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If the term ‘monster cropping’ makes you scratch your head, don’t worry: most professional weed growers haven’t used this advanced technique, nor do they have any idea what it means. But after reading this article, you’ll both grasp the concept and be ready to use this amazing method yourself for record-breaking harvests.
What Is Monster Cropping?
Without a doubt, you know what cloning is. You also probably know that normally, you should take clones from a cannabis plant that’s still vegging. But what happens if you let your plant enter the flowering stage and THEN take a cutting from it?
Actually, this is exactly what monster cropping is all about: growing cannabis from a clone that’s been taken from a flowering mother. You revert the clone to veg and get a plant that’s just as healthy and vigorous, but also has better yield potential.
The word ‘monster’ in monster cropping refers to three things: at the initial stage, the cuttings will look downright ugly with all those roundish, single-leaflet leaves and a thicket of branches growing everywhere. Then, it will frighten you with the insane number of bud sites growing so close together that the plant will look like a football. Last, but not least come the monster harvests.
Monster Cropping Cannabis Has Many Pros, But Also Some Cons
Huge yields are clearly an upside that any grower would welcome, but we want to be honest with you: there are some downsides as well. Keep the following in mind if you want the best experience possible.
Pros Of Monster Cropping
- If for some reason you’ve missed the right moment to take clones in the regular way, monster cropping gives you a chance to still do it and probably get even better results.
- If you take clones from a flowering plant, you know more about it and can more easily tell a keeper from other, inferior phenos.
- You won’t need a special place dedicated to keeping mother plants. Just take a cutting from a plant that’s already flowering and on its way to harvest, and after the clone has rooted and grown some, make it flower, too. Then you can take new cuttings from it, and so on and so forth.
- Starting from the second generation of monster cropping, the plants will have so many branches that you can take as many clones as you need without slowing down the growth of the parent plant or compromising its future yields.
- You can turn your cutting into a very wide but not very tall, multi-branch bush that, given enough time, can fill the whole grow tent on its own.
- You can use any canopy management method along with monster cropping: topping, fimming, supercropping, LST, HST, etc., with the ScrOG technique being the best option possible.
- With a lot of branches, multiple bud sites, and an even canopy, the yields from each plant will be spectacular.
Cons
- You can’t use monster cropping on autoflowers. It’s impossible to re-veg an auto once it has entered the flowering stage. Btw, cloning an autoflowering plant that’s still in veg doesn’t make any sense, either.
- Not all photoperiod strains are equally suitable for monster cropping. Those that are compact, with very short internodes, are not very convenient to work with. Slow vegetative growth of some varieties is another impediment.
- You need more time for each growing cycle compared to regular cloning, because cuttings with flowers on it will need an extra week or two to revert to the vegetative stage.
- Not all clones will root, so you’ll have to take more cuttings than normal.
Is Monster Cropping Marijuana Worth It?
If you’re still questioning whether you should take the risk and try this advanced cannabis training technique, the answer is definitely yes – monster cropping marijuana is worth it! If you’re not a complete newbie and have had some previous experience growing cannabis (or at least done thorough research), you should try monster cropping.
First, a monster-cropped plant is a source of unlimited clones that can bear buds of your favorite genetics, cutting after cutting. Yes, not every cutting will survive, but keep in mind that every successful attempt at monster cropping is another healthy, branchy plant that you can use for the same technique again later.
Second, you need to remember that flowering clones acquired through monster cropping weed behave differently than classic clones taken during the vegetative stage. Namely, they will grow to become bushier, branchier, and more high-yielding compared to regular clones. If you still aren’t convinced that you should give monster cropping a shot with your plant, here are detailed instructions that will show you that monster cropping weed isn’t actually that difficult.
Monster Cropping Step By Step
In describing the exact procedure of monster cropping cannabis, we assume that you’re familiar with the basics of cloning. For those of you who aren’t, we provide very brief guidelines and basic tips. These will probably be enough for success, but we encourage you to read more about cloning. Without further ado, here’s how to monster crop:
Step 1: Choose a flowering female plant that you like the most. Some people say that one week of proper flowering is enough for monster cropping to work. However, we suggest playing it safe and letting 3-4 weeks pass from the moment you switched to 12/12.
Step 2: Choose some branches closer to the bottom of the plant, as these tend to root more easily. Take more cuttings than you actually need because not every one of them will root. Cut the branches at the base and immediately put them in a glass of cold water to prevent air from entering the stem.
Step 3: Cut off the distal half of every leaf on your clone to diminish the evaporation area of leaves and give the clones a better chance of survival.
Step 4: With a sharp, clean knife, make a diagonal cut closer to the bottom of the cutting. This is where the roots will appear, and the bigger the surface area of the cut, the greater your success rate.
