First Grow - LST

First time posting, but been reading up a lot on here.
I’m 21 days into my first grow, I’ll write the details of my setup lower down.

Things have honestly been going great and have been having a lot of fun with this so far. I decided to start trying LST 3 days back.

I tied down the main stem, and within 8 hours, the plants were already starting to reshape themselves. I quickly fell in love with this concept. Now I find myself constantly going to my tent and checking on the branches and ties. So I’d like to know:

is there such a thing as too much LST?
Should I also be training fan leaves?
Is it too early to start pruning? Should I remove leaves that are on the « bottom side » of the plant?

My smallest plant (5th pics) seems to have had a lot of stress during transplant which was 5 days before I started lst. It had no growth for a couple days after transplant, only for some small improvements after that. Maybe I shouldn’t have started training this one yet.

4th picture is a different strain, Maraschino Cherry, this one seems to not be doing as good as the other two peanut butter crumbles, but could be genetics. I actually pruned the lower growth of this one as it seemed to be blocking lower growth. Which I think was a mistake at this stage.

First 3 Pics:
My other two plants ( both peanut butter crumble) seems to be doing pretty good. I’m worried that I might be doing too much lst. I’m slowly trying to bend the bigger leaves away from the new growths under them. Only issue I’m having is how close it is to the edge of the pot, should I maybe repot into a bigger one and « center » it? I’d rather not as these have been in these pots since seedling and would rather not transfer them.

Also topped them all today. I realize now I should have topped first and then lst, but I’m really learning as I go with the training. I wish I’d have let them grow naturally for my first grow, but my impulses got the best of me unfortunately.

I’d like some recommendations on what I can do differently and improve on!

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C 25-28
RH 65-74%

3x PEANUT BUTTER CRUMBLE from Sacred Genetics

1x MARASCHINO CHERRY from Sacred Genetics

3x3 Tent

Spider Farmer SE3000 @ 50% @ 24in

3gal fabric pots

70:30 Coco Perlite & 85:15 Coco Perlite

Amended with Gaia Green All Purpose and Superbloom. 70:30 @ 3tbsp/gal
Worm

Stupidly was going to try organic and coco but talked myself out of it. I’m supposed to start top feeding at the 1 month mark, but will instead start feeding synthetic nutrients.

One simple suggestion make a little bridge to bend the main over. That can give a nice sharp bend without breaking it and it's easy. I take a piece of wire that I can bend and have enough to stick in the soil a couple of inches. I like to put the bent just above the first true leafs.

This is how I start it. I use a rubber band to hold tension and do a little at a time.


After a day or two you can pull it on over to horizontal.


After that you can use rubber bands and small stakes to train however you want. I also use a lot of pipe cleaners. This may not look like much but it works and you can make your plant look the way you like.

It's good that you are doing LST right off. I think the way you have started them they will be really nice. The more you bend them now the nicer they will be.

Everything looks cool. The only suggestion would be to place your plants off center in your pots next time so when you bend it over it will be centered. That's just my OCD kicking in tho. Keeping it all centered makes space management a little easier

A lot of really good youtube videos on lst that often mention doing it twice a day on vegging plants..
I've never done it that much but that should tell how resilient the plant is..

DreHaze said:

Everything looks cool. The only suggestion would be to place your plants off center in your pots next time so when you bend it over it will be centered. That's just my OCD kicking in tho. Keeping it all centered makes space management a little easier

Click to expand...

Nothing wrong with a little ocd when it comes to growing..

DreHaze said:

Everything looks cool. The only suggestion would be to place your plants off center in your pots next time so when you bend it over it will be centered. That's just my OCD kicking in tho. Keeping it all centered makes space management a little easier

Click to expand...

I was thinking of doing the same thing on my next grow. I'm also growing my first.

@DreHaze , got a question for you about planting off center. If you are using fabric pots wouldn't the roots have to work there way to the center in order to not dry out when close to the side? That's just a question that I had that fits the conversation.

DancesWithWeeds said:

@DreHaze , got a question for you about planting off center. If you are using fabric pots wouldn't the roots have to work there way to the center in order to not dry out when close to the side? That's just a question that I had that fits the conversation.

Click to expand...

I never gave it any thought. I just watered normally and figured the roots would go where there is space and water and they did. I only did two grows like that before switching to hydro but it was an old pro (25+ years of growing) who gave me the idea and it worked good.

DreHaze said:

I never gave it any thought. I just watered normally and figured the roots would go where there is space and water and they did. I only did two grows like that before switching to hydro but it was an old pro (25+ years of growing) who gave me the idea and it worked good.

Click to expand...

You're probably right. I have wondered about that. Thanks.