Super Cropping — The Best Technique To Get Massive Yields

Super Cropping is an advanced training technique to increase cannabis yields. 

Every cannabis grower wants to get the best yield with potent, bushier buds. If you want the same, you should try super cropping.

Super Cropping is straightforward and leads to impressive results, but a simple mistake could cause various problems. 

Many growers have horror stories of destroying their plants with super cropping. Simply put, this technique can be a boon or a bane, depending on how you do it. 

Fortunately, you can prevent mistakes and become an expert because we will show you how. 

In this article, we tell you everything about super cropping, so you reap big rewards without hurting your plants. 

What Is Super Cropping?

Super cropping is a high-stress training method to increase yields. 

The technique involves hurting your plants. Yes, you hurt your cannabis plants, but strategically.  Essentially, you have to gently damage the tissues of the branch by pinching and bending the inner fibers without tearing the outer lining.

The process of intentionally damaging your precious plant may sound counter-intuitive, but it can work wonders for the yield. Minor damage to the stem encourages your plant to grow more vigorously during the veggie stage and grow bigger buds later during bloom.

How? When you bend a branch, your plant enters a defensive mode. To recover from this trauma, the bent stems consume even more nutrients and light than usual. Eventually, they end up becoming larger and stronger, growing bigger buds. 

Plants exhibit this behavior even in the wild when it senses danger from predators. Similarly, your cannabis buds will likely grow bushier with higher resin, terpene-rich trichomes, and THC than normal with super cropping.

Super cropping is an effective way to manipulate your plant’s growth, but it’s magical if you combine it with ScrOG.  After cropping, the branches become weak, and you can then direct them to grow in a particular direction.

Additionally, super cropping also helps your branches produce thick knots that help support big buds, preventing bending and breakage under their own weight.

You can perform super cropping on virtually every cannabis strain, including autoflowers, if you have some experience. If you’re a beginner, stick to super cropping during the vegetative stage, so the plant can recover quickly before its full-fledged flowering phase. Experienced growers super crop their plants in the first two weeks of flowering to derive maximum benefits. For autoflowers, though, always super crop during the vegetative stage. 

We recommend super cropping your plant only if your lighting panels are over 600 watts as they provide sufficient light penetration required for growing bigger branches and buds.

Drawbacks of Super Cropping

While the benefits of super cropping are great for your cultivation, super cropping does have some drawbacks. 

Super cropping can potentially make your plant vulnerable to infection. Plus, a minor mistake you ignore can turn into a costly problem — it can stunt your plant’s growth and cause other growth problems. 

Also, your plant must be vigorous enough to handle the process. Never try the technique with plants struggling with pest infestations or other diseases. In addition, it can backfire with some strains. Although it’s rare, you could end up killing your plant. To prevent this, you can test it with a small branch to see how the plant reacts.

You must also give your cannabis plant enough time to recover. If you become hasty, the results won’t be as good as you expect. You must be patient.

Steps to Super Crop Cannabis Plants

Super cropping is a high-stress training method for your cannabis plant. So, it may freak you out at first — which is a good thing. However, be cautious when growing cannabis, especially with HST, as a single mistake can hurt your plant and stunt its growth.

But if you know the right technique to super crop your cannabis, you would be surprised at how easy the process actually is. 

Equipment You Need for Super Cropping

1. Zip ties or strings to tie down branches
2. Garden stakes or dowels to support the branches 
3. Duct tape or something similar 

Super Cropping Step-by-Step

Figure out which branch to super crop

You must super crop only those branches that are mature but not woody or too old. Also, branches that are taller than others are a good place to start if you are aiming for an even canopy of branches.

Start by cropping at the bottom

Place your thumb, forefinger, and index fingers near the base of the branch, squeeze it gently, and bend it slightly in the desired direction at the same time. 

Remember, the goal is to crush the branch’s core without damaging the outer lining — be as gentle as possible. You can even roll the branch between your fingers to make it more pliable before gently bending it.

