Hey everybody, this is Shane McCormick from the cheap home grow podcast. And on today's show. I have returning guest. Dr. MJ from cocoa for cannabis doctor. MJ comes on the show today to talk about the importance of stress training and Topping. Please remember to press subscribe and enjoy the show. Hey, everybody before the stress training and Topping podcast starts with dr. MJ. I invited him back on and he's going to be talking about his spring Auto flour challenge. JH and is going to be starting April 20th AKA 420. So, dr. MJ. Can you tell my audience a little bit about this challenge? Yeah, absolutely shame. Thanks for having me on to do this. We're going to do this bring out of flour challenge. We like to do these grow challenges that are collaborative grows. They're not competitions. Everybody's welcome to come and Grow With US new Growers old Growers whoever for this challenge. We're going to grow Auto flowers and we're going to germinate them on XX we're really excited because we're going to try to grow the same strains or at least try to match up a lot of the same strings to try to facilitate that I put together a really great deal with the London SEED Center. They're going to give everybody 25% off your the official strains that we've selected and they're going to go ahead and give you 10% off anything else your order with yet that package as well. So we're going to be growing Auto glue Berry OG think different, Colorado. Oh cookies and night Queen all from the breeder Dutch Passion. They're all really great autoflowering strains, and you know, hopefully there's something there for everybody. So I hope everybody would come and you know, it's just a great opportunity to get to grow together in the spirit of collaboration where just a friendly helpful Community. Nobody's going to give you a hard time or try to harass you. We just like to grow together. So come on over to Coco for cannabis.com Weird / challenge you still got plenty of time to order your seeds and Dan to get ready to grow with us on 4/20. All right. Dr. Andre. Thank you very much and guys, please enjoy the stress training and Topping podcast. Hello and welcome to the cheap home grow podcast a show for individuals that want to learn more about growing cannabis indoors. This is a podcast dedicated to helping you with your indoor growing Adventure. You'll learn how to grow your own and not have to rely on others for your medicine the cheap home grow podcast will also feature timely interviews with cannabis industry veterans shaping the culture and politics of cannabis. All right here is your host Shane McCormick and the cheap home grow podcast. Hello everybody. This is Shane McCormick from the cheap home grow podcast, and we have returning guest and Fan Favorite doctor MJ cocoa, or dr. MJ for short. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram at dr. MJ Coco. Now when he was last on the show, we talked about germination, but he comes back on the show today and he's going to be talking about topping and training. So doctor if you would could you please once again just give a very brief background about yourself and then we can get right into the topic of conversation. Okay? Sure. Thanks Shane. It's a pleasure to be back with you today. Yeah, my name is MJ Coco. I have a PhD and I work with Farmers. I published the book cocoa for cannabis a Growers guide which is published through green Harvest press and available on Amazon and I run the website cocoa for cannabis.com where our His to help Growers maximize their success by sharing proven practices in scientifically accurate articles tutorials and gods as I started getting into sore growing my own and growing in Coco. I realized there's a lot of different information available in different sites on the web and a lot of its contradictory. A lot of it isn't very scientifically accurate. So we've started putting together these resources to help Growers and Sort of provide good positive proven information coming from the science of horticulture. Okay. Well listen doctor MJ. Thank you for coming on the show again. I am long with my listeners. Appreciate it. We appreciate you coming back on in the information that you provide but let's get right, you know, let's get right into the topic of conversation and that being that being topping and training now, you know, you know as you as you know, my My audience, you know, they are people, you know, they are listeners that are probably just getting into growing their own or maybe they've been a you know, maybe they've been a been through a few a few grows. So I mean really in terms of topping and training techniques. I mean, you know, what would you recommend that they do? Yeah. Well first of all topping and training or really effective strategies Especially for indoor growing and they can be started on your first grow. You don't need to sort of wait and get experience growing untrained plans before you start training and basically let's start with thinking just why we want to train our plans in the first place. A lot of people think that plants know how to grow themselves and sort of have evolved to grow effectively and to an extent that that's true our cannabis