Step 5: Dip the cut into a rooting gel (optional) and stick the clone into a rooting medium such as rockwool, perlite, water etc.
Step 6: Keep your clones under the right conditions (reduced lighting, moderate temperatures, a humidity dome) until they root. The light schedule should be at least 18/6 or all the way to 24/0. The idea is to revert clones to vegging.
Step 7: Let the rooted clones grow until the new leaves look normal and you’re happy with the size, number of branches, and shape of the canopy. At this stage, you may use any training method you like. For bigger yields, ScrOG will be the most effective one.
Step 8: Induce flowering, and after a couple of weeks, you can take the next generation of clones for the next cycle of monster cropping.
What about Monster Cropping Outdoor Weed?
If you’re wondering whether monster cropping weed plants can be done by outdoor growers, the answer is yes. However, this adds another layer of careful planning that needs to be done before you begin. Applying the monster cropping technique to your outdoor canna-garden is possible if you live in a warm area with long summers. You also need to be well-informed on the number of light hours in your area and how they change throughout the year in order to manipulate the photoperiod traits of your cannabis plant when doing monster cropping outdoors. Here are some additional outdoor growing-specific points for our monster cropping step-by-step tutorial:
- Plant your photoperiod cannabis in winter, when the amount of light hours a day is less than 12. This way, the plant will skip the vegetative stage almost entirely and begin flowering. As a result, you’ll have a very small flowering plant.
- If you’d like to have a bigger plant, prolong the vegetative period by introducing a source of artificial light and keeping your plants under a 16/8 or 20/4 schedule for some time – but not for too long! You need to plan the vegetative period to stop at the point where the plant would be able to start flowering and finish right before spring, when the plant would reveg. Take some clones of the flowering plant.
- In spring, when the light cycle crosses the point of 12/12, you need to harvest the buds right when the plant is about to reveg. Keep the plant in soil – it will start the vegetative phase again along with the clones you took, allowing you to bring in another harvest around fall.
What Strain to Choose for Monster Cropping?
Cannabis monster cropping is a technique that takes a lot of endurance from the plant. Therefore, you need to be selective when picking a strain to monster crop.
First of all, remember that monster cropping autoflowers is not possible. If you do that, neither the mother plant nor the clones will survive.
Second, try monster cropping when you have a healthy, robust plant that grows vigorously and thrives in your conditions. That’s always the best choice, and a guarantee that most monster-cropped clones will survive and root.
Monster cropping also works best with medium size strains. These don’t grow as slowly as short plants, but not as quickly as tall and lanky Sativas either, so you’ll have better control over the process and your grow space.
Finally, when monster cropping weed plants that grow outdoors and aiming for that double harvest, go for a strain that finishes flowering quickly, 8-9 weeks at most – this will help you harvest right before it starts re-vegging.
Here are some cannabis cultivar perfect for monster cropping:
Sugar Black Rose Early Version (Delicious Seeds)
An early-flowering cultivar with stable genetics. Its 45 days flowering period makes Sugar Black Rose Early Version a great choice for monstercropping ouitdoor plants and harvesting twice in a season. Besides, it’s resistant and naturally easy to grow.
Grandmommy Purple (Herbies Seeds)
Grandmommy Purple (Herbies Seeds) - Photoperiod
- An ecstatic must-have
- 400 - 500 g/m² indoors
450 - 550 g/plant outdoors - 28 - 33 %
A sturdy, Indica-dominant plant. Grandmommy Purple is stress-resilient and makes for clones with a higher rooting rate. Easily controllable, this strain’s height range lays within 40-140cm (1’3” - 4’7”) - her monster cropped clones will be compact and bushy. Over 30% THC content is a great bonus.
Girl Scout Cookies (Garden of Green Seeds)
A perfectly-balanced 50/50 hybrid of Indica and Sativa. Resilient and fast-flowering, Girls Scout Cookies will make for a perfect monster crop candidate. Besides, it performs great in SoG and ScrOG systems, which you can combine with monster cropping for boosted yields.
Monster Cropping with Other Techniques
For the biggest harvests and the best overall results, combine monster cropping with other cannabis training techniques. Monster-cropped clones show active and quite random growth and branching, so use this to your advantage! As soon as the cutting roots, start tying its branches down for an even, wide canopy. Monster cropping marijuana also works perfectly for implementing clones in ScrOG setups.
Monster Cropping Weed Is A Useful Method For Your Growing Repertoire
Far from being a curio, cannabis monster cropping is a legit technique that definitely has its uses. Understand its limitations, and you’ll have another powerful weapon in your cultivation arsenal that will lead you to new victories.
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