Beginner Grow Tips: Topping, Water Stress & the Root Zone

Each week, High Times Cultivation Editor Nico Escondido brings us three beginner grow tips to help ease the novice cultivator into the art of growing. Today, we cover topping, water stress and the inner-workings of the root zone.

Topping To Increase Overall Yield

“Topping” plants, or cutting off the top terminal shoot, results in multiple top shoots growing out directly under the cut.

Beginner Grow Tips: This will increase the number of top colas and the overall yield of your plants.

How Water Stress Affects Plants

Water stress is the lack of water, or too much water, for a plant. The former results in wilting, with dry, crumbly leaves; whereas the latter causes drooping of moist, heavy, sagging leaves.

Beginner Grow Tips: This stress causes abscisic acid to build up and closes down stomata in leaves, thereby slowing photosynthesis to a crawl.

Root Zone Must-Knows

There is a shift from leaf production to root production during the dark cycle as leaves transfer stored energy down to the root zone.

Beginner Grow Tips: Shut down supplemental CO2 during this time and boost oxygen to the root zone. It’s one piece of advice you’ll be glad that you remembered!

Final Hit: Remember These Beginner Grow Tips

First, let’s remove any fear you may have that growing cannabis is going to be difficult. It is not. We call it “weed” for a reason—because it grows easily and anywhere, like a weed.

That being said, it’s easy to get bogged down by dense grow guides and obscure technical jargon that often comes second-nature to seasoned cannabis cultivators; we often don’t even realize we’re using it!

That’s what makes these weekly tips so handy. You can use these bite-sized tidbits of weedy wisdom to gradually increase your grow knowledge as you dive into the finer intricacies of cannabis cultivation.