plants. Evolved to grow sort of in competition with a lot of other plants and they're in competition to get up and get the sunlight, you know before they get shaded out and that's not the the scenario that we're sort of growing and inside a tent or inside an indoor grow room. So in nature plants need to invest a lot of energy and sort of getting tall quickly so that they can get up above the rest of the plants and can abbess has evolved to produce that one sort of terminal Cola that rises above the rest and make sure that it continues to get the light when you're growing indoors. That's not a very good sort of way to maximize your you're harvesting of the light energy. So we're providing light and spending a great deal of electricity to provide that light. So we want to make sure that we sort of take maximum advantage of the light and and that means having as much of the plant And the right distance from the from the light as possible. So instead of a sort of a tall Christmas tree shape plant. We want to have a broad almost a table top shape plan that has a big broad flat canopy instead of a tall skinny Tower. So the sort of goal of plant training is to achieve that shape that sort of spreads the plant out and keeps a lot of it the right distance from the light. Right. Usually there's two types of training you have you have you have low stretch training in high-stress training. I mean really as a new grower that's growing inside. I mean what I mean what which which one would you recommend that a new or a novice grower do and also what you know, what are the what are the differences between low stress and high stress? Perfect. Yeah low stress training is really when you're not going to cut. Or pinched or injured the plant or at least you're going to try not to do any of those things. So let us just training is usually just bending parts of the plant over including the whole plan. Sometimes you try to bend the whole plant over and tie it down and you do that to sort of promote a shift in apical dominance. Solo service training is just sort of bending in tying and high stress training is any kind of cutting that you're going to do to the plan to topping faming or even super cropping is considered a high stress technique, even though you're not cutting your severely pinching and bending the plant in that way now for new Growers, I think you should plan to use the combination of both low and high stress training. Um, one of the things about low-stress training that I think especially new Growers. It sounds less risky low-stress sounds like low risk, but in a lot of ways low-stress training is actually higher risk than high stress training. Yeah, when you're bending the plant over oftentimes, you can just snap it unexpectedly in a place that you didn't really want to snap it and so you got to be careful. You don't sort of low stress too hard and it really does create some sort of a risk as you're putting that stress in that pressure on the plant. So if you do it, well, it is low stress on the plant but there's actually a good deal of risk involved in low stress training high stress training has sort of higher stress on the plant because you're going to be removing parts of it or you're going to be pinching it, but there's less risk of things sort of going. Wrong or going sideways on you. So it may be a little bit higher stress for the plant. But but there's lower risk involved. So really don't let those sort of labels convince you they what you should do is new Growers just the low stress training. It's still very appropriate and actually, you know topping which is considered a high stress technique is probably the easiest technique To master. It doesn't take you know, it doesn't take a tremendous amount of skill to just sort of cut the top off the plant, right? It can take much more skill to figure out like how much can I bend this down? And where should I tie it and how am I bending it down all of that. I mean that takes sort of more skill and practice topping just takes a pair of scissors and you know a little bit of Courage, right? Yeah, and you would just basically Cut the stem and boom in and you're done. Exactly exactly you just cut the stem off you I usually when I do my first topping on my plants, I grow a modified main line and I'll talk about that in a little bit here. But the first topping that I do I let the plants ground until they have six true nodes. So six nodes serrated leaves and then I top the top three nodes off. So I cut the plant in between the third and the fourth Fourth node, and it's like removing half of the plant. It takes a little bit of a sort of convincing to new Growers that this is a good idea good thing to do, but it certainly doesn't take any skill to go and sort of take a pair of scissors and cut the plant in half. So yeah in terms of sort of skills that are appropriate or practices that are appropriate for new Growers. I think topping is an absolutely appropriate. Technique for new Growers. I don't think you need to have much experience and I think it really is beneficial and let me talk a little bit about sort of why we top or why we want to train in really any of these ways. It cannabis plants have