If you’ve been growing marijuana plants for a while, chances are you’ve tried your hand at least a few advanced training techniques. Monster cropping is a relatively new cultivation technique, though, and even experienced growers have often yet to try their hand at it. If you’ve got a little bit of experience under your belt and you’re looking for a way to continuously harvest big, dense buds from your plants without keeping a mother, this technique might be for you.
What Is Monster Cropping?
Also known as “flowering clones,” monster cropping is a plant training method that lets growers take down continuous harvests without having to devote space and resources to keeping mother plants. It involves taking budding clones and setting them back to the vegetation stage to create more plants with more colas. Once you get the hang of monster cropping, you can also combine this technique with other types of plant training such as ScrOG to increase yields even more.
How Does Monster Cropping Work?
Monster cropping is different from more traditional plant training techniques in two crucial ways.
- Most high-stress and low-stress training occur during the vegetative stage, but you’ll need to monster crop when your plants are already flowering. If you do it right, the controlled stress will promote the development of a bushier structure, complete with extra colas.
- While most high-stress training techniques are designed to increase growth on the plants being pruned, monster cropping creates entirely new clones. Since it doesn’t influence the growth of your current crop, you’ll still be able to pull down a good harvest from the plants you’ve monster cropped.
The reason that this training technique is so effective is that it takes advantage of plants’ natural defenses. Like most plants, cannabis plants alter their growth characteristics when they encounter environmental stressors. In this case, the new clones respond by being switched back to veg by developing a bushier growth pattern.
Is It Worth Monster Cropping Plants?
There’s an ongoing debate among serious growers about whether monster cropping is a worthwhile training technique. The problem is, while it’s very effective when it works, monster cropping can be unpredictable. You’ll need to evaluate the pros and cons of this training technique carefully before deciding if it’s the right solution for your situation.
Continuous Harvests Without a Mother
Keeping a mother plant around for making clones requires extra work, space, and resources. Monster cropping allows growers to take their next generations of clones from plants that are already in bud, eliminating the need for a dedicated mother room.
Huge Yields
Re-vegging flowering clones creates monstrously huge plants. They’ll be far bushier than clones taken during the vegetative stage, with more branches and more buds that have better light exposure. Bushier growth patterns also lead to more effective use of space in indoor grow rooms.
Easy Combination With Other Training Techniques
Experienced growers can easily combine monster cropping with other advanced training techniques. ScrOG is the most popular of them, but you can also top, fim, or lollipop your monster cropped plants, or play things safe and use low-stress training (LST) techniques.
A Way to Protect Genetics
Most growers don’t keep mothers for every cultivar. Plant breeders, especially, love monster cropping because it allows them to take clones from plants that have only expressed beneficial genetic traits later in their growth cycles.
The Cons of Monster Cropping
Few things in life come with only benefits and no drawbacks, and monster cropping is no exception. Growers who refuse to use the monster cropping technique haven’t made their decisions out of stubbornness, alone. They’re just weighing the cons of monster cropping more heavily than the pros. Those cons include:
Unpredictable Results
Every plant responds differently to monster cropping, so there’s always an element of surprise. Some plants bounce back quickly, while others take months to re-veg, and many monster cropped plants still need to be treated using LST techniques to create a more desirable shape.
Long Timeframes for Execution
It usually takes weeks for flowering clones to take root and start producing new vegetative growth. In some cases, it takes months. Some strains take better to monster cropping than others, but there’s no way to guarantee that the next harvest won’t be behind schedule.
Lower Success Rate
Clones taken from flowering plants have a lower success rate than those taken during the vegetative stage. Even expert growers who’ve been monster cropping for years always take extra cuttings to make up for clones that won’t root. Clones taken earlier in the flowering stage have a better chance than those that already have highly developed buds, but you should expect some losses no matter when you monster crop.
Doesn’t Work With Autoflowers
Autoflowering strains can’t be re-vegged. As a result, they don’t respond to monster cropping. You can only use this technique on fast-growing photoperiod plants.
How to Monster Crop Marijuana
Now that you’ve got an idea of what monster cropping is and whether it’s worth the effort, it’s time to take a look at how you can get started. If you’re starting from scratch, the first step is to set up your grow room with the best soil, nutrients, and lights and buy some feminized seeds.
You’ll want to choose strains that boast vigorous growth in the vegetative and initial parts of the flowering stages and to buy seeds from a reputable supplier. Kind Seed Co has a wide variety of high-quality yet surprisingly cheap seeds to get you started, and each strain sold on the site has a detailed profile to help you choose one that will work well with this technique.
In general, plants that grow slowly and stay short are poor choices for monster cropping. It takes them a long time to re-veg and start growing new leaves. If your favorite strain exhibits these growth patterns, you’re better off buying wholesale seeds and planting out a larger garden than cloning plants, either in veg or in bud.
Step One: Choose Clones
Once you’ve nursed plants of your chosen strain through the vegetative stage and induced flowering, it’s time to cut some clones. The best time to cut flowering clones is about three weeks after the plants enter veg. The closer it gets to harvest, the less likely you are to find success with monster cropping.
When choosing which branches to take, opt for the ones that are the lowest on the plant. They’ll root faster than clones taken from the top. It’s also important to take multiple clones since not all of them will survive.
Step Two: Cut Clones
Once you’ve decided which branches to cut, take a sterilized tool and cut diagonally across the stem. This cutting pattern will increase nutrient and water uptake and create more surface area for roots to grow.
Step Three: Root the Cuttings
Next, take the clones and place them in a glass of water. You can wrap a wet paper towel around the end if you can’t get them in water immediately to make sure no air seeps into the cut stems while they’re being transported. If air gets in, the clones will die. Once you see roots start to form, transplant your clones into high-quality soil.
Step Four: Re-Veg the Clones
To return the clones to the vegetative stage, just switch your light schedule back to an 18:6 light-to-dark ratio. There’s no need to worry about light intensity since clones don’t need much light to survive, but make sure you don’t disturb the buds and new leaves.
Frequently Asked Questions About Monster Cropping
Now that you have a general idea of how monster cropping works and how you can implement this technique at home, let’s dive in a little more. You can find answers to some of growers’ most pressing questions about monster cropping below.
Is Monster Cropping the Same as Super Cropping?
Despite the similar names, monster cropping and super cropping are very different techniques. This popular LST technique involves bending and tying down branches while plants are still in veg. It’s fine to super crop monster cropped clones but don’t confuse the two techniques.
Should I Try Monster Cropping My Plants as a Beginner?
Monster cropping is not a technique for the faint of heart, nor is it for beginners to cannabis cultivation. If you’re just getting started growing your first crop, get the basics down and focus on less risky LST techniques for now. If you’re an experienced grower, though, go ahead and try monster cropping to see if the technique is right for you.
Can You Monster Crop Outdoor Plants?
You can only monster crop outdoor plants if you live in a climate with very mild winters. If your temperatures reach below freezing, stick to growing indoors or harvesting just one crop per year.
It’s Time to Get Growing
Want to learn more about advanced cannabis training techniques? Kind Seed Co has all the resources intermediate and advanced growers need to up their game and start pulling down even bigger crops of large, tasty buds. Learn what you need to know online, then put your knowledge to the test by trying monster cropping and other advanced techniques on your own plants.
