LST??

can someone please explain to me what this stands for and the technique. also the benefits, thanx

Low Stress Training, it's basically forcing the plant to grow secondary branches by tying down the main stem(then other larger branches) this way you'll have a larger lower profile plant with more flowering points. The benefits are if you have a smaller light, this way you can expose more of the plant directly to the light, it isn't as stressful as topping, and it allows you to keep larger plants in shorter spaces...

I'm sure other people can offer more info.. if you search on Low Stress Training, there are plenty of articles which explain how and why here.

can you only do LST during a veg period? seems like a process that could be tricky.

Tricky????

Tricky????

I both top and LST my plants. And why do you feel it is tricky? All I do is grab some twist ties and some nuts and bolts (hubby has coffee cans full of them). Take the twist tie, attach the bolt or nut, bend the tie and hang it on the plant! The nuts are for small branches and one or more bolts for thicker ones. It looks weird, but it works well. I have a plant that is only 6 inches tall but almost totally covers the surface of the 18 x 24 tub it's in. It missed the very corners, but hangs over the edge in one spot by about 4 inches. Totally covered in buds! Even the ones that would have been "popcorn" buds are reasonably sized. LST is easy! - Granny

You can "lst" during flowering, but you will get the best results with it if you start during veg / the first two weeks of flowering. Don't worry too much about breaking your branches, they are very flexible, and if you do happen to break one, it will come back in a short time.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, check out ABC's and LST's. It's basically a step by step approach to Low Stress Training...

Welcome to IC Pirate!

If you have any other questions about all the different abbreviations you're likely to see, check out the Glossary link in my sig

It is very easy, you just tie or weight the stem down. I have various fishing sinkers in 1oz incraments that I fasten to the branches with string, tieing them to the pot also works.. It seems to work well getting a small plant to fully occupie an area and flatten out the canopy which will streatch more slowly upwards but have a lot of apical meristems.

LST is an awesome way to grow and imho you get a better yield with hardly any extra veg time.

Its a win, win situation

Peace, TPS

panopticist said:

Now that the formalities are out of the way, check out ABC's and LST's. It's basically a step by step approach to Low Stress Training...

Click to expand...

actually i did "do some reasearch" but didn't find anything like the thread you posted (which was helpful). thanx for the advice guys i will def put it to use, some of my fave pix of plants seem to have been LSTed

Hi you really should check out this link, it explains everything

http://forum.grasscity.com/absolute-beginners/122936-how-lst-low-stress-training.html

This is long and if there's errors in the way it's put together i'll come back and adjust it so it makes more sense.

One of the things that you need to know, is that Low Stress Training has a particular spot in training methods: it was agreed by growers around the world at one time, that it is the proven #1 yield enhancing training method. AT least, so far. It was widely accepted and has never been refuted since the time the most testing was done, in 2004. The reason there's been no more concern with challenging it is due to what it does: what it is: and what everything else is [NOT]. You'll see why.

There's more to it than just laying the plants down. There's a specific technique that produces maximum yield; that technique isn't optional - and it has an exact, scientific reason. The threads that are around now are not centered around the original complete method; and are actually what's called a ''Partial L.S.T. ;and because they're not, there's a lot of things that are not noted by people who start threads or post on it; there's a vast difference between tying limbs down, and the yield increasing method that is famous - and the Partial L.S.T. tying down threads are named for.

Today the method described is centered around ''how easy' it is' - 'methods of securing strings' - 'shapes of training'; but that was not in any, important way, part of the original high yield method. Everybody used different methods; the shapes of the plants were varied a lot; and there was no particular shape concentrated on; there was one, and ONLY one thing to be sought:
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To get the plant laid over in such a way, so no limb's nodes, were any lower, or higher, than any other limb's nodes. to the BEST of the grower's ability for the life of the plant(s).
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Not laying the limbs so the nodes are specifically equalized for height- or untying the plant at some point, is Partial L.S.T. and was known from the beginning by that term: because Low Stress Training as such, has a specific end: a specific way of achieving it, and is done throughout the grow till the day the plants are cut down. That is a FACT.

A Partial L.S.T. is when you don't do the complete technique.

