I have been growing outdoors for a long time and first discovered “low stress training” as an accident, some plants went into bud and the weight of the flowers caused them to bend (almost break) over. When I found the plants I thought they were going to die but I realized that the smaller stem buds had doubled in size and the plants were growing fine. My question is when is the best time to low stress train my plants while they are still in veg. or just as they begin to flower? I have been doing LST when the plants go into flower , however my daughter is pushing me to tie the plants over before they go into flower. Her reason is that the stems are still fairly “bendable” and will not break at this point. I think that any suckers would really take off and shoot up. I’d like to hear any thoughts on this matter my fellow growers would care to add.
Thanks to all in advance.
I like to get the training over by the 2nd~3rd week of flower as a general guideline but what your daughter suggested is also a great approach (esp if you want to keep them below a fence line).
If the stem appears to be too ‘woody’ to bend you can ‘crunch’ the stem gently with needle nose pliers (see supercropping) to get the flexibility you need. Surprisingly the plant responds quite well to that minor abuse.
Cheers
G
Have a look for yourself here’s a top view of my bent down batch only 3 plants here and two are bent over the sides of my log grow plot those side larf branches will definitely rise to meet the occasion and spread out and become main kolas .Been bending plants over since back when i was a kid.At first it was out of necessity to blend the plant into the landscape and break up the profile so noone seen Christmas trees standing out in the field,Now i do it for size constraints didnt do it last year and plants got over 13 ft tall and you could see them over my fence no bueno when you have Bitchy twats for neighbors that look for excuses to get law involved.I bent these over about 3 weeks after they were
in the ground and im almost a month out till Pistils start popping out.You will lose the main kola but gain triple that in medium sized kolas you get more buds overall in the end and they wont be larf
IMO its never to early to start training them outside. I like a lot of tops. Better yield, less chance of bud rot on the main cola, sense there is no main cola. And some pests like stem borers, and stink bugs can attack that main stalk and ruin most of your smoke.
I’m going for my record this year. Got my favorite plant in my best hole, and I put her out big and pretrained 
This is all great info, thanks so much for the input! I am growing outside in pots, I have drilled holes in the upper edge of all my pots in order to run the strings through that I will use to bend the plants over.
@ CapnCannabis I know what you are talking about when you say you did LST just to hide your plants. There were to many times back in the day when I found someone had ripped up my crop because they were just too tall!
I’ll start to LST this weekend after this heat wave breaks. I’m not F-ing with them in 100 degree heat!
Yeah, I slide the one neighbor who can actually see my plants at least a half ounce twice a year and he’s cool with it, otherwise nobody can see my girls.I started LST for more/ bigger buds.