a form of apical dominance where the Apex or the the top growth tip on any stock. Awk severely limits the growth of the the lower growth tips on that same stock. So the top or that apical growth tip produces a hormone called auxins and those auxins flow downward through the plant and inhibit the growth of lower branches. So when you're growing a plant that's not trained you'll notice that that top The top color that tub growth tip grows much better than the ones right under it and then at well down if you have a tall plant five or six nodes down the branches will start growing better. And that's because the auxins don't flow very far. They sort of they have a proximity effect. So the auxins are produced by that Apex and then they sort of filter down through the plant inhibiting the growth of the lower. Ranches, but especially the lower branches that are close to the Apex as it gets further away the effect of the auxins wears off and those branches start to grow out more and it's because of that that cannabis plants end up growing like a Christmas tree with the lower branches well developed, but the branches close to the Apex are short and almost stunted. So when you top a cannabis plan and you cut off that Apex growth Tip it eliminates the source of the auxins and that almost immediately the next set of growth tips down will assume dominance. They're no longer being inhibited by the auxins and they start growing much better and I actually go through in my manifold process. I'm doing this modified main line. I top twice. Ice and at that point there's really the distribution of auxins coming from the the Apex growth tips are so distributed through the plant that all the branches grow crazy and you get branching and really sort of good growth good horizontal growth at that point that would never happen. If you didn't top the plan because that that Apex growth tip would be inhibiting all of that lower sort of growing. Um, so topping is the most effective way to when we call break apical dominance and it sort of redistributes the growth potential of the plant out into the branches and you get your able to then have four tops or have eight times. I usually grow plants that end up having eight main colas and you can spread those out to sort of maximize that the way the plant receives. Light and create a nice even canopy as opposed to started that Christmas tree shape you end up pulling like a candelabra shape or sort of a something like a candelabra or a menorah from Hanukkah. Right? Right, right. Exactly. Now, I mean II know we just said, you know topping is pretty straightforward. But you know, I mean you said that you top multiple times during yeah, as some need that that grows myself. I mean, you know How do you know when to top and not to top during your girl? I mean other certainly that's a perfect question. You know, I mean, I mean, what do you what do you look for when you want your plan to be growing? Well, you don't want to plant or top a plant that's struggling in any way or that's having any kind of issues. So if it's dealing with any kind of nutrient issues, if it's dealing with any kind of you know in Cocoa oftentimes early, you get some cal-mag issues. You want the plant to Of get through all of that and be growing well before you start topping. The other thing is you don't want to top a plan before it's had a chance to sort of develop a root mass. So I never taught plants until they have six true nodes and you can you can top in different ways. There's a training technique just single top training where you just planted top the plant once that really reduces the The the apical dominance allows a lot more branching and gets a much better plant. I do a modified main line, which is topping it twice and it's very sort of formulaic. So as long as your plants are growing, well, I just do a fairly simple formula for how I highly trained my plants let them grow out until they have six true nodes then I top I say I top to the third know But I actually top just below the fourth node, and then actually leaves quite a bit of stump sort of above that third node and that stump acts as sort of an anchor and Anchor Point to tie the the plant together. So I leave the growth tips at the third node those two growth tips and I take off the growth tips from the first and second node. So at that point after my first topping there are only two growth tips on my plane. And those are the two sort of lateral branches from the third node. I leave all the leaves that I can so when I trim those lower growth tips, I do not trim the leaves I try to leave those. Yeah. Yeah leaves Harvest light energy and help the plant to grow. So especially early on when a plant is Young and small and only has a few leaves you want to leave as many In the leaves as you possibly can so then I have those two growth tips. They're usually pretty short at this point. But because of the training that I just did especially topping it there now the Apex and they grow pretty quick. I usually wait about five to six days and those two growth tips already have three nodes on them each and I just let them grow naturally for those five to six days. I just Sort of let them grow