The plant's adjusted constantly : that's a critical aspect for the actual method: the timeframe for successive adjustments is every 2, to 4 days or so, depending on the grower's time constraints. Preferably 2 to 3 days.

The maximum yield method is fairly time intensive for that reason. But to people who have about 15 minutes every couple to three days or so, it pays off bigtime

Since this is just a post i don't have time to go back and keep all the chronology or the cohesiveness of what i type compact and absolutely straight so i'm gonna repeat myself i'm sure.

In the middle of 2004 , on O.G. a guy started a thread called .. i think it was 'Leaning' about something he said he guessed should be called 'low stress training'. People were all trying to find ways to make scrog work better and various topping, supercropping, and scrogging methods were being used, hybridized and compared.

Scrogging was making a lot of headway and the guy that started the 'Leaning' thread ( i think thats what it was named) knew about doing something to individual limbs: leaning them down so they appeared to get more bushy. He asked if anybody knew much about it; people came around and said what they knew, saying that they thought it had something to do with maybe a hormone. Eventually somebody posted up a link to a paper on Auxin; and how Auxin distribution in a plant controlled the way the plant put out new branches & flowers at nodes according to the plant's sense of where the limb was. People wondered if maybe you leaned a lot of limbs down it might out strip the production of the hormone and limit growth at some point.

A person who saw the first thread and read the Auxin paper, wanted to try his hand at it and started a second thread; where most of the subsequent discovery was made on how to max out growth; and the two threads ran concurrently, and the second guy would go over and tell the first thread starter how things were going, regularly; they kept in contact.

Eventually somebody that understood botany came in one or the other of the threads, and said that Auxin doesn't cause growth: it suppresses it; and that the plant shipped it from the upper levels to the lower levels, in order to auto-channel superior energy into those parts of the plants that were higher, to maximize the possibility of pollenation by insects or by wind. At that point people were still laying down individual limbs on plants and starting to lay the main stems over to see what happened and noting increased bushiness.

With the Auxin suppression mechanism being explained in more detail, and understood better the people in the thread started talking about how to control it.

A bunch of different people realized that if the Auxin being delivered to lower buds, to limit their growth: in order to allow the plant to get more flower up into the wind, there wasn't a problem with running out of Auxin: the problem was STOPPING the Auxin for distribution; but since that wasn't known to be possible, the question shifted to stopping Auxin being delivered to lower bud sites.

The suggestion was made, that maybe, MAYBE, trying to get all the bud sites at the same height would work.

Little did anybody know that this suggestion: that got passed around between them: was going to lead to the creation of the #1 yield increasing training method, ever.

No one knew what would happen if you made all the bud sites the same height: it was theorized that maybe all the buds might slow down, because there was no dominant bud that could be found, and simply have the Auxin they produced distributed into their own growing tips: splitting cells, and shut growth down. However this proved to not be true.

What was discovered is that the opposite happens: the plant has a sense of what is the ''highest tier'' of budding sites. And all those budding sites on that 'highest tier' have no Auxin reduction in growth; whether there is one, or whether every bud on the plant is at that same height: and they grow at an unrestricted rate.

Over time, characteristics of plants that were C.O.R.R.E.C.T.L.Y. laid down, were found to have a similar profile of characteristics that never changes: (yeah, that's right: i said, it n.e.v.e.r. changes. No matter the plant strain; no matter the light; no matter the nutrition except in real bad situations;

All buds on the highest tier, grow ragingly fast. The word 'scary' came up over, and over. You might not believe me; it was. People actually used the word 'scary' to describe how the plants acted when all budsites were constantly re - shifted, so they were at an equal height with one another.

The plants would grow at incredible rates, regardless, more or less, of the quality of the growers' skills. First time growers produce excellent yields: dense, fat, long budding sites, that are covered in trichs.

And speaking of trichs: The plant: leaves and stems: become COVERED in trichs during flowering. A properly Low Stress Trained plant will get so many trichs it's incredible. The stems: will get a lot of trichs on them. fewer down toward the roots, very thick up in the most full-throttled budsite region. They always have some in any growing method but in low stress training for max vigor and yield, they have a lot. Trichs come out everywhere. Fan leaves have a lot of trichs on them comparatively. More than usual for a particular strain all over. It gets reported over, and over, by people who've used other methods, then learn to low stress train properly.

