As a grower, you want the best for your plants: the best flowers, the ideal height and the maximum yield. All these components combine to make a successful plant that is worth your time, energy and attention. There is nothing worse than working on your plants for hours or even months to get a low yield with very few buds. While some strains naturally produce higher yields than others, there are things you can do as a grower to increase your chances of improving your yield. We hope you find these tips useful!
How to increase the yield of cannabis
• Trellising: You’ve seen the shampoo adverts, right? Well, then you won’t have a hard time understanding the comparison. To get long and healthy hair, you need a healthy scalp and strong roots. Nothing can grow without a solid foundation. To push the roots to get stronger, you can use the technique of tree reinforcement : palisading, is a popular gardening technique that uses wood, metal or bamboo to support the stem and branches, helping the plant to maintain strong and sturdy roots. Growing horizontally or vertically.
• Training: If you can train a puppy, who’s to say you can’t train other living creatures such as cannabis plants? Plants can also be encouraged to grow as desired, provided that, especially during vegetative growth when they are more fragile and relatively weak, a low-stress training method is used to prevent twig snagging. If this occurs, it can lead to uneven growth and lower yields. An example of low stress training (LST) is stretching the main stem and side branches by separating them with a rope. Be gentle and light. LST can help plants to grow outwards, creating a more symmetrical, fuller bush shape.
• Increase the size of the container: The biggest mistake you can make as a grower is to grow more plants than you can actually handle. If you feel comfortable with five plants, consider whether it is right to increase the size of the equipment you use to grow them. Let’s say you started your growing journey with a 10 litre pot – do you have enough room to transplant up to a 20 litre pot? At the risk of sounding like Mr Obvious, one way to increase yield is to increase production. Marijuana plants love their space and generally produce more if they have more room to grow. The bigger the pot, the wider the root system, the bigger and more productive the plant:
• Increase light intensity: Because your lighting set-up is tied to your budget, it may not be possible for all growers to change the intensity level with a switch or dimmer. Even if you are growing cannabis on a budget, consider moving your plants to a part of the house that produces more or less light (away from a window). Growers with the correct lighting set-up should look for energy-saving bulbs that will reduce energy costs and the risk of heat stress. New LED bulbs are a great solution: they are initially more expensive, but allow significant savings on the bill!
• Climate control: This applies more to growers who grow outdoors and are exposed to snow, strong winds and heavy rain. Indoor growers should consider themselves lucky as they do not usually experience extreme cold and heat waves. However, when growing all types of plants outdoors, keep marijuana plants away from temperatures of 21-29 °C. The recommended temperature without lights is 14-21 °C. As for humidity, try to keep it around 50-70 %.
The most important thing to remember when harvesting is that all cannabis plants are living beings with their own needs. No two cannabis strains are the same. Like humans, their interests change depending on their maturity, environment and time. It’s never an exact science, but these five tips should increase your yield in no time!