Monster Cropping

[Ginger Viking]

Here is the back story. Late last year I popped a handful of beans(around 8 beans, 1 fem and 7 regs). I always throw in 1 fem with regs to guarantee a lady in worst case scenario. The fem showed sex first around the same time i flipped to 12/12 to force the regs to show sex. Well I had a few hold outs on showing sex and I had to leave them 12/12 longer than I wanted. I flipped back to 18/6 after almost 3 weeks. Needless to say I screwed with their life cycle too much and had to reveg. As soon as the plants went into reveg they stalled out. The plants bushed out but didn't grow much vertically. I noticed as soon as I started seeing 3 finger leaves again the plants just exploded with growth and I am seeing the desirable monster cropping effects.
Here is the question. I have heard that monster cropped clones do not stretch. I will buy that and believe it. Will a monster cropped mother plant stretch? I think it will. It is back to its same hormonal balance as it was right before it went into flower so I would think it would stretch.
Second question. What would you do with these plant? Flower them out and be done with them or use them as mothers because the undergrowth is so dense you can get a ton of clones off with it using minimal space.

 

[Heisen]

They still stretch but I think cause there are so many nodes the stretch is maybe a little smaller. I have a gmo that tried to flower in veg and than finally straightened out. After I got her in flower shes trying to reveg under 12 12 lol. Shit looks crazy. The new clones off her have been normal

 

[Ginger Viking]

Following up here. I flowered these girls out and they stretched like crazy. One couldn't support herself at week 3 and the other at 4.5 weeks. I managed to string up some support around them but a scrog would've been ideal. I've even got a few buds hanging upside down. Got about a week left on one and 2 to 3 left on the other. The buds hanging upside down gave me an idea. Anyone ever tried to grow a plant upside down like the tomato plants they use to advertise 10 or 15 years ago? I think the brand was topsy turvy. Hang the plant from the ceiling and the light on the floor. This would solve a lot of support issues for some people. Just a crazy stoner thought.

 

[The knight of green oakes]

I,v ran many many revegged plants.you do get lots of growth with lots of shoots but those shoots are usually very thin and just grow lots of small wispy buds.what I do is once there's plenty of shoots I select the best shoots,what ever amount of tops you want and strip all the wee scrawny wispy shoots away leaving the plant to concentrate all it's energy into your choosen shoots instead of all the wee shitty ones.
I,v never seen a drop in the quality of a revegged plant.the nugs are just the same quality in revegges as the are normally.

 

[Greenthumbskunk]

Here is the back story. Late last year I popped a handful of beans(around 8 beans, 1 fem and 7 regs). I always throw in 1 fem with regs to guarantee a lady in worst case scenario. The fem showed sex first around the same time i flipped to 12/12 to force the regs to show sex. Well I had a few hold outs on showing sex and I had to leave them 12/12 longer than I wanted. I flipped back to 18/6 after almost 3 weeks. Needless to say I screwed with their life cycle too much and had to reveg. As soon as the plants went into reveg they stalled out. The plants bushed out but didn't grow much vertically. I noticed as soon as I started seeing 3 finger leaves again the plants just exploded with growth and I am seeing the desirable monster cropping effects.
Here is the question. I have heard that monster cropped clones do not stretch. I will buy that and believe it. Will a monster cropped mother plant stretch? I think it will. It is back to its same hormonal balance as it was right before it went into flower so I would think it would stretch.
Second question. What would you do with these plant? Flower them out and be done with them or use them as mothers because the undergrowth is so dense you can get a ton of clones off with it using minimal space.

They will still stretch.
The difference is that the plant focuses it's energy in dozens of stems instead of just 1 main stem or 3 or 4.
The more energy dedicated to a top the more it will grow. The more energy dedicated to dozens of branches the less it will stretch.

I've grown the same plant now a long time and have seen it do it all. Depends on how I manipulate it.

I personally want many tops as your gonna yield way more vs 1 big cola.

 

[Greenthumbskunk]

Following up here. I flowered these girls out and they stretched like crazy. One couldn't support herself at week 3 and the other at 4.5 weeks. I managed to string up some support around them but a scrog would've been ideal. I've even got a few buds hanging upside down. Got about a week left on one and 2 to 3 left on the other. The buds hanging upside down gave me an idea. Anyone ever tried to grow a plant upside down like the tomato plants they use to advertise 10 or 15 years ago? I think the brand was topsy turvy. Hang the plant from the ceiling and the light on the floor. This would solve a lot of support issues for some people. Just a crazy stoner thought.