Final part of the characteristics of a properly Low Stress Trained plant: Vigor.

When people were experimenting with getting low stress trained plants maxed, the general comments people made, were always going on, about the incredible vigor that plants trained this way have. It's nothing short of outstanding. Words like ''really surprising'' and ''shocking'' have been used; by experienced growers: who had never seen a plant low stress trained : and the max vigor of growth that comes from proper technique.

People came into the main, couple of threads when it was discovered to train for Auxin control, over and over, and said " This is crazy. I've never seen plants act like this. Are they supposed to act like this?
Over and over, people came into the Low Stress Training threads where Auxin control training was being done, and said that. People who were experienced growers came in talking about how they had scrogged, topped, grown outdoors, some had been growing a long time, some not as long, but they ALL said the same thing about the vigor of the plants: ''This is bizarrely strong growth."

People came in and out of the blue, said " i haven't posted in here because i wasn't sure if this was gonna work out but i want you people to know that i have been growing X years and i have never seen anything like this in my life." And *boom* they'd be gone; and another person would come in and say it. This was common; happened many, many times on the main couple of threads on the subject of Auxin management technique.

The people who first got the technique nearly perfected stayed around awhile, and other people came in, who were scroggers, topping and supercropping trainers, the gamut; people all over figured there would likely be a ''best way to train'' found; and everybody was going around trying to find that way; and scroggers and l.s.t. people took the training to past the limits that topping and supercropping had.

it boiled down to the first people proving that they could beat scrogging eventually moving on; and people who saw the early parts of the threads and tried it would come in, say ''WoW! WTF is this? I have never had growth like this in my life but i'm hooked!" and eventually most would be gone; and around the middle of 2005 it started to slow down. People on other sites who had read the O.G. threads did comparisons and verified: they could make Low Stress Training produce more weed per foot of plant than any other method, and by late 2005, it was a settled issue that for the time being at least, LST'ing had won the competition for most productive method.

The way the Low Stress Trained plants beat out the Scrogged plants was the presence of many smaller, but dense mature buds, way, way down the stems, to within a few inches of the roots. Scroggers would always have a few inches of plant where their lower buds were so far beneath the tip tops of the oldest buds, that they wouldn't grow very much; and the LST'd plants have that weight in mature frosted bud.

Beginning scroggers today, thinking they're using the exact same method that was found to be so heavily productive, also don't know what the scroggers at the time it got really popular, learned from l.s.t. people who they were talking with when both methods were being brought forward in leaps, and bounds: the Auxin connection; and readjusting the bud height over and over through the grow, so no bud gets any taller than another one. Today they see one bud get bigger and think 'oh thats normal' and don't usually know that if they let one bud per plant get any taller than the others, it starts slowing down the growth of the other buds on that plant.


If you want to see a plant that looks like it has been properly LST'd go look at MicroRU's speaker grown plant: that plant is particularly dense in that everything's pushed closely together, but THAT IS WHAT A PROPERLY L.S.T'D PLANT TURNS OUT LOOKING LIKE :

Trichs everywhere. Buds everywhere- and many are in a relatively narrow size range: medium. The oldest, longest buds aren't real huge but all those buds that are in the middle weight area are very near to each other in size range; and near in size to the oldest and biggest; and dense, and universally mature looking. And those that come from the very bottom of the plant, while smaller, are idential in that aspect: they look dense, and completed. Not airy or immature. The only buds that don't have that look, are the ones that will STILL be forming, as the plant starts to finish up.

The vigor: cannot be duplicated.
The frostiness: is difficult to surpass; and MANY people who do it say they have NEVER seen so many trichs on their plants; that is an almost universal comment.
The density of the buds: is amazingly uniform and satisfactory in structure. Even sativa buds get denser and harder. That, again, is a universal observation.
The yield: has been tested, and shown, Can Not Be Equaled, in side-by-side tests; and the reason is Simple as pie and crystal clear: OTHER METHODS DON'T STOP THE PLANT FROM SLOWING IT'S OWN GROWTH. Low Stress Training does EXACTLY that, and the entire plant grows like it has been shot up with a mixture of vitamins and steroids, to some degree.


