How to Increase Cannabis Yield - Beginner Techniques

[0:07] Here we have Alien OG. We're going to demonstrate a couple of different trimming techniques on the different varieties that we have. It produces more terpenes, bigger buds, more buds, so that's exactly what we're looking for. Here we have Alien OG. So for this one, we're just going to do what I'm most used to, just the standard lollipopping, just trimming
 

[0:44] all these suckers from underneath, get better airflow, stimulate growth up top on the canopy. All of these plants have been topped once on the center node when they were babies. I'm going to keep that technique up with this. We're also going to be showing FIMing and super cropping. So we can do a bit of both on here, but I'm going to start by
 

[1:04] trimming all this undergrowth off. Some of these larger stems, I'm going to keep and just strip them from here down. Some of these smaller ones are going to come right off. They're just wasting energy with the plant. Seems a bit aggressive, but you'd be surprised at how well they respond to a hearty trimming. You don't want to overdo it and remove too many of the
 

[1:24] water leaves. That's where they convert energy, so you don't want to take too many off, but you can take some off that are blocking some of the promising nodes down there. Okay, so after we strip all these stems, we're just going to finish off and top each node. It's kind of a point of preference on where you want to pick it.
 

[1:47] If you see this little top piece here, there's two nodes off to the side. You can either pinch this top one here, or if it's starting to get a little stretchy, you can trim it down a little further if you'd like. I'd like to keep most of it intact, so I'm just going to go right here, just under this top node. And you can see both of these are now going to
 

[2:10] get a lot more light. Instead of one top here, you're going to have two. So as they're growing, you continue to top and multiply the heads here, and each one of these should be a big cola by the time you're done. So if you keep up on it and do it right, it should increase your yield quite a bit. But when they start flowering,
 

[2:29] you'll see the little hairs coming out. You don't want to trim at that point. It'll impede bud growth, so it's important to get all this done right in the middle of vegetative state. So some of these big leaves too, we could take off a couple of these. Let's see, maybe like this one here. So you can pull off a couple of big leaves if they give more light to some
 

[2:51] of these nodes down here. Now that this has been stripped, something else that you can do, they call it super cropping. You're just going to be gently massaging the stem and kind of breaking it up and damaging it. You don't want to sever it or snap it. You're just going to be softening it so you can kind of bend
 

[3:10] it to the side here. And we're trying to create a nice flat canopy, so instead of having big buds on the top and little buds down here that are sapping energy, we're going to be trimming those, training it to have a nice flat canopy, and we should have a nice even spread of a bunch of big colas this way.
 

[3:28] Snapped one off the other day, so you want to be careful, especially with these good-looking plants here. This is all good smoke, potentially. Just kind of bend it, and as this heals too, you're going to get almost like a scar tissue. It's like a knuckling, and it's going to give more structure and strength to these as they're growing.
 

[3:47] So when the buds get big and heavy, instead of the branches breaking off, you'll have kind of a, not a calcified area, but a strengthened area to support more weight as well. Okay, it looks a little severe, but it'll respond well to it. Get a lot of nice airflow down underneath. Maybe bend a couple more of these. I think this one's good to go.
 

[4:08] Alien OG, we'll see how this one does. Removing some of the flowers there can extend the vegetative state. So we're going to try to remove the tops of these flowers, prevent it from fully going into flower here. Yeah, it should kind of re-veg with everything else. We have months ahead of us of growing. After I lollipop it, I'm going to trim these down a bit more
 

[4:38] severely. These would be nice buds if we were going right into flower here, but we got a ways to go still. So yeah, it's kind of a shame hacking on these things so much, but you'll be better off for it. Also, one of the things you can do is remove some of these larger fan leaves, so when they're blocking out side
 

[5:05] branches and other nodes. You don't want to trim off too many of these leaves. These are converting a lot of energy for the plants. They hold a lot of sugars, so if you take off too many, you can send it into shock. So what you want to do is if you do have a fan leaf that's blocking out a nice side branch and you want that one to bud, you can
 

[5:24] just take that fan leaf and clip it right off. They'll grow back, no problem, and it'll give this other side branch a lot of light, and this thing will shoot up, and you'll have a nice even canopy. So after we do that, we'll just take off any of these little suckers here. That one looks, eh, I'll probably take that one off.
 