If it is a stretchy plant then at the time of flip then go in and pinch off the tops all over her. It will limit stretch and give you 2 tops on each one you pinched off so an added benefit.

 

[Greenthumbskunk]

Following up here. I flowered these girls out and they stretched like crazy. One couldn't support herself at week 3 and the other at 4.5 weeks. I managed to string up some support around them but a scrog would've been ideal. I've even got a few buds hanging upside down. Got about a week left on one and 2 to 3 left on the other. The buds hanging upside down gave me an idea. Anyone ever tried to grow a plant upside down like the tomato plants they use to advertise 10 or 15 years ago? I think the brand was topsy turvy. Hang the plant from the ceiling and the light on the floor. This would solve a lot of support issues for some people. Just a crazy stoner thought.

I've ran lights on top and bottom of a plant at same time before. Made bud but just didn't yield enough on the bottom side to justify the added cost of buying more lights and electric.

 

[Ginger Viking]

They will still stretch.
The difference is that the plant focuses it's energy in dozens of stems instead of just 1 main stem or 3 or 4.
The more energy dedicated to a top the more it will grow. The more energy dedicated to dozens of branches the less it will stretch.

I've grown the same plant now a long time and have seen it do it all. Depends on how I manipulate it.

I personally want many tops as your gonna yield way more vs 1 big cola.

Ironic you found this thread and posted today because one of these got the axe today at 60 days. She stretched about 2x. I defoliated down to her initial height at flip and I think this is about the only thing I did right on this grow. It was a must for circulation. I trained this plant by bending the main over from the bottom and topping at 8 nodes for a total of 13 mains(most of which were topped)with an even canopy. When I defoliated I also cut any branch that pointed downward, mostly from the mainline portion. Easily 50+ tops on this plant most on the mainline portion. This grow is priceless to me from the amount of knowledge gained. I'm not a noob but by no means a pro. This was a super long grow and I could've gotten 4x the yield if I had done things differently but this is personal smoke so nothing lost only knowledge gained along with some killer smoke. The main thing I learned was to scrog any monster cropped plants. I think this alone would've easily doubled the yield because she was laying all over herself blocking light from bud sights from week 3.5. The other thing that would've helped yield would been giving her more room. She was in a tent with another plant both of which could've filled it up alone. The only clones I could get to take were at 2.5 weeks of flower so this time I'm going to reclone the clone after she gets straightened out from monster cropping...again and see how she does.

 

[Greenthumbskunk]

Ironic you found this thread and posted today because one of these got the axe today at 60 days. She stretched about 2x. I defoliated down to her initial height at flip and I think this is about the only thing I did right on this grow. It was a must for circulation. I trained this plant by bending the main over from the bottom and topping at 8 nodes for a total of 13 mains(most of which were topped)with an even canopy. When I defoliated I also cut any branch that pointed downward, mostly from the mainline portion. Easily 50+ tops on this plant most on the mainline portion. This grow is priceless to me from the amount of knowledge gained. I'm not a noob but by no means a pro. This was a super long grow and I could've gotten 4x the yield if I had done things differently but this is personal smoke so nothing lost only knowledge gained along with some killer smoke. The main thing I learned was to scrog any monster cropped plants. I think this alone would've easily doubled the yield because she was laying all over herself blocking light from bud sights from week 3.5. The other thing that would've helped yield would been giving her more room. She was in a tent with another plant both of which could've filled it up alone. The only clones I could get to take were at 2.5 weeks of flower so this time I'm going to reclone the clone after she gets straightened out from monster cropping...again and see how she does.

If you have plants crowding for space it will def effect yield where they are competing for light.
I use a scrog net for flattening it out and then another level or 2 if it is kinda stretchy. Those I have about 8" gap apart from each other.
Indicas I usually don't put another level on.

If it has a thick canopy I will also defoilate a lot of the big fan leaves at day 21.

I've shrunk down my rdwc system from 21 gal totes to 8 gal buckets. Yield is usually .5 lb to over a lb per plant in those 8 gal buckets depending on variety.

I Also use 4 gal rdwc and 5 gal buckets that is just dwc and all I scrog. They just don't yield quiet as much.

 

[DET—PDX]

I think the most important thing I’ve learned to avoid an overly bushy plant is to train early and often. If you can get the side branches going wide to start, you will not have leaf clutter blocking bud sites later on. I 100% agree with SCROG and defoliating the bottom 1/3 of plants as well.