Mainlining is a cannabis growing technique that has gained a lot of traction over the past few years, especially with modern indoor cultivators. It is now considered one of the best methods to break apical dominance and increase yields. At its simplest, mainlining cannabis entails building a new plant of a single node. It combines the concepts of low-stress training (LST) with topping. In this article, we cover how to mainline your cannabis plants and explain why this is now regarded as the best way to train your plants.
Mainlining Cannabis: What Do They Mean?
The main purpose of mainlining cannabis is to produce plants with several large and uniform colas rather than just having one. While this concept has been done before, the process of mainlining is very straightforward and requires only a little extra effort. Many cultivators top a plant three times at symmetrical nodes until they can produce eight main branches. But depending on your grow space’s height availability, there is no need to stop at eight equal colas. You can simply replicate the topping process on newer growths and have 8, 12, and even 32 main branches!
Oftentimes, mainline training gets confused with manifold training, which is also often used on cannabis plants. While both techniques produce plants with eight main branches, the manifold achieves this with only two toppings while preserving four branches on each side of the plant.
Mainlining Cannabis: What Are The Benefits?
Aside from the most obvious and significant advantage of this technique, which is increased yields using the same setup, mainlining cannabis also offers several other benefits. These include the following:
Equal Energy Distribution
Mainlining creates a spot to distribute energy equally across the plant, resulting in fatter colas – no tiny “popcorn” buds – with similar sizes and weight. This, in turn, makes the drying and curing process faster and easier.
Better canopy management
As a result of the equal distribution of energy among all colas, mainlining also allows effortless control of your plant’s height. Managing the canopy level in your grow room is important for maximum marijuana yield. When you have plants of uneven heights in the same space, the shorter plants will miss the same light intensity as the taller ones. The taller ones might also run the risk of getting heat stress when they become too near the light source.
Works for both indoor and outdoor cultivation
This technique is easy to implement as this needs to be only done once in the plant’s lifecycle. After the initial training done at the beginning of the plant’s life cycle, you only need to sit back and reap the benefits of the technique. And whether you are an indoor grower or outdoor gardener, you will be able to reap the above-mentioned benefits of mainlining, which is a more desirable and consistent final product.
Mainlining Cannabis: How to Mainline Cannabis Plants?
When you have decided that mainlining is the technique for you, it is time to jump straight to the simple and easy step-by-step process below. Before you start, however, make sure to only apply this technique on cannabis plants that are healthy and robust. If your plants are suffering or recuperating from any type of stress or deficiencies, make sure to wait until they have fully recovered before mainlining them.
Prepare the needed tools
You will not need that many tools with this method as all you need would be a pair of sterilized pruning shears and some proper plant ties. As always, make sure to work on clean tools to avoid plant contamination and diseases.
Wait until the seedlings grow out to five to six internodes
The optimal moment to start applying the mainline technique to your cannabis plants is when they have developed the right number of internodes. In this case, that is around five to six internodes. Avoid doing neither too early nor too late. When done too early, plants will take a longer time to recover. The new growth will also be too close to the soil or grow medium, decreasing proper air circulation, and encouraging diseases. When done too late, on the other hand, you will have wasted all that extended time. Never apply this method during a plant’s bloom phase to avoid taking away the plant’s focus on growing buds.
Top at the third node
Make sure to leave a stump behind, just below the fourth node, when doing your first topping. It may look out of place but this little sprig of the stem will ensure a strong start to the mainlining process. It will also guarantee that the stalk will not split under the weight of the buds when they start to grow. Remember a split or wound easily opens doors for pathogens to enter.
An important part of mainlining is under shucking all the branches and plant matter under the third node, leaving only the main colas to grow. This ensures that there is enough air circulation underneath the dense canopy that will form later on. Good airflow is always an important part of cannabis growing. Another purpose of this step is to make sure that the plant sends all energy to the main cola at this point and focus on growing the new main branches.
Allow the new main stalks to grow
Guide the new branches to create a 90-degree angle and train them to branch horizontally by tying them into position. Make sure to be confident but gentle when doing this step to avoid breaking the branch. Knowing the strain you are working with helps a lot, as some strains respond better to this method.
Top each new branch until you now have eight primary branches. Make sure to keep an eye on new growths from both sides of the lower nodes to ensure that air circulation is maintained. Continue training the new stems horizontally and away from the center as they grow, ensuring an even canopy height. At this point, if you decide to make more than eight colas, simply repeat the process. Just make sure that, again, you do not apply this method once the plant enters the flowering stage.
Mainlining cannabis is a pretty straightforward process that requires a few tools and a bit of skill, patience. However, the benefits reaped will be numerous. By giving attention to the plant at its early life will really pay off at harvest time.