It takes about 15 to 30 minutes every 2 or 3 days to do it right. Two, three days, or as soon as a bud or two get above the rest, they'll start assigning Auxin to the lower tiers, and the whole plant below that will slow down; and as long as they sit like that they're gonna be dialed back some; and when you re -even the canopy, it'll take a couple of days for the Auxin that was in them to lose effect, and for the unbridled growth to start again. It pays to keep on top of it.

THAT is what you SHOULD be hearing from people who start Low Stress Training threads; because if you're not told about the effect of Auxin suppression & minimization then you're just laying down individual limbs and the Auxin re-distribution for that particular limb taking effect: but those budsites that are even a couple of inches higher, are shipping growth suppression hormone down to all of THEM: and the effect is FAR from the same.

The effect is in play within the individual limb, and from highest to lowest point on the limb; Auxin in a particular limb controls that limb; and Auxin on the UPPER tips controls LOWER tips/nodes, in the overall plant, as well.

The end, more or less:

While i can't remember the exact names of the people involved, the original thread authors' name, of the main two threads, HERE is how it came to be, that Low Stress Training got it's final official name, and a set of rules; and that every thing else, became what's called ''Partial L.S.T.''.

The main guy wasn't a real hardcore type person; and a person who came in said he was going to start a thread about using the leaning method, in which he was going to experiment on his own plants; and he asked the guy whose 'Leaning' thread it was, if he could go ahead and take the 'Low Stress Training' name, "so that the guy, and others interested in the 'leaning' thread could find it easy" - That was WHAT he said. The original guy said yeah, sure; that would be cool, he wanted to find out how much could be done using the leaning method. It was all done in a super friendly way.
The guy with the leaning thread was totally aware and gave permission for him to start using the ''low stress training'' thread name, and they stayed in more or less steady contact across threads.

This second thread was the one that was the most intense; because it had experimenters in it who were into hardcore leaning and it was the thread where the actual discoveries were made for the most part. The man that started the second thread, would go back to the original guy's thread, and tell him whatever updates there were, and eventually he came back and said that he thought since it was beating scrog it should go ahead and have a set technique, a name, and told him that he thought it should be: training from any time early in the plant's life; adjusting the plant every two to three days, that it could be done for it's entire life; training for an even height canopy to minimize Auxin was the main aspect of it. That was given the name "Low Stress Training"; and it was then somehow established that doing part of any that was called 'Partial Low Stress Training.'.

I'm sure there are things about it i've gotten wrong; the exact sequence of events is as close as i can remember. I wish now of course i'd have made copies of the pages but it's far too late for that, now. But that's what Low Stress Training is; and less than that is Partial Low Stress Training.

These threads you see out today are all something called 'Partial L.S.T.' threads without ANY CONNECTION with the REAL, LOW STRESS TRAINING technique, except some leaning, and taking the name of the finalized technique.

That i know for a FACT. I was in there, following along from early 2005 and was doing my first indoor growing using it, right off those pages every night, in the middle of 2005.

Like i said if there's any errors, editing mistakes or paragraphs that plummet off cliffs, that's cause i'm tired and i've been typing and editing as fast as i can. But you have just read about what REAL Low Stress Training is from somebody who was there, talking about it with those guys, and watching it become an actual, completed technique with rules, with reasons for each one, and with proven results that got the method labeled: the #1 yielding training method in the world for pot.

Good info King!

thanx king that info was invaluable

LST is the way to go, regardless of what size light you have. It will increase yield, and I typically extend my veg time by about 10 days. I grow under 1k lights, and I still LST all my plants! Start when they have about 5 nodes, and tie the plant over at about a 90 degree angle. Keep tying the side shoots out, so they all get equal exposure of light, and the tops remain somewhat level.

thank you for the info King, it is much appreciated.

BlueAdept

i think im gona use string and some metal nuts to do my LST

LST. The lazy way to do it

My LST




I cut the tie-downs when they start flowering

heres a overgrow save ive posted few times







combine LST with FIM and you'll be very pleased




now to maximize your yield potentional scrogg each plants container
















may you have many happy huge harvest's