Now, work your way up

Once you have cropped the base of the branch, it’s time to work your way up. Again, make sure you leave a few centimetres between each crop. 

Also, never crop anything above three nodes from the tip as it can damage the branch and buds.

Tie the branch

After super cropping the branch, it may be weak or flimsy. So, you can simply tie the branches down using a garden stake and zip ties. Use the crop sites as anchor points.

And, that’s it — it’s easy to super crop cannabis plants. But, remember, the key to successful super cropping is finding the right spot where the outer lining remains intact and the core feels malleable and soft. 

If you have super-cropped your plant properly, the branches should lean more towards one side without any signs of damage on the outer lining.

Fixing Broken Branches

If you are experimenting with super cropping for the first time, you may end up breaking a branch. Don’t worry; this is completely normal and you can rectify the situation if you act quickly. 

As soon as you realise you have broken a branch, put duct tape around the snap or tear site to create a makeshift bandage. Next, use a garden stake and zip ties to support the branch. After a week, you can remove the duct tape.

The damaged site may grow big knots, but you shouldn’t worry about those. They’re completely normal. 

Ideal Time to Super Crop Cannabis

Image Credit - MrJoint

The correct time to super crop cannabis can be tricky, but once you get a hang of it, you can experiment as per your preferences. The grower, MrJoint, has super cropped during the 7th week of the plant's vegetative stage in the pic above. You can check out his grow journal here - https://growdiaries.com/diaries/76921

But for starters, if you are doing this for the first time, we recommend super cropping your plant in the late vegetative stage — ideally, three to seven days before you switch to the flowering stage.

Doing so would give your plant all the time it needs to recover from the trauma before it can focus its nutrients and energy on growing bushier buds.

On the other hand, if you have more experience, you can do super crop multiple times.  However, try to super crop only within the first couple of weeks of the bloom stage because the plants exhibit explosive growth at the beginning of the flowering stage. This can help your plants get bigger and grow bushier, more potent buds.

Once you gain more experience with super cropping, you can experiment with the timing. You can super-crop the plant in various ways and see which works best for your cultivation objectives. 

Additionally, if you want to support bigger buds (to avoid them from falling under their own weight), you can super crop your plant once it grows the third node. 

And if you are aiming for an even canopy, super crop the plant in the late vegetative and early flowering stages to promote resin production and help the plant potent aromatic buds.

Again, remember that you must never super crop when your plant is experiencing any kind of problems like nutrient deficiency, pest infestation, or stress. Your plants experience a traumatic phase due to stress, and it can be pretty taxing, so super crop only healthy plants. 

Super Cropping, LST, and Main Lining

If you want even better yields, you can combine super cropping with other training techniques like LST, ScrOG, and mainlining. Do this when you are experienced enough in super cropping, though.

For mainlining, you have to create a manifold, i.e., you need to top the plants to grow two main stems from the node. 

On the other hand, for LST, you have to bend the stems to make them parallel to the ground. This would improve light penetration, which is a terrific advantage during the vegetative stage. 

So, by combining these techniques of super cropping, LST, and mainlining, you can make the most out of your cannabis plant, ensuring amazing results. Be warned — your plant may look a bit weird, but it’s totally worth the effort.

Finally, just to show you how it works, check out Mr Joint's spectacular results in his journal, and you can see how super cropping helped increase his yields.

Summary: Super Cropping — The Best Technique To Get Massive Yields

Super cropping is an effective method to make your cannabis plant more potent and produce higher yields. If you want to give it a shot, remember these points:

• Choose branches that you want to super crop
• Pinch the branches gently using your thumb and forefinger
• Then, wiggle the branches until they are pliable 
• Slowly bend the branches into your desired positions 
• Use stakes and zip ties to anchor the branches so they don’t fall or bend too much
• If you accidentally damage a plant, use duct tape as a makeshift bandage

That’s it. Try out super cropping and see how it can reward you with a large yield full of aromatic, potent buds.