Low Stress Training (LST)

Bushes are ideal plants to grow for anyone who has a small HID flower light (under 400 watts) or uses fluoros. Smaller lights and fluoros emit the most intense light for only a short distance, so keeping as much vegetative growth in the lights sweet spot is a must to make your lights most efficient. SCROGgers take maximum advantage of this by weaving tops through a screen so only tops are exposed to the light. Well, training attempts to achieve the same goals only with a less work intensive method that will make more use of your small lights limited effectiveness

In the first pic, the plant is tied over so the top is beyond a right angle to the soil. This redistributes a hormone called auxins which are responsible for the dominant growth on the plant. Sending auxins to all branching along the stem makes most if not all nodes grow out evenly.



After a week, you can release the plant from it's inverted position. Then tie the plant back down to a planter with screws or something in the side as tie down points. This pic shows the verticle support.



The second tie again makes it horizontal to maintain auxin distribution to branching (planter is reversed)



After a few days, the top has raised itself over the nodes



Raise your base tie a node and pulling the plant over so the top lifts almost upright again. Note that branch on the very bottom for later. It is now receiving it's share of auxins, something it usually would never see and be trimmed out by any grower seeing it on a single cola plant.



Then tie your top back below the next highest node.



Once again, after a couple of days, the top has worked it's way up.



Raise the base tie and pull the plant up



Raise the top tie a node and pull horizontal.



Several days later, re-training will not be necessary since the top isn't growing over the nodes anymore. This is a very dry plant in these pics and I will be watering her tonight. The growth spurt in the next few pics should be impressive.



An example of the auxins at work. Here is that lowest node on the plant, almost buried under the topsoil. No untrained or topped plant would grow nodes out so uniform that even this would be weakling could join the harvest party.









This plant is now ready for flowering even though the last pics show my new clone mother. The same size rule applies to growing bushes, expect each branch to grow 2-3 times as large in the stretch as it is when you switch.

The time to leave bushes in veg is determined by your flower light and how tall you want the plants to grow. The plant in the last pics took 19 days to reach the point you see in the last pic. With an 8 week fowering period, thats only 10 weeks (or so) from cutting to harvest.



*Info provided by Caprichoso