Natural trees, no training.

I get that if you have limited space you can train plants to make better use of what space you have available, but if you have unlimited space, I don't believe that training will increase yield or quality..
Not saying I really know anything and I am not any sort of expert..

I think the plant is going to grow as good as it possibly can on it's own and any sort of stress or contorting it will slow it down..

Think of it like this..
If you started a plant too late outdoors where it would have plenty of space would you try training it or just let it grow as much as it can?
If you had a massive field in full sun with no space limitation why would you train a plant?

I don't see much of anything for naturally growing plants with no training. It's like nobody ever does it..
Have you ever grown a big plant without messing with it at all?

I have seen plenty of plants grown with all sorts of training and pruning methods and am now seeing some of MY plants that are just natural and they are doing the best of all of mine and the growth pattern of all the bud sites coming off of my natural plants and into the light is NOT making me wish I trained it in any way..

My big natural plant has tons of colas all reaching the light very evenly and well all the way around the plant from top to bottom 360 degrees around.. The colas are light lights on an xmas tree all the way around.. every few inches across its entire canopy..

I don't see making it grow with a flat top as being any better.. The base is as big around as the flat top would have been and it has more surface area of canopy because it's a big cone instead of a flat surface..

Sure ALL the cola tops won't get sun ALL day but they all get atleast half sun and then ambient sun all day and I'm not even convinced full sun would be that much better..
the north side of the plant that gets the least sun doesn't seem to be doing noticeably worse than the south side that gets the most sun.. You would think that the darker side of the plant to the north that gets less direct sunlight would look a lot different but it does not..

I'm not here saying all of you heavy plant trainers are liars but what I am saying is..
Plant training always being the best is a myth - Change My Mind

Learn me something because I am probably wrong seeing as this opinion of mine is by far the minority opinion..

They are prettier too.. <fact

 

Well, My 2 biggest are right next to eachother.. I tied the biggest one down horizontally and left the 2nd biggest grow straight up..

The one I let grow straight up is now easily twice as bulky as the one I tied down, is bigger around at the base now than the tied down one is, and has probably 3 times as many colas exposed on its surface all around it than the one I tied down having only colas going straight up, stalk is twice as big around now too while it used to be the smaller of the 2..
They aren't exactly apples to apples because they are not the same genetics but this is my observation..

If they were exactly the same size around at the base, a cone simply has more surface area than a flat top..

I'm not saying any of you are wrong at all, I just want some data or first hand experience that shows training outdoors does increase yield.. Time will tell on my plants what they yield but it isn't looking like a win for my tied down plants..

Granted, I have a short growing season this far north so plants just aren't going to get ridiculously huge and unmanageably tall..
I had my seed sprouts out and in the ground before most put their clones out this year and I haven't seen a more bulky or bigger plant than my best bagseed plant this year and regularly see a set of 24 mainlined clones..

They are wanting to trade me clones of their legit genetics clones for clones of my big bagseed natural untrained plant.. What does that mean?
Maybe I just hit a killer genetic in that seed.. IDK


I have to wait for 4' of snow to melt and the ground to thaw in the spring while even just 50 miles south of me your ground is probably ready a month and a half earlier in the year.. I still have snow when it's 75 degrees out in the spring.. Boats in the water while their is still snow on the ground..

I don't think I have an abundance of time to be stressing them and stunting them trying to keep them short while height is not much of a concern to me anyway..

9-10 feet high is fine with me and if anything I have more of a shortage of horizontal space than vertical space..

I'm not trying to argue, I just want a discussion so I can learn what I am obviously not understanding..

Next year I think I will do an apples to apples comparison with the same clones in the same holes and probably mainline train one and let another do whatever it does and see what happens..

 

You ever grow any full size plants without training? How often?
It seems to me that nobody ever even tries it because the stigma of training is so great..

 

I don't know what works best for me yet.. I need to try a bunch of different things to find the difference still, and I am planning to, but natural growing plants are going to be part of the arsenal of experimentation..

I am also currently debating wither or not I should "De-Larf" the inside of my plants right now or not..

I'm not convinced either way wither the plant material inside will act like suckers slowing the colas down, or the plant will suck the nutes/energy out of the inside plant material to boost its main colas in the end when it knows it's time to give it all it's got..

 

I live in the red spot on this...


It isn't permafrost but the ground freezes pretty good and takes a while to thaw..