Skylining: My Guide To Cannabis Training Featuring Blue Gelato 41 & Pink Kush

After seeing how trimmed up your lower canopy is, it definitely makes me feel more comfortable getting rid of a bunch more on my plants. I definitely have an uneven canopy on a good bunch of them. I'm giving some of the lower branches some time to catch up but maybe that's a waste of time?! If I can focus more energy on the already stronger branches, that may be the better option. Not sure which way I will go but that is one of the fun aspects for me is experimenting and trying new things. Thanks for the encouragement and tutorial.
 
Hiya @TriangleCheese, caught myself up...typical things rolling right along and then the bugs show up...those are definitely Thrips. More green and smaller when young, dark like that as adults...mine tend to look smaller and green because I keep up on them half assed I believe they never really get that developed, but they never really go away!

I been kicking them hard lately though, I find if I neem two or three days in a row every week or two, they really are kept to a minimum and I don't see much adverse effects besides a bit of leaf damage. I use it in flower as well, castillo soap doesn't seem to cut it for me.
 
BakedARea said:
After seeing how trimmed up your lower canopy is, it definitely makes me feel more comfortable getting rid of a bunch more on my plants. I definitely have an uneven canopy on a good bunch of them. I'm giving some of the lower branches some time to catch up but maybe that's a waste of time?! If I can focus more energy on the already stronger branches, that may be the better option. Not sure which way I will go but that is one of the fun aspects for me is experimenting and trying new things. Thanks for the encouragement and tutorial.
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Hey BA :passitleft:

You can be brutal on your cannabis plant and keep the strongest branches but if you got some other strong branches at the bottom and if you are still not satisfied with the horizontal growth, you need supercropping here. Super cropping keeps the highest tops at a steady level while the non-supercropped lower branches grow upwards to catch up with them. That is one miracle method to get an even canopy, therefore prevents time waste. Actually, it must be the fastest way for you to go.

Another method is to skyline or mainline but this must be decided before the first topping. Either way you can end up with a flat canopy BUT still, mainlining or skylining has its advantages over other training methods. If you have a main distribution line like my Purple Punch plant from the first post, your colas are more likely to become similar at the end. Quadlining or low stress training results with a flat canopy full of colas and nugs of different sizes. Thats not a problem but I think having less distribution lines provide more uniform results and higher yields but takes a little longer to finish.

However there is no such thing as the most efficient training method. It changes on every case. When I don't have time to complete two grows in a row but can afford a long veg. I go for skylining to get highest yields. When I am at the top comfort level and have lot of seeds, I do sea of green. When I don't have time to deal with too many plants and don't have time for a skylining grow, I go for quadlining or LST. To this day, I mostly qualined but I like Skylining the best. Without an argument, SOG provides the most yield but has the lowest uniformity.

I've decided to run the second tent for a quadlined SOG grow with 8 clones. Pink Kush and BG41 will be skylined together in the 3x3 tent and I will get 4 clones from each next week. If I can keep all of the clones alive, I will quadline them and go for a bushy SOG in the other 3x3. I will sure be bored from these strains soon :laugh:
 
Pbass said:
Hiya @TriangleCheese, caught myself up...typical things rolling right along and then the bugs show up...those are definitely Thrips. More green and smaller when young, dark like that as adults...mine tend to look smaller and green because I keep up on them half assed I believe they never really get that developed, but they never really go away!

I been kicking them hard lately though, I find if I neem two or three days in a row every week or two, they really are kept to a minimum and I don't see much adverse effects besides a bit of leaf damage. I use it in flower as well, castillo soap doesn't seem to cut it for me.
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Hey Pbass :passitleft:

These are great to read. To be honest, although I was %100 sure that these were thrips, I've been waiting for some confirmation :smokin2: Celt's post was also a relief.

Let me give a little more detail on these bastards. They are also very small. They move kinda fast but after the milk spray, I haven't seen any so I don't have a lot to share actually :) They don't seem very developed to me and maybe that is because these thrips are a different chunkier thrip type than yours.

And here is what I did about it. I sprayed the whole plants with a dense milk solution. After that I watched these bastards with the macro lens and I can tell you that they don't enjoy milk :ciao: I am glad that I used that much milk because a lesser amount wouldn't have been that efficient. There is stilll milk residue on the leaves. Anyways, I sprayed the plants with plain water the next day to get rid of the milk layer on top :eye-roll: I gave them a day to recover and they did. After that day, I got some Neem Azal and sprayed the whole thing until dripping wet. I used 2ml/l of Neem Azal. I moved these plants to a sterile tent and they seem to be happy right now. I also sanitised the other tent and the main grow area. I think I won't have further issues but you may never know.

