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NY Times article on plant overcompensators

Franklin

Franklin

New member
I read this great article in the New York Times on plant overcompensators and it got me thinking about marijuana and the various hacks that people use to increase production and yield. The quote, "Like it or not, theory be darned" reminds me of the arguments I hear about defoliation. On the one hand, "Leaves are the plants sugar factories and nutrient storage systems, don't ever cut them!" (theory), on the other hand, "I cut them and my plants grow bigger and better." Theory be darned. It also has me thinking about all sorts of other strategies, including schwazzing, step splitting/poking with needles, cutting the tops off of buds, supercropping, and even molasses/sugar (apparently, sugar molecules are too large for plants to actually absorb and sugar water is, in fact, damaging to most plants--google it--maybe overcompensators see it as a threat and produce more resin as a response). I'm curious what other sorts of damage people have tried inflicting? Bruising leaves?
 
From all that I've read about plant intelligence/perception, I wouldn't ever do any of those things to my plants. I prefer "kinder" ways to get my buds big and sticky... For ex, lowering humidity in flowering.
 
Intresting read. Thanks for posting.
I feel i have had good response from super cropping but I am way too early in my growing career to say 1 way of the other.
 
Good article, man all those tricks work great if YOU think they do, you are the only one that really knows for sure.
No one wants to admit the trick that they tried failed.
I'll admit I use molasses about once a month, but it's mainly for feeding the soil,
 
Just curious daas is your negativity on this subject a result of your own experiences not making any difference? Because I too believe that some of the opinions could be pride influenced. It seems a lot of people like to be that person with a different technique no one else can seem to master!
 
There's no doubt topping, fiming, lst,supercropping and a few other techniques Nebula mentioned work ,they are proven they are not tricks.
Your other question Bluebudz, yes we have pretty much tried every trick in the book over the last 50 plus years of growing.
We even tried cutting some of the best looking buds we had growing outside off, an putting them inside for the winter in fresh soil to see if they would continue to get larger, the trick we liked the best and did work was watering you plants with urine.
There's nothing wrong with experiments, folks have been trying new things for years, if any so called new tricks worked, they would have already been published in all the grow books. Anything you see Nebula has written in GWE , you can bet your ass, that they work, pretty much all the other Bullsh-t, is just that bullsh-t, next thing you know people will be watering there plants with gasoline, an swearing its makes plants grow like hell,
 
Hey Blue, people have been growing pot for many ,many years, and not just a couple of years, I'm still learning my self, every grow is different, MJ is a strange beautiful plant.
I will guarantee you damn near everything has been tried before, and what works is published in books, and very reputable grow sites like GWE.
But if you think some new trick works ,that's all
that matters.
I just hope some of these tricks don't harm a new growers plants, that might be all it takes to get them to quit growing.
 
Really love all of these thoughts. D.A.A.S.69, you make a good point, in science it's called the "file drawer problem", meaning that if an experiment doesn't end up the way the experimenter expected it to, they might not publish it (they would put it in the "file drawer")--not just because of ego, although that happens, but also because an experiment that doesn't work out is less interesting for journals to publish. I'm sure the same happens here. I would love to coordinate an actual research project where growers or, better, plants are randomly assigned to specific technique(s)--cutting apical dominance and/or defoliation--and we measure the outcomes via weight.

As I've been thinking about this article though, what strikes me is less about whether stress techniques work or not to make bigger, bushier, plants and more potent product. NebulaHaze cites agricultural research on other plants (cotton, I believe) in her tutorials about defoliation--this is very well established fact using rigorous scientific design. For legal reasons, marijuana research is very difficult to conduct so there are no studies (of which I'm aware) about whether HST "works" with weed or not, but there certainly is so much anecdotal evidence that I would wager big money against any detractors. The real question is why. Up until now, those of us on the HST bandwagon had very little theory to guide us--what is the actual physical mechanism that makes it work? Those against HST argue that leaves are "photosynthesis machines" and "nutrient holders" and all of that is correct mechanism for how plants work. The best that HST supporters could say is "defense mechanism" and, "evidence shows it works, I don't know how/why, but evidence shows it works" (and anyway, good data should beat out theory any day of the week). Now HST supporters can say "HST in weed probably works because of endoreduplication--reduplication of the genome without mitosis--which creates larger and more complex cellular systems that are simultaneously able to increase growth vigor and chemical defense, which translates to bushier plants with more resin".

