If you want to ensure a great yield every cropping season, you have to equip yourself with the right knowledge, skills, and perspective in super cropping. As a first time or advanced marijuana grower, it is your job to be aware and understand the best techniques for your marijuana plants to produce the most potent and biggest buds possible. While you want to make sure that your cannabis plants survive from germination of seeds until harvesting, keeping them as healthy as possible in a perfect environment won’t bring you the best results, unless you apply special techniques like super cropping cannabis.
Many cannabis growers consider super cropping as a yield-boosting cultivation method. Why will you let this method pass? How can you use super cropping to your greatest advantage? Why do you need to consider implementing super cropping in your indoor or outdoor grows? Let’s find out! In this post, you’ll learn about the secrets of super cropping, how it works, its benefits, and techniques to help you achieve your goal, and that is to harvest a bigger cannabis yield every time. Let’s get started!
What is Super Cropping?
This cannabis growing method is a form of High-Stress Training or HST technique, wherein the marijuana plant is slightly hurt in a planned way. You want to aim the natural response of the cannabis plant by growing with more buds, bushier, and higher levels of THC. It is a way how a cannabis plant responds in the wild or a survival response when things go wrong. As a cannabis grower, you should keep yourself abreast with cannabis trends and you can use super cropping to obtain bigger yields. It’s also a good way to get more potent buds!
In the wild, like forest and mountains, deer, wild goat, and other creatures eat cannabis flowers which prevent the plants from making Cannabis Seeds and reproducing. Most animals, domestic or wild, don’t strip an entire cannabis plant or all of the buds. The possible reasons might be they hate the psychoactive effects or they find the taste terrible. That’s why researchers and growers believe that cannabis plants use THC as a way of deterring predators. Because cannabis plants use THC to safeguard themselves against predators, their cannabinoid production accelerates and grow bushier buds.
What Are the Benefits of Super Cropping?
1. Increased Potency
For a cannabis plant, producing the highly regarded cannabinoid-laden buds makes the majority of their life’s work. Because cannabis plants are stressed, they produce more cannabinoids, like THC, as a way of protecting themselves. THC is produced in greater quantity by female cannabis plants, mostly in the flowers. Also, their stems, leaves, and other plant parts also produce THC. If you want to harvest high-THC or potent buds, consider implementing supper cropping.
Humans have plenty of cannabinoid receptors that comprise the endocannabinoid system. It’s no wonder why humans take cannabis very well, healing and curing different medical conditions. They are found mostly in the brains, so natural cannabinoids present in cannabis is well-loved by cannabis users. Make your cells happy and help medical patients find alternative treatment by supplying healthy and potent cannabis.
2. Grow Cannabis Plants Bushier
As an attempt to protect themselves from harm, cannabis plants tend to grow bushier. Their leaves, stems, and buds tend to grow larger and more. All you need is duct tape, your fingers, and a bit of cannabis growing knowledge and experience, so you can stress your cannabis plants the right way. Marijuana responds well when being stressed. That’s why super cropping is a proven technique to achieve extra flowering and vigorous growth.
3. Increased Yield
Because cannabis plants grow bushier and healthier, expect an increase in your yield. Another natural process that cannabis plants do is to grow more buds because super cropping stresses them. Super cropping marijuana plants create a “knuckle” on parts where bending happens. It is the easiest and most effective methods to stress your cannabis plants for better harvests. It is a simple method that can drastically increase yield.
What You’ll Need to Perform Cannabis Super Cropping
- Thumbs and forefingers
- A pair of rubber gloves (working with lots of cannabis plants). Remember that non-flowering cannabis stalks can be sticky because of the resin.
- Duct tape (if ever you commit mistakes).
- Garden ties such as netting, cages, trellis, or stakes. Regular zip ties or twisty ties work great.
- A bit of knowledge and growing experience. Read and watch super cropping tutorials and blogs.
Step-by-Step Guide to Super Crop Your Marijuana Plants
1. Choose the Branches of the Cannabis Plants You Like to Super-crop
The vegetative stage is the best time to do super cropping. This stage is the time that your cannabis plants have grown lots of healthy branches and when they’re growing vigorously before it’s fully into the flowering phase. When doing a super-cropping, it’s crucial to select the parts of the cannabis plants that are old. Of course, you need to ensure that these parts are still pliable or ‘bendy’.
Apply the super cropping technique on green parts, and not to wood-like parts like the bottom of the plant’s main stalk. For cannabis plants with multiple colas, implement super crop at the same location. When there is only a single main cola, you must super crop the greener and more pliable growth on the top portion of the plant. You need to create a flat canopy located on the top. Make sure that there are no stems that stick up taller than the other parts of the plant.