What do you suggest for my case brother? Should I keep spraying with neem everyday or wait until I see some new ones? I think using that Neem spray for the whole veg. would be a good thing because I don't want to spray my buds with anything. I don't think diluted Neem spray will hurt buds too much but it would be better to get rid of the problem in the veg. phase if possible right?


I think plants are packed with great strength but since they were under a lot of stress and I am letting some sidebranches grow to get clones, vertical growth is slowed. I think I am over that bug thing and when I get over this cloning thing these babies will take off. I think I can top these both next week.
Cheers :blunt:

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Pink Kush;

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BG41;

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I think they look great. If the milk is working, keep at it! You have all the elements going. Since you applied as much as you did already, I might give it a couple days but honestly I don't know the life cycle and if we are killing eggs or just actual bugs, so the fact that they always return after a few weeks based on my stopping after a few days leads me to believe I'm leaving eggs.
 
Pbass said:
I think they look great. If the milk is working, keep at it! You have all the elements going. Since you applied as much as you did already, I might give it a couple days but honestly I don't know the life cycle and if we are killing eggs or just actual bugs, so the fact that they always return after a few weeks based on my stopping after a few days leads me to believe I'm leaving eggs.
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I also think we are not killing eggs because they are back with a fewer number. That made me upset but this type of stuff can be considered a minor issue if treated continiously with the neem oil so I decided to use neem oil until the end of the flowering if necessary. I've smoked nugs treated with neem oil before and they tasted fine. I guess they should turn out allright if you stop spraying 4-5 days before the harvest.

Anyways, since I don't want to depend on neem oil for high yields, I am taking more and more action everyday and these are mostly resulting in time loss. Plants are under stress and I am defoliating them constantly to get rid of these bugs for good. I almost cut everything except the nodes and sprayed with a milk+neem azal combo this time. I will look for something to kill the eggs as well because neem oil just prevents them to make eggs to some extend. I am planning to take clones from these plants and now I have second thoughts:(

I've contacted my friend about my problem and he said that most of the growers have this type of thrips on summer. He said that I should spray with neem until a couple days before the harvest and neem oil completely evaporates in a couple of days. I hope I can clean my plants completely and move forward without any contamination.

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TriangleCheese said:
I've smoked nugs treated with neem oil before and they tasted fine. I guess they should turn out allright if you stop spraying 4-5 days before the harvest.
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This was something I was curious about. Considering how quickly it tends to dissipate, I was wondering if you applied light misting with water a few days before harvest to get rid of the neem?

Something else I would consider trying for the eggs, larvae, and adults is a dust applicator and use diatomaceous earth. It would eliminate the larvae quickly after hatching and definitely start killing off adults. You could make your own with a squeeze bottle or buy some of the fancier battery powered spreaders. They dish out a much more consistent dust to ensure you get those shards of ancient fossilized shards of insect glass everywhere!
 
I believe it was @Pennywise who suggested something called Systemic Insect Control as a maintenance application. He's got a huge pot brain, lets poke him!
 
BakedARea said:
This was something I was curious about. Considering how quickly it tends to dissipate, I was wondering if you applied light misting with water a few days before harvest to get rid of the neem?

Something else I would consider trying for the eggs, larvae, and adults is a dust applicator and use diatomaceous earth. It would eliminate the larvae quickly after hatching and definitely start killing off adults. You could make your own with a squeeze bottle or buy some of the fancier battery powered spreaders. They dish out a much more consistent dust to ensure you get those shards of ancient fossilized shards of insect glass everywhere!
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I've heard about diatomaceous earth. It's cat litter right? I don't know how to apply that with an atomizer sprayer though. I don't have access to DE here unless its exactly the same thing as cat litter. I've red that there are several types of DE manufactured for different industrial needs. I can grind some cat litter and mix it with water to spray. Would that work?

:passitleft:
 
Pbass said:
I believe it was @Pennywise who suggested something called Systemic Insect Control as a maintenance application. He's got a huge pot brain, lets poke him!
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I've checked that and it seems cool but I don't have access to that one here. If there are alternatives, I would like to learn more about them.

I am checking some spinosad products now. I've found one with 480g/L spinosad density. These specifically kills thrips and exterminate them faster. I think that might be the way out but as BakedArea said DE can also be a good choice.

I've been growing for almost eleven years and this is the second time for me with bugs. I dislike them genuinely.

