QCS Learning Center

What Is Super Cropping?

Super cropping is the practice of manipulating your weed plants to increase their health, yield, and quality. The technique falls under the term High-Stress Training (HST) and can be used as a way to give plants an edge.

While some techniques are more stressful than others, it’s all about properly organizing your plant’s physical structure so that it works more efficiently. This involves carefully bending branches, training limbs, or moving stems to create minimal stress but maximum reward for your weed plants.

It may seem counterintuitive but this specific type of pruning goes a long way, allowing people to organize the overall shape of their garden, properly set up key components such as air circulation and light sources, simplify maintenance tasks, and most importantly increase the heavier yields from a single plant.

Pros and Cons of Super Cropping Cannabis

Super cropping is a high-stress cannabis training technique used by cannabis growers to maximize yields and encourage bushier growth. It involves gently bending and pinching stems to damage the plant's inner tissues, which triggers a response that promotes growth. Super cropping has its advantages and disadvantages, which should be carefully considered before implementing the technique.

Pros:

1. Increased yield: Super cropping can potentially increase the yield by encouraging more budding sites and distributing growth hormones more evenly throughout the plant.
2. Better light penetration: By creating a more even canopy, super cropping allows for improved light distribution, ensuring all parts of the plant receive sufficient light for optimal growth.
3. Strengthened stems: The healing process following super cropping results in thicker, more robust stems that can better support heavy buds.
4. Controlled height: Super cropping helps to manage plant height, making it ideal for indoor growing spaces with limited vertical space.
5. Adaptability: This technique can be used on various cannabis strains and during different growth stages, offering experienced growers flexibility in their cultivation approach.

Cons:

1. Stress-induced response: Super cropping is a high-stress technique, and not all plants respond well to stress. Over-stressed plants may exhibit stunted growth, reduced yields, or even die.
2. Expertise required: Successfully cropping cannabis requires a certain level of skill and experience to avoid causing severe damage to the plant.
3. Time-consuming: This technique can be labor-intensive and requires regular monitoring and adjustments to achieve the desired results.
4. Potential for infection: Damaging the plant's tissues exposes it to potential infections, which may negatively impact the plant's health and yield

When To Start Super Cropping

Starting a super cropping technique is important to maximize your plant's potential, but it’s also necessary to know when to begin the process. At the start of the vegetative stage is where Selective Leaf Pruning usually takes place. Here you’ll need to wait until your plant is between 10-12 inches tall before you attempt to snap and twist it without risking serious damage.

Once your plant has grown an adequate amount, it’s time for super cropping. However, keep in mind that most super cropping should take place during the veg phase since the flowering stage is more likely to devote its energy towards flowering rather than optimizing recovery from stiff stems.

Therefore, by following these few essential tips, you can ensure that you start your supercropping method at the right time and help your plant into its best possible shape!

More: The Ultimate Cannabis Fluxing Guide.

What Are The Main Super Cropping Techniques?

Super cropping is an innovative approach to cannabis cultivation that involves manipulating plant growth to optimize valuable yields and overall health. To maximize the benefits of this high-stress training method, outdoor cannabis growers employ various techniques, each designed to address specific needs and growing conditions.

H3: Selective Leaf Pruning

Super cropping techniques are an excellent way to increase the foliage and huge yields of your cannabis plants. One effective method for achieving these results is selective leaf pruning. With this technique, you can eliminate shade-creating leaves that cover nodes or budding sites, allowing your plant access to more light and space for growth.

Additionally, any interior leaves that point inwards towards the canopy can also be safely removed without any tools; simply pinch them between your thumb and index finger and pluck them off with a firm upwards motion.

Branch And Node Pruning

Branch and node pruning is an effective way to increase the yield of a plant, allowing it to direct energy exactly where it is needed. When a plant grows, it often produces sucker branches which take away energy from the plant without any worthwhile benefit due to the lack of intense light exposure.

Removing these weak broken branches allows the energy stored in them to be redistributed across the other parts of the plants that do receive direct light exposure. This allows these other portions of the plant, including budding and branching sites that are further up on the plant, to benefit from more access to sunlight and heat.

The same principle can also be applied to nodes, which start in crevices where leaf stems meet main stems, eventually forming into another branch. By selectively removing non-essential nodes, a pruner can direct growth back towards higher parts of the plant that do receive direct light exposure.

Pruning back suction nodes along with branches helps ensure that all areas of your garden or planter have enough resources for stress-free growth. Node pruning should be done carefully so as not to damage other portions of your plants when removing lower ones; otherwise, you risk causing additional stress which can halt or slow down growth altogether.