[5:46] Strip these here. And this one's almost good to go. Yeah, all these little ones here, they'll never get any light. We'll keep the branch on here. This one looks like a nice one, but we'll take all these little leaves off They call it lollipopping. You get better air flow through the middle of the plant where you typically get a lot of powdery mildew and pests settling.
 

[6:12] The air flow helps prevent all of that stuff. So we have a couple of little flower sites here, but these should shrink as we're getting into 13, 14 hours of light here. So these will start to disappear and go back into full veg. Okay, this is the White Fire OG. I'm excited about this one. Now these OGs typically flower a lot quicker than any of your sativas,
 

[6:40] so we shall see. Okay, which one do we want to grab now? What do we have? Some Dosie. We got some Purple Haze. That might be nice to try. Yeah, this Purple Haze. I don't normally go for purples, but they make really pretty buds, and this should do really nice outside here. GDP is another good one. I think I have a GDP Auto in there, and that one is known
 

[7:14] for staying really short, staying really squat. And if you're worried about privacy or plants getting over the top of the fence, Granddaddy Purple is a nice choice. It's pretty compact, and the flowers are just beautiful. Okay. Actually, probably take those off here. They look like big branches, but we got bigger ones up here to worry about. Okay, some of these look pretty good. These are pretty high up.
 

[7:42] These should reach the top of the canopy. And to keep this from stretching out too much, I'm probably going to tip this center node pretty severely. We've already topped it previously, but it's stretched out quite a bit. So I'm going to go ahead and cut it right here, try to even it out. I topped this the other day. Yeah, I hit all of these nodes here, so they
 

[8:13] have been topped. You can do that same technique where you're bending the branches here. I'm also going to be building some scrog pots. I ran out of room in the greenhouse, so I'm going to set them up out here. I'm going to have them self-contained, so I can move them around, and we're going to have a nice screen top to kind of weave it through like a grapevine, to
 

[8:32] really take advantage of a nice flat canopy. Hey, everybody. How's it going? We are out here at the Homegrown Cannabis Co. greenhouse, and I was curious if you people would want to leave us some comments and let us know if there's anything else you'd like to see in the greenhouse, or specific strains or cultivars that you'd like to see us plant.
 

[8:56] Let us know in the comments below, and we will talk to you hopefully very soon. Here we go. We have Northern Lights Amnesia Haze cross. I did one of each variety in a 10-gallon pot. Everything else is five gallon. We're going to see what the increased root volume does for these. You can see compared to the Alien OG that the leaves are a lot more
 

[9:22] thin. This is definitely sativa-dominant, so this should be a nice outdoor plant here. So I'm going to do the same thing, take some of these lower suckers off here, and then we'll do some fimming on this. But all of these have kind of a nice habit. None of them are stretching out too much. They're nice and short and bushy, which is just what we're looking for.
 

[9:45] We want a nice canopy on these. So I'm just going to remove all these things. It's just a waste of energy anyway, and then we'll start dealing with the top growing tips up there. These techniques you would not want to carry out the same way on an auto. I have not grown autos before, but have a couple in the garden here, and we're
 

[10:06] going to treat those a little differently. So what we're doing here, these fems, they respond to great. And so it's been about a month. These have actually started flowering. So there's a couple of plants that when you remove the flowers, it will set them back into a vegetative state, kind of like basil, if you've ever grown basil. You can keep it growing with those nice leaves that you
 

[10:28] like if you just remove the top flowers. So we're going to try to disrupt this from fully setting into flower here. And so with these tops, instead of fully removing the growing tip like the other ones, known as topping, we're going to do a technique called fimming, where you go to cut it off, but you actually... Like normally, when you're topping, cut it off here.
 

[10:53] But it's, "F**k, I missed." Where you kind of chop it off midway, not really at the node that you were looking for, but it still has a nice effect on these. So this is, yeah, a little less stressful. It's still destructive, but that promotes even more growth, bigger flower production. Feeling that it's under attack and that it's a little stressed out,
 

[11:16] it produces more terpenes, bigger buds, more buds. So that's exactly what we're looking for. Okay, so we're just going to kind of cut right across the top there. The node's intact, but the actual tip has now been removed. Okay, this one's ready to go. Do it. Do it. Do it. Hey. Come on. Do, do.