Peace :passitleft:
 
TriangleCheese said:
I've heard about diatomaceous earth. It's cat litter right? I don't know how to apply that with an atomizer sprayer though. I don't have access to DE here unless its exactly the same thing as cat litter. I've red that there are several types of DE manufactured for different industrial needs. I can grind some cat litter and mix it with water to spray. Would that work?

:passitleft:
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No, it is not like cat litter at all.
"Diatomaceous earth, diatomite or kieselgur/kieselguhr is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that is easily crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder. It has a particle size ranging from less than 3 μm to more than 1 mm, but typically 10 to 200 μm. Wikipedia"

Another source but from an academic university website, "
What is diatomaceous earth?
Diatomaceous earth is made from the fossilized remains of tiny, aquatic organisms called diatoms. Their skeletons are made of a natural substance called silica. Over a long period of time, diatoms accumulated in the sediment of rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans."

This comes in a very fine powder already and you should DEFINITELY be wearing a mask when doing this. You can buy food grade DE or you can get some at feed stores where farmers will use it for the storage of their various grain feeds. They mix it with their feed to keep it clean from insects. Perfectly safe for animals to ingest it when prepare in this way. That is the cheapest option. I buy 25 lb bags at a time and it is cheap! I spread it around my entire garden. Works great but it breaks down quickly with water or mist so reapplication is needed when you see it has been rinsed away.
 
My recollection on researching DE for thrips is it doesn't do much based on the fact they pretty much exist on the foliage. DE cuts fungus gnats to shreds though, they start out in soil and have to climb trough it which does them in is my understanding.
 
 
BakedARea said:
Details about thrips from Applied Bio-Nomics. I hope this helps.

"Diatomaceous earth or silica aerogel applied to the floor under the plants will kill thrips as they drop to the ground to “pupate”. Insecticidal soap or horticultural oil can be used to reduce thrips numbers before biological control agents are applied as they act on contact and do not leave toxic residues."
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Good information here. I will look for DE in detail tomorrow. I think I have very limited options on a good pesticide. I will keep this milk/neem spray until I get more decent stuff.

I don't know if I can get my hand son what you guys are suggesting here but the spinosad also looks appealing to me. Any idea how that performs?
 
BakedARea said:
This was something I was curious about. Considering how quickly it tends to dissipate, I was wondering if you applied light misting with water a few days before harvest to get rid of the neem?

Something else I would consider trying for the eggs, larvae, and adults is a dust applicator and use diatomaceous earth. It would eliminate the larvae quickly after hatching and definitely start killing off adults. You could make your own with a squeeze bottle or buy some of the fancier battery powered spreaders. They dish out a much more consistent dust to ensure you get those shards of ancient fossilized shards of insect glass everywhere!
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Sorry brother I forgot to answer your question :passitleft:

As far as I heard from my friend, 4-5 days is totally enough and I agree with this opinion. The master grower who provides nugs to my pal is a very resourceful guy and he's been using neem oil for ages. We smoked lots of his weed and it always tasted great except a few times. And no, he doesn't spray with water to get rid of any stuff because he is convinced that the diluted neem stuff dissipates totally. We are actually spraying very few amounts if you think.

Anyways, I agree that water misting would be a nice thing to do. In fact, budwashing would be even nicer. If I will have to use neem oil on flowering, I will definately wash my buds.
 
Pennywise said:
DE only works when dry, if it gets wet it’s no longer effective
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Hi PW thanks for dropping by :passitleft:

So we just top dress the plant itself? Like cooking with salt :laugh: How about the backside of the leaves?

If you got any comments on the other stuff that I mentioned(spinosad,neem or milk) it would be greatly appreciated :Namaste:
 
Just use DE as a top dressing to keep them out of the soil. I’ve used both Neem and spinosad. Look for Green Cleaner and Dr Bonners Castile Soap as well.
 
Pennywise said:
Just use DE as a top dressing to keep them out of the soil. I’ve used both Neem and spinosad. Look for Green Cleaner and Dr Bonners Castile Soap as well.
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We got some other castile soap brands available here but I guess I'll have to find an unscented one. Most of them are coming with lavander. Green Cleaner looks very appealing and I'll make sure I get a bottle of that in future.

Thanks again and I'll poke you for one more time when things go green here :passitleft:
 
TriangleCheese said:
I'll have to find an unscented one.
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I use the Dr. Bronners Hemp & Peppermint soap. It's awesome! The peppermint in there helps deter pests too. If you do go with unscented, experiment with various essential oils to make it better.
 
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