they each growth hip gets gets about three growth and our grandkids about three nouns. And then I either do LST of those stress training where I just tie the two nodes down there the two branches down or usually what happens because the plants are growing really well at that point is that I actually have two super crop to get those two branches to get down. So two super crap. You have to really pinch the point where you want the And to bend before you bend it and and you want to you want to pinch it hard at that point and then sort of hold it while you bend it down. It puts a little almost a fold in the plant which will create sort of a knuckle in the growth respond in it in a response to that and create actually a structural point of strength. It looks when you first do it like it'll be a point of weakness, but it creates a little point of strength that that super cropping. So at this point you have a plant that looks almost like a t it comes up and then there's two branches and you want those two branches to be sort of horizontal with three with three growth nodes on them. I top those two branches at that point. So they don't grow past the third node. Okay, and I remove the growth tips from the second node. I'm just I'm just trying to get it. I'm just trying to vigils with yeah, so At that point I have to break branches and they have to growth tips at the first node and to growth tips at the 3rd note. Okay, two girls tips. The seconds go. Okay. Yeah the to grow tips that would have been at the second were removed. So you end up with for growth tips on each branch or a total of eight growth tips. All right. So so basically with those eight growth tips, they are in that sweet. Spot regarding the light. Yeah. Well, they're all then you have eight growth tips that are all at the same height the same tension, right and from that point forward, they'll all grow equally so they'll all grow at the same speed because they're not getting inhibited by each other by the the ox and slowing down where because they're all starting from the same height position and auxins won't flow down one branch and then up another they only flow down so when you get Was eight tips that are all their own leaders, then they'll all grow at the same speed and that's when you can start doing fun things with training. You know, I know you've had Atlas plant trainer on here before. Yes, Robin. Yeah, and I've got a knotless plant trainer myself now and I think it's just the perfect sort of training device for this style that I'm talking about this modified main line that I'm talking about. About because you got your eight now Mains and you can train them sort of away from each other which opens up the inside of the plan and since you've trained it to eight Mains that all of the branches on these plants are going to grow. Well, you're not going to have that stunting that you normally have on your branches when you don't top a plant. So you're going to have all of your now lateral branches coming off of those eight means are going to be growing. Really well and able to actually reach the canopy you're going to have more of those lateral branches, then you can actually keep so one of the the challenges in this in this training style is sort of figuring out which of those branches you need to prune and how many of them you're going to have space for and you'll end up with with the plant with just a bunch of tops a bunch of those top colas and far fewer. I've sort of the lower popcorn Cole has that form lower on the branches. I mean, you know most Growers really prefer to have the tops anyway, so it's a it's a better way of training sort of that kind of the kind of product that you want to end up with in the end. Yeah. That's yeah, that's true. I mean I had I had robbed on the show. Actually. I spoke with him a couple days ago. We were supposed to get together. Well during my work but you know things got busy and I And I couldn't meet up with him. So if he is listening, which I hope he is Rob. I apologize but him and I will be talking soon. Yeah. Yeah. I really I think he's got a great product you dumb. I just want to put that out there and I'm really excited to try it. I've thought about lots of different things for training have been tempted to use tomato cages in the past. The problem with tomato cages is if you put one that's actually big enough for how big the plants are going to end up. It'll get in the way of the lights when the plants are little and if you put one that's not big enough, then it's not going to sort of help you in the end. I've used bamboo just bamboo Stakes that but I had to get six foot tall bamboo Stakes to get them tall enough to support the colas at the end of the grow and that's just incredibly awkward to try to be adding a five or six foot section of bamboo and Sided 10th. It's barely larger than that. So being able to sort of grow that training device and build it as the plant is growing is just going to be really awesome and let's make it go or sort of you want it to go. So I think it's the perfect solution and if you want to do a main line like I did then I think that that was planned trainer really couldn't couldn't be a better solution