We have heard a lot of different and effective methods of keeping our marijuana garden sustainable all throughout the year. As technology advances, growers find more ways of keeping their marijuana harvest coming and they are increasing even more as the year goes by.
Marijuana is a seasonal plant. It can only flower once a year, therefore, you can only harvest once a year as well. After harvesting and the season has ended, the plant will gradually deteriorate and will eventually die naturally. To keep the characteristic of the marijuana plant alive, the seeds that carry the genes will continue its legacy unto the following season.
From seeds to plant to flowering then harvesting, this process is tedious and been practised since the olden days.
There is a breakthrough in growing marijuana. Instead of letting the plant slowly deteriorate and die, it was found out that there is a possibility that the process can stop on the post-harvest stage and allows the marijuana plant to continue growing until the second season.
Now, your marijuana plant can be manipulated by forcing it to go back to its flowering stage and then to its vegetative stage once more. This is what we call “re-vegging” technique and this process is simple and very easy to follow. From re-vegging technique will rise another process that will optimize the yield of marijuana, making every grower’s dream come true. In this post, we will learn the ” Monster Cropping technique”.
What is Monster Cropping?
Defining monster cropping in the marijuana business is simple. This process is very new, this is a training technique that is also called the “Flowering Clones“. This is the process when you take a clone from a flowering plant. This can produce stronger and bushier plants.
If correctly done, these monster-cropped clones can potentially produce plants that have higher yields in their second season or cycle that is due to their increased vegetative mass, vigorous stems, and branches, furthermore there are more additional node points that mean more potential buds. If you will practice monster cropping, you will get a higher success rate if these monster crop marijuana plants are grown outdoors or in greenhouses.
Reminders Before Using the Monster Cropping Technique
1. Learn and Understand the Basics
The Monster cropping technique could cause a significant level of stress to the marijuana plant. Whenever you cut good parts of the plant in order to grow the clones, this places a big burden on the health of the plant in general. If this is not done correctly, this could weaken the marijuana plant and could even cause stunted growth and will stop growing.
2. Monster Cropping Technique is not Applicable to All Strains
Because of the high stress and trauma that monster cropping causes to the marijuana plants, the monster cropping technique is only applicable to strains that follows regular photoperiod. Using this technique will require that plants ample time to recover from the damage and fortunately, the regular strains tend to have a longer life cycle that are very helpful in giving them enough time to heal and complete the flowering stage.
3. Prepare Your Materials and Equipment
When executing the technique, make sure to always use only clean and sharp scissors. This will lower any chances of infection. There are growers who will even sterilize whatever cutting tools they will use, and this is not a bad idea if you wanted to be one step forward in achieving a successful procedure.
Another importance of using a clean and sharp cutting tool is that it will aid in the healing process and for the successful rooting of the clones. Also, use clean container and water where you can soak the cloned stems and wait for them to root.
You Can Now Start Monster Cropping!
How to Monster Crop?
1. Choose the Clones Wisely
The ideal time when to cut clones is when the plant is into its 3rd week or more of the flowering stage. It is okay if you will take them later, this will not affect the result.
When it comes to picking which parts to cut, always choose the branches in the lower areas because they have a tendency to root faster compared to those branches on the upper or top area. Always cut diagonally across the stem because it will result in a more surface area where nutrients and water can enter, and furthermore, it will give more space for the roots to sprout.
When taking clones, you can use the shotgun principle, getting more than you actually plan to cultivate. In reality, not all the clones will successfully root or some might not root at all this will result in the failure of the reverting process. You have to balance the number of clones you will take and to leave enough on the donor plant.
2. Rooting
After choosing and taking the clones, put them in a container with clean water and keep them there for a while. This ensures that there is no air that will enter the fragile system of the clones because if air makes it way into their system this will cause the death of your clones.
Do not be alarmed if the first leaves of your clone are unusual because once the clone survived and healthy and the reverting process is finished, the next set of leaves will be the usual leaves you see.
3. Going Back to Vegetation
You just need to go back to the light cycle on the vegetation stage. You can choose from 18/6, 20/4 or 24/0, and you do not have to worry about the intensity of the light because clones can survive on CFL with daylight or cool white light spectrum.
Do not disturb the clones’ buds to avoid the growth to stop.
4. You Can Boost the Growth with SCROG
If you are a hardcore marijuana grower and wanted to maximize your hard work, you can utilize monster cropping together with the ScrOG method. In a short period of time, this combination will surely produce heavy branches of monster buds.