The second exciting thing about this research is that defense against physical attack via chemical repellent (resin in marijuana) and faster growth (bushiness) are correlated in the overcompensator plants. Meaning that as one increases, the other increases. I think there have been additional debates in the marijuana world about bushiness vs. resin production, and I think I've seen people argue for HST during veg but pampering during flower. This paper shows that these defense mechanisms actually are correlated in some plants, and I believe supports the idea of continued HST into flower.

They did find that you could go too far--removing 75% of leaves and cutting the stem was just too much damage, as i imagine chemical attacks (via gasoline or whatever) would also be--I doubt plants have evolved many defense mechanisms to ward off gasoline, given it isn't a killer of plants that naturally occurs in the wild, unlike the physical damage caused by animals and insects.
 
I knew it had a name, but I couldn't think of it at the time, thanks Franklin.
I can tell you have been doing some serious studying, good job.

File Drawer.
 
I don't know if this is interesting to anyone, but I started growing roses last year and I have a few different species/strains that I'm growing at the same time. You might not know it, but cannabis is actually part of the rose family. I feel like I've noticed some definite similarities in how the roses grow compared to cannabis plants, and it's interesting to see how important pruning is to getting your roses to grow the way you want.

I've noticed that the rosebushes only seem to make flowers on the outsides and especially the tops of the plant that get strong sunlight, just like cannabis. I've also noticed that removing leaves to expose the growth tips at the base of every leaf causes them to grow, while the hidden growth tips stay small.

Additionally, I've learned you need to defoliate and prune the roses at least once a year. Basically, the more you cut away, the fewer but bigger roses you will get. So if you completely strip the plant, you will end up with a few huge roses. A thorough trimming gives you more but smaller roses, and a light trimming is the way to get many small roses all over the plant. If you never trim your rosebush, you will have a bushy and green plant, but unfortunately, it won't grow many roses. For some reason, most rose strains need you to cut away branches to get it into "flower-making" mode. But you have to find that balance that results in the most and best roses.

To make things more complicated, there are different strains of roses, and they grow very differently. I have one rosebush (called a Fragrant Cloud) that makes these huge, weighty, fragrant roses. However, it only grows a few at a time and doesn't seem to respond well to defoliation. Unlike all my other roses, it seems like defoliation just slows that plant down. It will make weighty flowers no matter what, so it seems like defoliation just steals from its overall energy. I only trim it to cut off dead roses, and that seems to be all it needs. I have this other rose (called a Florabunda) that naturally makes many tiny roses. It seems to respond extremely well to defoliation. Cutting away at a branch causes it to almost instantly start growing a new stem from the growth tip right below the cut, which soon grows into one or more roses that are bigger than the average. Removing most of the leaves on a stem seems to cause the rose at the end to swell in size. With this plant, heavy defoliation makes it so that it is covered in tons of good-sized roses, but not many leaves. Leaving it alone causes it to be covered in lots of leaves, but only a few tiny roses.

Cannabis plants are not that closely related to roses (If only you could grow cannabis plants that produced flowers throughout the year... or roses that produced THC....), and even the differences between different species of roses can be huge. So you can't read too much into what roses do when it comes to growing cannabis. But I did find it very interesting that gardeners have been studying roses for hundreds of years and have concluded that defoliation and pruning are such an essential part of proper flower production :)
 
That's great Nebula, my late wife stayed in her rose bed working, She knew a thing or two about roses ,She even won yard of the month a bunch of times, because of her roses, She also said that there wasn't a prettier flower than roses and cannabis.
 
I would love to get THC from my roses!! LoL Seriously, the plant "Bird of paradise", reacts just like roses, in the fact you must prune them back in the beginning of spring in order to flower that year. This was some good discussion! :D
 
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