than that. And you know, I'm going to be doing this I think by the time this episode airs, my plant should be sort of wealth or cyborg up with its Atlas plan trainer sort of half half plants have machine there. So yeah it encourage your listeners to if they're interested to check out my grow. I will be documenting that grow on our Forum on Coco for cannabis.com forward slash Community come check out our form check out my grow and you'll see sort of How I've trained the plant and how I'm using that was plant trainer, you know, is there anything that I'm missing? Is there anything that I should be asking that I'm not any any final statements on your end? Yeah. Well, you know, there's a few other things that I do in terms of training. I do a lot of super cropping during the grow which is a really great way to to manage sort of runaway colas if you have one that's growing faster than the Others or if they're all growing too fast and you're running out of room you can use super cropping which again a lot of new Growers are somewhat scared Orson a skeptical of super cropping requires that you pinch the crap out of the plant. You really want to it's yeah people say that, you know, you pinch it and then you fold the plant over but you want to pinch them. Harder than you can pinch and you want to fold incredibly gently. So super cropping is really about pinching hard and and folding easy, but it plans to respond really well to that. So you really almost can't pinch too hard. You just take the stock where you want the plant to sort of fold over pinched it from both sides with the pads of your fingers as hard as you can you should feel the the pin the plant sort of pop and go squishy. It'll make you a little bit sort of queasy the first time you do it because you'll be convinced. You've just done something bad, but that's exactly what you want to do. You want to sort of get it soft and Squishy from one side and then move your fingers around sort of clockwise on the thing and do it from the other direction and get it soft and Squishy and then fold it down and hold it in place. That's a great way to sort of move colas away from each other. Other or to manage the height of your canopy. I also lollipop my plants. So once a solid canopy has formed and there are leaves and growth tips that are then left totally in the shade I go ahead and I trim those off that promotes airflow it promotes efficient growth, but and I think we'll talk a little bit more about this in an upcoming episode. so done sort of things not to do but I never d foliate i do prune and I selectively remove leaves but I don't do any indiscriminate removal of leaves leaves are there to harvest light energy and promote plant growth there never sort of a problem that needs to be removed just because there are leaf and I see a lot of of You Growers sort of follow the misguided advice to cut a dramatic amount of leaves off of your plant at various stages. So I think that that's almost always a mistake but there are reasons to prune particular leaves to lollipop the lower leaves that are no longer getting light occasionally ta to manage humidity. It's important to remove a few leaves, but it's never a good idea to promote the development. Development of flowers removing leaves in general will inhibit the development of flowers not promoted. But again, I'll talk a little bit more about that. We have a episode coming up on what not to do and I'll get more into that. Yeah, the point the overall point of training is just to think about how to capture the light and how to sort of spread the plant out so that it's making the maximum use of the light while maintaining air flow and other other Things that you're just trying to get your tabletop to sort of harness all that light energy doctor. I'm Jay. I mean just going back to super cropping. I have one. I have one question for you. Absolutely. How do you choose which branches to Super crop? You know, I I end up super cropping all of my branches at some point or another but to do it selectively usually do it because there's one, you know, I talked about the way I treated. Train plants and up with one with eight colas that all should grow at about the same speed. So you end up with sort of eight tops that are all the same height but there's often one sort of renegade that wants to grow faster than the rest or a couple Renegades that want to get started grow faster than the rest. So I'll let them I encourage growth in my grow. I never it always sort of this strikes me as odd when a grower will say like I'm trying to sort of inhibit the growth Both on that one to let the others catch up and I'm thinking now you should promote the growth everywhere as best you can and sort of then knock it down with super cropping or do something like that. So I'll let those those Renegades that want to grow. I'll let them grow until there's several inches taller than the rest and then I'll choose a point that's about an inch or two lower than the other tops are and I'll super crop at that point. Which means That I'll sort of pinch the stem of the taller Cola there. Like I was describing really pinch it until it's soft and pliable and then the plant will just almost