Training Techniques
Monster Cropping Marijuana works very well if combined other training techniques and gets better results.
Here are some of the training techniques you can apply along with monster cropping.
Topping
Topping is an easy and less stressful pruning method that encourages multiple kolas on each flowering site.
Fimming
Fimming is taking Topping to the next level because with Fimming you can quickly multiply the flowering heads from 1 to 4 on each site.
Lollipopping
By trimming the base of the plants helps them to focus their energy in their upper branches and their future flower sites.
Low-Stress Training (LST)
Using Topping twice with a non-pruning stress technique could definitely increase yields further.
Super Cropping
This encourages lateral growth and production of buds by putting stress on the branches of each plant.
Benefits of Utilizing Monster Cropping Technique
1. The biggest advantage of the Monster cropping technique is that you will no longer need a mother plant to guarantee a continuous harvest. Now, simply take clones from the flowering marijuana plants and you can have all of your plants into the flowering stage, and then get the next batch of clones from them.
2. This method will save you a lot of resources because this process will allow you to use the space, the light, and air, that the mother plant normally needs in order to produce delicious buds and use the same resources to a much larger number of plants now.
3. Another benefit of using Monster cropping is that the clones which were taken from the flowering plants have been proven to grow extremely bushy. Therefore forming tons of nodes and side branches.
Having plants that have lots of side branches also means that a lot of buds are exposed to light directly. Exposure to a lot of buds to direct light will result in high yields.
How to Increase Yield?
So you know a new technique that will make it possible for more yields.
Here are also some other ways to increase your yields by controlling other aspects.
1. Selecting the Best Strains
In order to get a high yield, make sure to choose the strains that really results in high yields.
Some of these cannabis strains are as follows:
- Big Bud and Super Skunk are both Indica. For Sativa, you can choose Purple Haze and
- Maui Wowie and for Hybrid, you can select from White Widow and Trainwreck
All of these strains are well known for they are easy to cultivate and if correctly managed and handled will definitely give you a large number of yields.
2. Provide Good Lighting
As proven, good lighting would really increase the probability of getting big buds.
This means that you have to invest in good lighting fixtures and equipment.
Once you have those, make sure that your marijuana plants are properly exposed to the light in the right places, meaning exposing the buds to the lights because if they do not get the light these buds needs they will not grow.
3. Using Carbon Dioxide
If you have done your homework, adding a little carbon dioxide is a good idea.
But you have to very careful, so in order for this to work and have a higher success rate you have to follow these simple steps.
- Slowly pour a can of sparkling water into your sprayer.
- Make sure that the bubbles do not appear while you pour the water otherwise the CO2 is gone.
- Spray the water only to the leaves, not the bud and you can opt to spray a little in the soil.
- If the CFL lights you are using is strong, this will keep enough amount of CO2 in the area of your plants. The use of CO2 Supplement is ideal for HPS and LED-based plants.
4. Provide Quality Soil and Nutrients
Another factor is the best soil mix you will use to grow your marijuana plants because this will surely make big buds. You can use commercially available soil mix and nutrients or you can have your very own version of homemade soil mix and make sure that you know what is the best for your plants. Do not over saturate and watch out for pests.
You can also introduce a source of sugar to your plants that are close to the end its flowering state because this can boost the weight of the buds.
5. Maintain the Right Temperature and Humidity
Keeping the ideal temperature and humidity leads to increased yields
You have to watch out for VDP or vapor-pressure deficit, this represents the amount moisture in the air and when saturated, how much moisture the air can hold. You have to do your homework to better understand how this can help you achieve high yielding marijuana plants.
As we advance, we find more ways to effectively maximize what we have at the moment. This method is not just for seasoned marijuana growers. Even a novice in growing can succeed if you study the technique, follow the steps meticulously and be patient. For Monster Cropping to succeed, make sure to pay attention to the steps and avoid committing mistakes that will put all your efforts into waste. This technique really needs a lot of work to make sure to dedicate your time to get the results that you wanted.
Conclusion
As always practice makes perfect. No one is as good when they started. Just stay focused and learned from your mistakes and apply whatever you learned from this article and read more about the craft of marijuana growing in order to get the best possible results and who knows you might invite another technique just like this or much better that could help all marijuana growers in the world to achieve high-quality buds all year round and possibly discover new strains that will be very useful in all aspects of life, whether for medical or recreational users.
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