Manifolding Nirvana - Wonder Woman + AK48

Thanks for the interest from everyone. It's been just over 2 months since I planted the seeds and yesterday was the first day of flower for these two. Last time I grew these strains the AK finished flowering in 8 weeks, Wonder Woman took 9 weeks.

Everything so far has been really successful with the manifolding project. The plants both responded very well to training and have beautiful even canopies on top. It looks like they are all ready to start stretching and produce 8 massive cola's each. I should have mentioned in an earlier post as this should help with perspective in photos; the tomato cages horizontal rings are at 7 and 14 inches from the top of the soil. The WW has passed the first ring with almost all of it's shoots, the AK is just under it.

Also the 8 clones from the WW that I showed earlier are still doing very well. I let 2 grow from node 1 of each side, so they are all pretty much the exact same size and leaf count. I would love to continue this thread or make a new one and do more experiments with growing 4 vs 8 main shoots, and defoliation vs non-defoliation.

iPerculate said:

defoliation vs non-defoliation

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Your plants are things of beauty. Can't wait for next pics!

I have that going on right now. The two clones from node 2 are (were) identical. The two from the second topping are identical. That's one of the things that makes manifolding so neat. One of each has all but the top two sun leafs removed, but not the smaller growth at the nodes.

This is what I've seen so far: Both with the leafs removed have a little larger growth at the nodes and the flowers are a little bigger. The general appearance is the ones with the leafs look a lot nicer. Here is one difference I"m watching that may mean something. The ones that were defoliated developing a lot more from the bottom up. Almost cone shaped. But none of smaller stuff the usually make popcorn buds.

Where did you take the clones from WW?

Wow thats some perfect training!

Vd22 said:

Wow thats some perfect training!

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iPerculate said:

My intention with this grow was to try manifolding or mainlining for the first time

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I have literally searched the web for manifolding that's like yours. There are quite a few somewhat similar in design but none I could find that were quit exactly like them. Your plant is twice the ones on tutorials. Take a close look at the ones from the Mainlining Tutorial here or at THCFarmer and other places and you'll see the difference. GrowWeedEasy.com was the closest.

One germinated seed didn't make it so I have only one White Widow to try to duplicate what you are doing.

@DancesWithWeeds I seen there are many different styles of manifolding as you mentioned, but the one that I settled on is called "Nebula's Manifold". See link here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/manifold

My first couple grows were done SCROG style, and I just hated how restricting the trellis was to get in and take care of the plants. Once the plant grows into the net you can't rotate the plant or pull it out to give it more attention. It just gets really crowded and makes it harder to water them and everything. That's when I began thinking about a modular approach, that is, creating a frame around each plant to train them individually. I had been toying with the idea of manifolding for a long time now and thought it was a perfect time with just 2 plants going.

However, even with the link I provided, there still isn't any pictures of plants on that page that look as even as mine do. I'm very happy with the way the manifold has come. I can sit in the tent for quite a while just staring at the plants and their structures.

I could perhaps work on a more structured step-by-step guide but there's already a ton of that out there and i'm still new to manifolding. I would like to try a couple other manifolding techniques side-by-side with these clones and see what works best for me. But either way, this has been a tremendous success and I can see myself doing a lot of manifolding in the future. I really appreciate the feedback.

DancesWithWeeds said:

Where did you take the clones from WW?

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I just typed it all up but decided a picture is worth 1,000 words. This picture attached is of the AK plant just for example, but the clones were taken from Wonder Woman.

Each red circle is on node 1 of each node 1.

2 clones taken from each red circle location, 8 total.


I cut most of the new shoots very early on these 2 plants, right when they get big enough to cut without hitting something else. I let these 8 shoots grow specifically for taking clones.

Thanks. The clone location picture answered some questions about where you are going. I did find the tutorial at growweedeasy this morning and read the whole thing. Now I see why plants look better than the original Nugbukets, but even at that as John
Wayne said "Those young lady's sit tall in the saddle."

@iPerculate do you ever drink beer while sitting in your tent staring at your plants?

@DankTankerous I bring the pipe in there pretty often, I rarely drink alcohol. I get in a trance-like state just staring at them really stoned. My mind goes all over the place but I remain extremely relaxed.

Halfway through week 1 of flower now, both plants stretched a little over an inch the last few days. A couple pics of the girls attached. Trying to switch it up a little with the camera angles for you guys.

High/Lows throughout the entire grow staying tight with lows of 64-65F at night, highs of 76-77F during the day. I have my humidifier hooked up to this Willhi controller that turns the humidifier on/off between set ranges. I had it around 55-60% during early veg. Have slowly been turning it down and I have it set between 48-53%RH right now. Will go down just a bit lower towards the end of flower.

Day 9 of flower

Very nice. I got a good idea how this story is going to end.

iPerculate said:

I start them off in 18 oz solo cups with holes cut in the bottom

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Here's something I've been doing lately. I cut two holes at the bottom edge and then cut most of the way up the sides from the holes. You can lift the edge and check the roots. I let the roots tell me when to transplant.

Also, I put a rubber band around it to keep it closed.

Really great job, I'm following along with this one for sure!

lepriad said:

I'm following along with this one for sure!

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This is a good one to follow. This is as good a demo I have seen of exactly how to do it. I have a White Widow about a week or so from starting a manifold. I'll be starting with his first picture and following through the same way. Got to tie them down a different way and it won't look quite the same. The fingers don't work well enough. But should be OK tied down some other way. I'm thinking about using a wire ring anchored flat to the soil and plastic flower ties to train them down. That might make it as nice as iPerc's.

Day 16 of flower

Everything still going well, flowers are starting to show. The Wonder Woman has hit the top ring. I trimmed off some more of the lower fan leaves on both plants, but left some of the lower shoots. I make butter and stuff with the popcorn buds so I don't mind leaving some on there.

Looking good.

Day 19 of flower

We're at the point now where the stretch is done and flowers are slowly starting to fill out. The AK is a few inches shorter than the WW so I put an extra water tray upside down underneath it to make it the same height as WW. There are a couple cola's on each plant that are shorter/taller than others, but no more than 2-3 inch difference in canopy height throughout.

The main reason for this update is that I removed the zip-ties from the bottom rung of the cage and moved them to the middle one. This allowed me to spread the 8 cola's evenly around the outside of cage. I was hesitant to do this before the stretch because I wanted to make sure everything was done moving before I took off the bottom straps.

You can see in the base structure photo below the tearing that's forming right where the plant splits in 2. It's developed knuckles where the nodes split almost like the ones you see during supercropping.

Day 25 of flower

Well I thought the stretch was done. Looking at the pics from last post we gained a couple more inches from both plants. Each of the plants have some tops that are higher than others, and it's bud size is already reflecting so. I should have done a little more training during the stretch to keep the tops at same height.

This has been a mostly organic grow as I only gave them very light nutes for two feedings when they were very young in veg. Today I gave each plant 2 tbsp kelp meal and 2 tbsp fish bone meal, topped with about 1/4 inch of earthworm castings on top. My local hydro store gave me a mycos tea mix with humic acid and other organic additives in it so I watered it with that as well.

Both plants starting to get a little frosty, hopefully they start bulking up soon. I was thinking about taking the cages off at this point, as the training is pretty much done. The only thing that's making me leave them on is the idea of the plant using it for support later, but for now, they just get in the way.

Anyway, everything lookin great, thanks for following along