"breaking" your stems?

Have you ever tried "breaking" you stems. I have been pinching, twisting and overall generally busting up my stems that will leed to bud sites later. Those bastards have been getting soo thick and exploding with growth throughout the whole branch. I highly recomend this method.

I have heard and seen something along these lines practiced, however, I cant say I would ever use it myself.

People also do this to supercrop.

The results are amazing! Try it one just one of your branches. I wish I had been doing this on my previous grows.

But whats this really doing for you, I mean what are the principles behind it other than just a big bulge where you fucked it up?

It has made the entire stem fat as fuck. My guess from there is that now the stems are super fat it is much easier for the nutrients to flow up that stem. Also, when it's time to flower that fat stem is very strong. It has no problems holding up the bud producing larger buds on those stems.

I started doing this bc my last grow I accidentally busted up one of my stems messing with my plants and that stem (one of the lowest branches) produced the biggest bud on the plant next to the cola. I am now seeing how growth is affected by doing this.

ganjagoddess said:

But whats this really doing for you, I mean what are the principles behind it other than just a big bulge where you fucked it up?

Click to expand...

distributing auxins throughout the plant for multiple large colas

plants are like people, when they break something their body repairs it to be stronger, im watching my the results of pinching and bending and im loving it

So this would be something to do more so in veg than flower, as you dont want to divert energy away from budding?

Technically though, when a bone breaks and re-heals, it may be stronger(seems to me like the only bone I ever broke is now weaker/more prone to breaking, but since your argument rests on this I'll let it slide), but it may also have an increased mass due to scar-tissue build up. Can you be sure that the thicker branches arent just thick with scar tissue, and that the 'auxins' are actually now having to thread thier way through a mess of scarred tissue to reach those colas? Also I wonder if the extra stress could lead to hermie branches?

I want to be clear, I'm not saying this 'does' or 'doesn't' work. I don't know. I've never tried it so I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way. But SmokerToker, shouldn't you at least wait until you have seen with your own eyes wether or not the buds are bigger before you start reccomending anything? I mean, at least wait until you see that you are getting vigorous bud growth, and not just extra thick stems, right? This could very well work just fine, I don't know much about the science behind how a broken marijuana plant repairs itself, only that it is usually pretty good at it, lol.

Anyway, the principles behind your theory of it being able to support more weight are very sound. This could even be a method to avoid having to stake strains like Big Bud and other high yeilders. I am not convinced one way or the other about your other theory, I think the jury is out on that one until it's nearing harvest time, for me at least. I've never seen this done before, only heard about it so if it works I am open to trying it

Theoretically the branches that grow bigger buds than the other could just be because the flow of nutrients and auxins to the other branches could be stunted by having to work there way through the scar tissue.

This could account for why you have bigger buds where you do this at, and smaller ones further up the plant.

So in essence you are stunting the overall growth of the plant branches above the pinch.

You could yeild more not doing so in my theory, and are hurting your overall yeild by doing this.

Just a theory, much like your theory of doing this helps.

This is not theory. Like I said I started doing this to all of my branches on this run after my last run I accidentally busted up one of my stems and that branch grew the biggest bud next to the cola and it was the lowest or one of the lowest branches.

The stems do grow extra thick from this, not just the scar tissue area. If it was just scar tissue area the only thickened areas would be the damaged areas. The new growth beyond the "damaged" areas grow with inhanced girth. From what I have seen no slowed growth occurs in the branches that you "damage". It is not like cutting a plant where it needs to close the wound at the point where most of the growth is occuring then continue to grow. Nutrients keep going past the damaged areas and the branch continues to grow at an increased rate from what I have seen.

Again the damaged branches are far from stunted. This is not similar to topping a plant. Nor is the rest of the plant stunted, from my experience.

Okay, I attached a couple of pics... The first two are just showing the over health of the plants. There are three plants there, @ 3 weeks into veg, approx. 28" (long in this case, I have them tied down). The last picture, you can see the damaged area on the lower part of the stem and the green new growth, see how fat the new growth is....

I take this method similar to a fan blowing on your plant. Is the fan stunting your plants growth??? Does the force from your fan make your plant thicker and stronger???

ganjagoddess said:

Just a theory, much like your theory of doing this helps.

Click to expand...

Are you doing this to all your plants? or are you doing it to just some so that you can compare results? Because unless you have a control to compare it to, your technique will remain a theory. Comparing to past harvests just isn't accurate, even if you don't think anything was different. I hope for the sake of science you at least left one or two decent one's untouched so you could make an actual comparison that would be able to refute the claims of nay-sayers were you proven to be correct by your findings. Please tell me you left at least one to compare.

When I do ANYTHING to a strain that I haven't worked with before, or a new thing to a strain I have grown before, I make sure to do some the regular way. For instance, some varieties respond very well to toppong, while others do not. for this reason I top a couple of each variety and leave the rest normal. That way I can compare their colas to ensure myself which way is better and which method I should use with any given species. "PIPE TESTING IN PROGRESS"

Buddy I have previous grows to compair to. Pictures, notes you know the data. I don't need side by side comparison, I can get that from my data. The compairison I used before I did this on this grow was the one branch from my last grow and now the increased growth rates from this go around.

This is the same stain as my previous grow. Clones as a matter of fact...

Look buddy I'm not trying to argue with you. Try it if you want, don't try it if you don't want to. I'm just trying to share my success with everyone so maybe they can have the same results. But don't try to refute the results that I'm seeing, when you haven't even tried it.

Dopalicious said:

distributing auxins throughout the plant for multiple large colas

Click to expand...

Thats the exact priniciple behind it

here my argument in picture format...

All im saying is that maybe doing so, for the short while, the plant is impeaded in maximum uptake of nutrients.

I compare this to the flow of water going down a gutter of a sidewalk.
If you put a large rock in the waters flow, it pools around it, and the stream past that point is lessened.

Nah GG the benefit is in the hormones released when the stems are broken nutrient pathways are repaired by the plant

gonjagoddess, I'm glad that you have an open mind to different possiblilites of what could be happening. If this where something that I didn't have application knowledge in I would take more from it, but I have seen just the opposite of what you are saying. If you would like I will post 4 day difference picture. Since I have my plants tied down it is pretty easy to see the growth of the branches. I have not been trying to "damage" the trunk of the plant, take that into account. I have been "damaging" as many of the braches I could. So you can see completly how unaffected or even increase in the growth rate.

Let me know if you would like to see.

NewGrowth said:

Nah GG the benefit is in the hormones released when the stems are broken nutrient pathways are repaired by the plant

Click to expand...

Im not arguing what is released just that doing so may have ill effects for the flow of water and nutes and hormones up the plant and result in less dense bud sites above the wound.

I equate all Buds below and at the node point of break to be a pooling that would result in bigger buds there, but not in the ones above it, which are consitent with his results.

I mean if you did this and saw bigger buds below the wound and at it, but not above it. One would think Oh this gets you bigger buds, when in fact he may be stunting the bud sites above the wound, and there would be no way to tell the difference.

smokertoker said:

gonjagoddess, I'm glad that you have an open mind to different possiblilites of what could be happening. If this where something that I didn't have application knowledge in I would take more from it, but I have seen just the opposite of what you are saying. If you would like I will post 4 day difference picture. Since I have my plants tied down it is pretty easy to see the growth of the branches. I have not been trying to "damage" the trunk of the plant, take that into account. I have been "damaging" as many of the braches I could. So you can see completly how unaffected or even increase in the growth rate.

Let me know if you would like to see.

Click to expand...

Absolutely More data the better! Like I said I have a theory and so do you!