Mainlining

judit asked me to gather my posts and pics about my mainlining experiment this year into a thread here in the Cannabis folder, so here goes.

I thought I'd drop some end-of-the-season notes in here about my first experiences with mainlining this year.

First off, I need to thank anonymous internet stranger nugbuckets, who wrote the guide I used:

https://www.growweedeasy.com/mainlining-nugbuckets

Nugbuckets mentions that some strains are better suited for mainlining, and I've found that to be true. My Grapefruit Haze and Green Crack main colas stacked up really well, with some lower branching, but my Girl Scout Cookies tops are only about half the size of her bigger sisters'; they're still 6-8 inch main colas, but a lot of her energy went into her lower branches.

The standard model for mainlining seems to be for 16 main stems, and I'm kind of conflicted about this. The pots I grow in are only 7 gallon, which is somewhat on the small side because I need to control the height of my plants. What I found though is that managing 16 main stems once you're in full veg gets pretty complicated. So, I think I might just do eight mains next year, but like I said, I'm conflicted about this and will be pondering what to do over the winter. Also, only doing eight main stems means that only three toppings are needed, which means less stress on the plant and more time for the plant to develop, since toppings typically require about a week or so to bounce back from.

One of the nice things about mainlining is that most of the work is done fairly early in the season, when things typically aren't too busy in the garden. I'm guessing I spent less than 30 minutes a plant doing the toppings and trainings; it was probably more like 10-15 minutes per plant spread out over the course of several weeks.

One thing I noticed this season is that my main stems weren't nearly as uniform as I thought they might be, and I'm guessing this is because I topped things sooner rather than later. I think next year I need to let things develop a bit more before I do my toppings.

My main takeaway from this season is that mainlining is an excellent way to grow weed outdoors. It's looking like I will double my yield from last year with only one other significant change in my method: pHing my water. I used the same commercial soil and organic nutes, and the weather was pretty much the same as it was last year--very hot and all kinds of sunny--and the ratio of usable bud to larf is pretty much ridiculous this year; there is no larf to speak of, which means much less time trimming.

I'm really looking forward to round two of my mainlining experiment next year.