tying down vegetable plants and flowers to increase yield !!!

[muslimgrower]

has anyone ever tried this ???, ive been doing if for the last 3 seasosn, no pics old lappy crashed,, but in june/july ill show with pics how to tie down plants and flowers to increase yield

[muslimgrower]

not even one reply huh ??

[Thelma Sanders]

You must be alone in your experiment! We'll all wait and see

[binley100]

waiting for piccies .....

[Jeanied]

Or a how-to guide!

[SarzWix]

Hey up! Haven't seen you around for a while

Yep, I think we were all waiting for you to explain what you mean by 'tying down' Do you mean so that the plants are forced to branch, or have the stem touch the soil so that it roots?

[Nicos]

Hey- welcome back!!!!

I've heard it's done to fruit trees- but never veg!
Which veg in particular????

[Two_Sheds]

By tying down, do you mean the cordon method? (never tried it on a parsnip though)

[chris]

I've heard of festooning (as above) with fruit trees, but not with veg. Interesting...

[taff]

I'm just waiting to find out what you mean by tying down...

[rustylady]

And what type of veg - the suspense is killing

[veggiechicken]

or just pegging down the stems so that the plants grow more roots at the point of contact with the soil - as with tomatoes or squashes?

[rustylady]

We are still waiting for some more information on what you tie down I think. Don't necessarily need pictures, just a little information.

[bazzaboy]

If you check on Google and YouTube you will find the expression “tying down” (also known as “low stress growing” and “super-cropping”) is most frequently used by the marijuana/cannabis growing set and there are a surprising number of short videos showing various techniques to that end… .

Although the particular phrase “tying down” seems to have that close association, essentially “stressing” a plant is also, of course, a much used and ancient technique to increase flowers and sometimes fruit production. For example if you grow nasturtiums (and several other flowers) you’ll probably be aware that a poorish soil and not too much water is likely to result in more flowers whereas water and plant food aplenty will result in a lot of lush leaf growth but fewer flowers. Similarly if you have a fig tree severely restricting its roots will prompt fruit production, unrestricted roots will prompt leaf and branch production. I suppose Bonsai is an extreme and specialised form of this stress technique.

The particular science behind “tying down” (which involves a bit more than simply tying down but severely bending branches without snapping or separating them) is to fracture the internal "veins" and interrupt the usual circular progression of “sap” so that it becomes concentrated at certain points/buds thereby increasing flower/fruit size and frequency.

If you’ve been following an interesting discussion thread on Feeling Fruity called “Training espaliers” you may have seen the references to “notching” which appears to be another application of much the same stress technique where the grower, by stressing branches with “notches” (surface cuts which interrupt the flow of sap) can prompt both growth and fruit buds depending where they're placed, see
Notch Dormant Buds So They Bear Fruit

Unfortunately I can't think of a way of applying this interesting technique to parsnips, 2S... Rather than me stressing them they tend to stress me!