I've grew a monster crop plant in the past but with pretty weak LED'S and achieved a plant with lots of branches but a pretty poor yield.
With better lighting and a scrogg net, I want to give monster cropping another go.
My question, if I were to lollipop as well as keep side branching pruned to a minimum, should this result in much fatter cola's and/or a greater overall yield? My thinking is, for starters, the plant has so much more energy and that energy could be dedicated towards bud growth and not growing more and more new branches.
The problem with re-vegging a plant that has been through a full flower cycle is the added time it takes to transition back to veg and recover to vigorous growth. You’ll need more patience than the average noob grower to pull this off even if you start over with a different plant. It might be a better plan to let this one grow out until you can take cuttings and then monster crop the offspring. Once a plant gets all woody like this it is not as easy or predictable to train as when it is first shooting off. Clones get kinda branchy so if you are trying for a limited number of fat ass donkey dick colas begin LST in early veg with plants from seed. Start out with a FIM and then bend & pinch the spaces in between all the nodes to favor the lower branches as new colas. “Monstering” becomes more predictable when you start from a seed or healthy young clone because the plant is not starting off w/ 1-3 blade leaves and woody stems already set in their ways....
Low stress training is only one aspect of monster cropping; light manipulation is yet another. The sun does not shine at exactly 18/6 and 12/12 from one season to another. It gradually shifts a minute per day until flowering is triggered. Outdoor plants usually have a more rigid structure and bigger buds as a result. So if you have invested in intense indoor lighting that can get through the canopy why not grow plants to their fullest potential?
It starts in early veg; grow and LST the plants until a fair number of colas are formed and then gradually reduce the hours of daylight by one or two hours per week. This closer mimics the suns cycle and fills out the plants with bushy “pre-flower” growth. For seeds train/veg until about week 7 but for clones wait until you have the basic plant structure you want before “monstering“ them.
Start at 18/6 and go to 17/7 or 16/8 and so on. Once most strains reach 14/10 or less they begin to shoot pistils. This is a good method to sex the plants... once you know what’s what clone the girls and kill or separate the boys. Great way to select potential mommas/daddies too. Reduces “stretching” ...spaces in between nodes are kept short which form long solid spires of bud later on.
At this point they are in both veg and bloom phase simultaneously. You can always opt to flip right to bloom phase from here but to truly get more bulk go back to 18/6 for at least a week or two. When the colas are at the vertical height you desire you can flip right to 12/12 or slowly reduce daylight to trigger bloom and avoid stretching altogether. This can easily double the yields but requires a shit-ton of patience. Not the long winded answer you were looking for but I hope you give this a shot....
