So this week I went hard on supercropping. I pretty much went through both plants and made the all the stalks with bud sites soft and bendable. I didnt actually train many to go anywhere, just softened them in hope that when they heal theyll be stronger and able to hold more weight later on. They seemed to all harden up after 3-4 days. After that I bent the ones that needed training again and tied a few branches. After the first round on bending (on friday I think) I gave them both about 3/4 gallon water with kelp meal and molasses. I also top dressed with about a scoop of mykos in each pot. If it makes a difference I did my bending about 10-15 mins after giving a foliar spray. Seems to soften them up a little imo. Since then I've just been tucking leaves and arranging bud sites so they all can get good light. Nothing special with nutes. Just foliar spray every day as close to lights on as I can. I'm going to be increasing the water as I get closer to flower. Idk if it matters, but I like the idea of tapering my water up until stretch rather than just increasing all at once. I'm pretty sure my soil is staying damp for a long time in these 20 gallon pots. I've yet to feel it go dry to finger depth. The only thing that's been drying out at all is the outside and way on the bottom. Hard to tell in these big ass pots but I'm watering lightly so far. By stretch I'm thinking I'll be up to watering 1.5-2 gallons per week for each pot. Right now I'm closer to 3/4-1 gallon per week.
I'm thinking the bigger plant is getting close to ready to flip. It's hard to measure but it's around 16-18". The smaller plant just isnt quite there tho. It's only about 10" so far. When I count the potential bud sites the bigger has close to 30, while the smaller girl has closer to 20. Shes got some nice bush growing, but just isnt stretching much. Maybe she got stunted or her genetics lean more toward an indica plant. My goal is to fill up this 2x4x6 tent with these 2 so I'm still planning to let my smaller gal grow a little more until flip. The way I've trained these plants will be good to lollipop like 2 weeks into flower (I think at least). My plants are still pretty much horizontal with the soil. Once I flip I'm assuming the bud site will grow upwards from there. When I flip I'll throw the scrog in too and keep spreading those buds as much as I can.
I've also been able to control my environment pretty well now. When it warmed up I had to start adding wet rags and such and it seems to be keeping temp just under 80f and the humidity just above 50% (goes higher in the am when I spray for about an hour). I also put my standing fan on oscillate now. I'm thinking the plants have been in these pots long enough that the roots are solid. So the little bit of direct air flow should strengthen the branches (I think...I hope lol).
Oh and I tossed a small amount of cat grass (oat grass) seeds in my pots. I was going to add a cover crop after this first harvest but my kitties love when i cut a chunk of grass and let them play in it. I didnt add close to enough to cover the whole pot but I'll see what happens. I'm still looking to add some more amendments to my plants but I want to start adding them slowing and spaced out so I can notice if they do anything good or bad. Aloe, silica and coconut are a few of the things I'm looking into. Theres a few other nutrient type amendments I'd like to try but we'll see what happens.
@GuerrillaNo_4, yeah I was given some oversized clones so I pretty much started training s couple days after I got them home and transplanted them. I figured if I was gonna mess up and break/kill branches I better learn early on so they have time to recover lol. I wasnt sure how well they would respond but it's nice to hear that it should help in the long run.