fall over on its own at that point. So you just sort of load and very gently lower it down and have a support and place the twist tie or the soft tire something to sort of hold that Cola and they You may have to hold it up because it'll be wanting to sort of fold that fall down because you did a good job and pinching but the plant will recover quickly and it will want to pop back up. So you also have to sort of restrain restrain it to prevent it from just sort of popping back up into position. And the that Cola will bend around whatever restraint you've put in place and then it we'll just be sort of at the height of those other Cole has any other growth tips that were sort of involved like, you know, the lower growth tips that are now either on the horizontal section or close to the top of right below where you super cropped it those will start to develop better now because they'll be more and more direct light and they won't be receiving the the auxins down from that lower growth to It's sort of at the same height that they are so it does it does really great things. I like to Super crop most of my colas almost whether they need it or not during the third week of 12 12 or what's really the second week of this stretch that gives them enough time to turn around and sort of keep growing in their new positions from that and I've done side-by-side. Merriments with sort of unsupervised opt colas and super cropped colas and this the ones that I super crop always seem to grow better fatter colas than the ones that I don't I've gotten in sort of arguments. There's debates. I'll call them debates with my with my partner. Dr. Photon who's unsure of sort of the biological mechanism that could be responsible for those those larger colas. but there are certain ways that it promotes the reception of light, but certainly my experience has been that the supercritical is do better than those that don't so I liked it to try to Super crab cause if they present an opportunity to do so at the end and on my current grow, I'm harvesting right now, but I super cropped all these plants really late right at the end of this stretch later than most guides would suggest that you should super crop and the plants did really well and are producing really well. I was really happy with sort of the way. I ended up with a lot of sort of horizontal sections of stem near the top of my canopy because of the way that I super cropped late and they all produce really nice sort of buds. That would have been lower popcorn buds developed into these really delicious looking buds. I was The I haven't super crop quite that late before so it's a I'm a huge advocate of super cropping. Okay? Yeah, you know I can I can definitely tell man. Yeah good. Well, well listen doctor MJ. I appreciate you coming on the show as do. I'm sure my listeners do as well. So when you guys get a shot go to Coco for cannabis.com sign up for the Forum and we can all talk and basically learn learn how to grow from there. Yeah. Absolutely. It's always better. We say grow your own but don't grow alone. So let's grow together. I think that being involved in a community like that and having a chance to sort of share your stories and and share your successes, you know, share your Joy's with people a lot of Growers are sort of forced to be on the down low and in a lot of ways and can't be, you know, I'm going to work and talking about their grows with their colleagues or other things like that so you can come and talk to What about them? We'd love to you know here you're here about your grows and see your pictures and watch you Journal. So yeah come and sign up for our forum, and let's grow together. Well, listen, ah, dr. NJ, thank you again. I do appreciate it. Absolutely. It's always a pleasure shame. Hey everybody. Thanks for listening to my podcast with dr. MJ. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at dr. MJ Coco. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and please remember To press the Subscribe button. You can visit cheap home grow.com / episode 53 to get show highlights. And please remember to sign up for my email list. Thanks guys. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the cheap home grow podcast. We do our best to bring you quality content. Let's grow together. Please hit the Subscribe button and take time to share this podcast with Friends visit cheap home grow.com for our database of interviews and information until next time be safe and grow easy.
I invited Dr. MJ from Coco For Cannabis back on the Cheap Home Grow podcast, and he was kind enough to talk about how to stress train and top your cannabis plants. His explanation of how stress training and topping is easy to understand and his advice is perfect for a new or even experienced home grower that's looking to pick up a few helpful tricks on how to maximize yield. We here at the Cheap Home Grow Podcast always appreciate Dr. MJ's almost "precision like" approach to growing your own. He's been on the show in the past and talked about germination, transplanting and how to grow in coco coir. This podcast with Dr. MJ won't disappoint. Please listen and tell me what you think in the comments section below. 