 2, 2" perferated pips kids corner from one an other an feed through the top of the pip.
this way I avoid top feeding and soil compresion.
it's working well so far.
if ya do try this. cap the bottom of the pip. cuz water just runs right through to the drain plate.

[Tika]

Early in my experience I liked the idea of FIM. 4 collas opposed to 2 from topping-a no brainer. However-my FIM was not as successful as I wished over several grows so I went to topping.
2, 4, 6 , 8

[NebulaHaze]

Yes, we FIMed in the beginning, but now we only top as well! Both will do the job, but the results are more predictable with topping.

[9fingerleafs]

Until last year I used to grow outdoors and didn't trained at all. Thing that I regret now. But indoors last time my grand daddy grew too tall so my only regret is waiting too long before flowering.

[insomniaczzz]

Biggest mistake, not training at all. Plants had that classic Christmas tree shape. I'm not ready to top and tie down. No hesitation after reading and viewing pictures from so many great successful growers.

[kingfish]

Insom, you're back. We missed you.

[South Sierra Dude]

I snapped a cola 3.5 weeks into flower; she was pretty big too.

[NebulaHaze]

Losing a cola in the flowering stage is so sad I feel your pain!

[Iammygod]

When i started my 1st grow, 5 months ago, i was thinking in Nebula's manifolding, Super cropping and defoliation. Manifolding was extremely easy to follow(although i had 2-3 small mistake). After next training done, super cropping, i thought i killed them completely but less than a week later they were completely heathly to me( i lost 1 cola of 28 ones).


but defoliation...

Place me in a circle you want which radius is a half of earth's radius (6400Km) and I'm must stupid guy on the circle for sure.

After reading Nebula's defoliation article more than ten times i started to defoliate. "Well, What should i take? Pre-flowering pistil are there and main cola is here" i was thinking. Ok i take these.

2 weeks later after buds started to form i realized I'm stupid by such a wrong defoliation. I should not have cut those growth tips. Who had told me to cut growth tips! I counted the "growth tip" times on Nebula's defoliation article. She had never used "growth tip" in her article even once. I check her article twice and number of "growth tip" still were ZERO.


less than 10" buds on each 28 main colas. 255watt LED 600watt HPS, 2 plants. 270 gr + 123 gr is what i gained from heavily trimed buds. They are at the end of week 2 of curing now. Don't know how much negative effect it had but i had 6-8 hour power during 10 day to last week of flowering.

[NebulaHaze]

Thanks for sharing your picture and story. The good news is you harvested a ton of premium bud!

[Tika]

Georgeous plant. Very nice! Perfect even!!

[PuravidaC]

Make some room, Lammygod... I'm right there with you! Tried defoliating for the first time last grow. Must have defoliated 5 or 6 times and she bounced back each time with gusto. I was a little uneasy defoliating late in flower as I had read conflicting advice but plant was sooooo bushy I felt I had to to help with air and light, so I dove in... After a while I noticed my hands were sooooo sticky, and only then did it hit me..... how many trichomes had I just rubbed off with my hands getting to fan leaves!!!!! DUH!!

[NebulaHaze]

Too-sticky buds is a good problem to have!

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Growing photos I lollipoped a Super Skunk too aggressively but it did make for very fat buds on the tops.

In my recent adventures growing autos I've really mucked it up. Trying to push the schedule on the autos I topped too early and ended up with a split stem. A week later I snapped one of my main stems completely off trying to pin my plant down a la Green75 and Rockman.

[NebulaHaze]

Thanks for sharing! I was wondering, would it be okay with you if we use these pictures on the website? They really demonstrate your point, and I think they may help other growers!

[Beach_Town_Brit]

Hi NebulaHaze, of course, it would be my honor

I've started resizing and compressing my pics for my journal (120dpi, 1,000 px width, 60% jpeg compression) in the hopes of speeding the forum up. If you want the original pics, or pics without text, just PM me.

[bobsakamoto]

this isn't a mistake per se but it's a way i learned to try to prevent mistakes...early on when i first started training, like the first 3 days ever, i noticed that the stem and branches were WAY more pliable about 30-60 min post-watering (which makes TOTAL sense once you understand the science of it). but so i learned that i should do all my training in that window if i wanted to achieve the "safest possible" results. i split a main stem and broke a couple of tiny branches along the way to realizing this.

[PuravidaC]

Great advice, thanks!

[NebulaHaze]

Interesting! I'm going to go check it out now, that's a neat tip!

[bobsakamoto]

i could be totally off on this bc i am only on my first grow (with this plant) so i have nothing with which to compare it, but it really seemed that way to me. especially at the topmost part where i topped one of them. it was almost like the topped part was flexing, lol

[Flockshot]

All I did was topped my only photo grow. Don't feel bad about not doing more because I hadn't learned enough good information about training. I have seedlings now and expect to know a heck of a lot more in 4 months than I do now.

[sag]

My biggest problem so far is that I have broken some nice branches. It might be, too many plants for the tent or bull in china closest syndrome. It is frustrating.

[NebulaHaze]

It's happened to us all! I've learned that you can often get a break to heal by placing the broken parts together and wrapping it in electrical or duct tape like a cast. Even if there's only a thread left holding the stem together, the plant can often heal itself over a week or two as long as the tape holds the parts together tight!