Topping And Training

One of the most popular techniques among cannabis growers is topping. Topping involves cutting the tallest cola at the top of the plant, allowing lower branches to get equal light levels and grow into larger colas.

This method works in that marijuana plants tend to focus all their growth hormones on a single apex or highest tip to outgrow everything around them. By topping, you remove the apex and let all your other branches receive more energy from the sun and grow equally.

Instead of having one central branch getting all the good light intensity, your satellite branches now have access as well. After topping your plant, it will continue to branch out with two tops eventually growing back, thus creating a bushier-looking formation than what was there originally. Topping can help increase bud yield dramatically if done at just the right time during the flowering phase which will give you quite a rich harvest.

Snapping And Twisting

Snapping and twisting is a super cropping technique that has an extreme and rapid impact on cannabis plants. This difficult skill requires a precise balance of firm yet delicate motions - users should grasp the branch with both hands and twist in opposite directions until they feel and hear the snap break the inner hurl, leaving the outer layer intact.

The healing process will then begin which lasts approximately 24 hours, resulting in a greater fortification of that specific spot where the wound was created. The principle behind this technique is similar to when humans break their bones - upon repair, it toughens up that same area because it can never be broken in that exact place again.

This makes snapping and twisting a great choice for cannabis experts who want to bolster their crop’s strength and resilience without relying on chemical treatments. Properly executed super cropping techniques can help ensure healthier plants in the long run while avoiding more invasive processes such as topping or pruning.

Super Cropping Guide: How To Super Crop Your Plants

This high-stress training method can boost yields and improve overall growth when executed correctly. Learn the essential steps and tips to supercrop plants effectively and confidently.

H3: Choose Branches

Super cropping is an easy, effective way to increase yield in your marijuana plants. This technique involves using physical stress on certain branches of the plant to force them to grow more horizontally and in a bushier manner.

By doing this, you can create a canopy with many more flowers and bud development, leading to higher yields. When super cropping, it’s best to do so during the vegetative growth, when the healthy branches are still green and pliable.

You should pick the older branches that have been around for a while as they will be hardy enough for the super cropping technique. Make sure not to choose too weak of branches or else you might break them altogether.

Bend Branches

Bend branches are a process that can be used to direct the growth of plants and flowers. It involves a technique, called super cropping, which involves inflicting damage to the inner tissue of a plant to create more pliable, bendable stems.

This allows those who want to sculpt their marijuana plants or direct their growth into desired shapes to do so without harming or breaking the outer layer completely.

For this advanced technique to work successfully, pressure must be applied correctly when gently squeezing any branches at the point you would like them to bend. You should then slowly twist that offshoot lot between your fingers for about ten seconds until it starts feeling softer and pliable.

Tape Up Any Slits In Branches If Needed

Super cropping cannabis plants is a great way to produce large yields of buds; however, it can be tricky and mistakes can happen. If the outer skin of the branch tears, put on your doctor’s mask and apply some duct tape to encourage the stem to stay in place and continue to function as usual.

With duct tape reinforcing the stem, it will keep transporting nutrient deficiencies like normal throughout its growth cycle and help promote healing for the plant.

After about seven days or so, check the joint for any signs of remaining injury or discoloration from where you applied super cropping. If there is still evidence of wounds, add another band-aid and wait a few more days until your cannabis develops her protective “knuckle.”

If your plant attempts to straighten out, tie it down with a Low-Stress Training (LST) technique for reinforcement. Lastly, if you do end up accidentally breaking any branches during super cropping, wrap some duct tape around this area until it has been fully healed. Knowing how to properly handle any rupture or breakage can save you time and anxiety in the long run!

Bigger & Better Yields

Super cropping is a common cultivation technique used in marijuana plants to produce larger yields while conserving space. By using this technique to manipulate the floor span, grow light distribution, and height restrictions, advanced growers can optimize their crop yield and get better quality results.

Supercropping delivers strong plants with a bushier structure and improved sturdiness thanks to the thicker nodes found on offshoots. With this method, professional growers will end up with an overall lower plant height but bigger yields due to the higher number of buds and limbs that result from these secondary branches being encouraged by cannabis supercropping.

Final Points About Super Cropping

Super cropping is an incredibly useful High Stress Training (HST) technique that can be used to create a more prolific cannabis crop. It works by involuntarily stressing the plant and then manipulating it to focus its energy on thickening its stems, rather than height.

This creates a much denser and bushier plant with more flowering sites compared to a conventional unaltered one. By doing this your harvest will be larger overall due to the increased number of bud sites created from super cropping.