2. Squeeze the Branches and Bend Them
Your aim is to create damage on the inner tissue of the cannabis plant without damaging the outside ‘skin’, thus making the stem very pliable. By doing so, you can easily bend it in the direction where you like it to grow. When grabbing the branch and squeezing it, do it with firm pressure just right between your thumb and your forefinger. Do it as if you are attempting to crush the stem on the part or direction where you want the branch to bend. It will loosen the joint you’re about to make.
For more than 10 seconds, you need to wiggle the stem slowly back and forth between your fingers. Just maintain the pressure and loosen it where you prefer it to bend. Wiggle the stem until the stem feels softened. Gently and gradually bend over the stem towards your desired direction, then secure it in place. For a stiffer stem, wiggle it back and forth for 1 minute while you’re crushing or squeezing the stem in between your fingers. Bend the stem without breaking the skin. Don’t force it. Other growers grab each branch, snapping them quickly. However, doing this technique might likely snap the tissue outside, needing a tape. Marijuana plants are resilient, so the super crop site may bounce back in a few hours if you do not bend hard enough. To avoid it from happening, you need to secure the stem down using ties.
You’ll know when you have succeeded when the cannabis plant appears somewhat ‘broken’. It should rest at about 90-degree angle where you originally bent it. Of course, the branch should stay down.
The stem should remain at a permanent 90°-degree angle, and you need to ensure that the outside tissue remains intact. It is important to secure the stem back down, otherwise, it’ll come up again in a few days. Regardless of how you super crop your cannabis plants, this process causes your plants to grow bigger and better leaves and colas.
3. Fix Any Tears and Tie Down
Because the outside skin of the cannabis plant is still intact and whole, you do not even need duct tape. However, if you go a bit overboard, duct tape is very useful to reinforce your cannabis plant. You can also use any tape, as long as it is strong, to promote proper healing, most especially if there are cracks or slit outside the stem. If you don’t see these signs, you should secure the stem. Also, you can flip it right back up in a few days. Regular zip ties or plant twisty ties are great! The place where you bend and grow a big knot acts as a permanent band-aid. It is using it transporting nutrients and water to your plants for them to grow healthy and strong.
4. Remove the ‘Bandage’ Tape
Before you remove any tape, wait about 7 days. Keep in mind that it is just normal for the stem tissues to show signs of discoloration, most especially around the healing sites. If ever the healing site appears grey and totally wounded, put the tape back until it grows the protective ‘knuckle’. All normal processes are maintained, like the transportation of water and nutrients, as long as it has tape reinforcement. Just ties don any branches that straighten using the Low-Stress Training or LST techniques. After they are super cropped, stems are easily encouraged to give in to your will.
Super Cropping Technique Tips and Tricks
- Soften the exterior fibers and internal hard to make the branch easily bent and more pliable. You can apply slight pressure while you’re pinching the branch in between your forefinger and thumb without crushing it. Gently roll the branch between your thumb and finger to feel the structural succumb. It’s easy to bend green materials, while scarred or older woody branches need more coaxing. Do not overdo and turn the branch into mush. Just do it noticeably to weaken the spot.
- Try to super crop buds into a new position with garden ties that can guarantee they remain on your desired position. You can tie the branch on the scar’s trunk side. You’ll realize that you need less tying over time for a perfect bend.
- Remember that too much pressure may break or snap a branch completely. Do not panic. Marijuana is considered a virulent plant. It will recover most of the time. Just tape back any accidentally amputated stem before the leaves droop for an increased chance of success. Take a splint or you can use a wide tape to fix a broken branch or a hanging bud upside down.
- Most first time growers usually experiment on one cannabis plant. The results are promising and the capital is noticeable. When you do super cropping well, it involves snapping the cannabis bud-bearing branches below the flower cluster.
- Exposure one side of the cannabis flower cluster to the light is important. During the flowering stage, each calyx gets more light. When there is more light, it means more flower, more resin, and greater potency.
- Super cropping must be performed the moment your cannabis plants differentiate. It gives the new structures of the flowers on the underside of the branches the chance to bend up towards the light. Ensure that the bud is horizontally trained.
- The cannabis buds try to return to their original position from the moment they’ve been treated. Don’t be overly gentle, because being brutal enough is the primary purpose of super cropping to induce stress to your cannabis plants.
- Remember that different cannabis species have different structural strength and tolerances. Some are brittle and woody, while some break easily, so you can’t apply the same treatment equally to all of your plants.
- Unlike extensively plucking leaves or topping, super cropping doesn’t dramatically slow down the growth of your cannabis plants. You need to give your cannabis plants a little time to fully recover. If you apply High-Stress Training techniques properly, you’ll reap the best benefits beyond what you can imagine.
By applying the appropriate techniques in super cropping, you will achieve your goals as a cannabis grower. You won’t only harvest bigger yields, but also high-quality yields. Get to enjoy potent buds that can be used by recreational users or medical cannabis patients. Whether you are growing cannabis for personal use or you’ve been approved for commercial marijuana plantation, super cropping is a proven technique you can use to increase your chance of a successful yield.
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