scrogging 101 for the noob please read !!

**Oxy** · 05-12-14, 09:24 PM

scrogging 101 for the noob please read !!

never done a scrog? looks daunting? get it done ya pussy its easyl, hope this helps yall. with few

The Scrog Method

So, you want to tackle a scrog do ya? Excellent choice! Scrog or SCREEN OF GREEN is one of the most productive and easiest ways to grow indoors. Now lets not get this confused with the Sea of green method. SOG involves no training nor does it have one item a scrog always has. A screen. Scrog has been around for many years. Before HID's were introduces many used floro's with this method with good success.
Now lets talk about the scrog for a little bit here. What is a scrog? What is screen of green? Well, it is just that. A screen is the main character of scrog. It is usually made of wire or something sturdy enough to hold back the growing canopy. This wire should have some holes in it about 2x2inches in size so that the plant mater can easily grow up through the wire and be supported by it. The wire is secured between the grow medium and the lamp at a distance determined by the size of your lamp. We will get into that later. The plants grow through the screen about 3-4 inches and then are pulled back under and spread out where YOU want them to grow. Its as easy as that folks. Its a great way to grow. Let me put it this way. I have tried untrained methods like SOG and have never come close to the yield I get with a scrog. Okay, sounds easy right? So, what are you waiting for?

Getting Started
This is the hard part. Getting started. Damned if it ain't for me man. I spend hours thinking of shit before I do it. lol Anyway, this isn't rocket science. If you've already got an area where you established plants growing you are halfway there.

The SCREEN
i found the wilko climbing mesh great... 8 notes cheap as chips.. i have used the same screen twice , steam cleaned after harvest.

Remember at least 2x2inch squares. You can use chicken wire as well or even some tightly strung rope but I would suggest wire. You need something strong to support the buds and hold back the canopy growth. The screen needs to be cut to size. The size of the screen is determined by the size of your lamp. Remember that to get the good bud formation you want from 50 watts per square foot so your screen size should not exceed that. Check the examples below.

150hps screen size 1.75ft x 1.75ft

250hps screen size 2.25ft x 2.25ft

400hps screen size 2.91ft x 2.75ft

600hps screen size 3.45ft x 3.45ft

1000hps screen size 4.4ft x 4.5ft

If your screen exceeds the 50wpsf thing a little. That's perfectly okay. Just don't overdo it. lol Now once you've determined the size of your screen and cut it to size. Situate it over your grow area and secure it into place. Just a few screws will hold it in place. Your mounting a screen. Not a twenty pound wall painting. lol.....Wait just a minute! You need to figure out where to set the screen. First, a few questions to ask. Is your lamp air cooled and what size is your lamp? These two questions determine how close you can get to your canopy. This is very important stuff. The closer you get the better off you are. If you do not have air cooled lamps then a simple fan blowing between the canopy and the the lamp should do the trick. Okay, now lets set that screen. Here's some examples of screen settings for hps's. These are not exact settings. They are just a baseline idea. If you can get your lamp closer. Good for you. If you can't. That's okay too. Don't worry. If you've got the right watts per footage they will produce.

150hps 10-12 inches
250hps 12-15 inches
400hps 16-20 inches
600hps 20+
1000hps 24+

Your Plants
How Many Will I Need Under The Screen? Usually the rule is one plant per square foot of screen. I go with as few plants as I can whenever possible. One side of my flower chamber is almost 3x3ft. That's almost 9 sqft. I only have 6 plants under there and the screens are pretty full. So, the rule does not always need to be followed. Having less plants can be a good thing if they happen to discover your illegal activity..lol.....Remember with fewer plants you will have to veg a bit longer but be patient and hang in there. Its well worth the wait.

Spacing Lets talk about the spacing between the plant medium and the screen. This space will need to be large enough to allow you room to manipulate your plants during the training phase. I usually use around 8 inches. Some people use more/less. Eight seems to be just enough for me but when working in a 3x3ft space it is still a tight space for a big guy. lol.....

What Is The Best Strain To Grow In A Scrog? Now lets talk about your plants a little bit. What kind should you be growing in a scrog you ask? Hmmmmm. Well, any kind your heart desires my friend. That's right. Most any plant strain can be grown without much difficulty using a scrog. The secret is in the screen. Some strains require more training than others but that is the only difference. Heavy yield indica's are excellent scrog candidates but the unruly sativa can really shine with proper training and timing.

Hydro or Soil?

So, how are you going to do this scrog? Is it going to bubble, flow or just sit there? Here's some things you may consider before your plants get tangled up in the screen.

Hydro: No real problem here. I prefer to scrog with a bubbler system over soil any day. The problem lies in the flush. I explain below.
Soil: Soil grows and scrogs are a wonderful thing. Organic buds rule. One problem I ran into when scroging with soil was the flushing of the medium at the end of the grow. Well, with the plants tangled in the screen. One can not just transport to the sink and flush. My soil buckets drain into catch pans. Then I have to drain the catch pans. Takes a while but it works. Hydro is much easier though.

Okay man, you just did something that will almost double your yield in the next sixty days. So, how do you feel about that? The screen is set. Now its time to move on to other things. Lets take a look at whats going to happen when these babies start to grow through the screen.

Managing the Scrog Grow
You have done some things that are a little out of the ordinary from your usual grow regime. Things look a little different. A wire screen has invaded your grow space and it looks weird in there. Maybe you even have a few inches growth through the screen. What in the fuck am I gonna do now? lol.......Be cool man. Here's where the real fun begins and were the beauty of scrog growing starts.

Vegging: Here is where a lot of people make mistakes. They get in a fired up hurry and get confused somehow. Flip their shit over to 12/12 way to soon and wonder why their screen never filled up. At that point the screen is nothing more than a support system for the plant. Normally one would veg a plant till the screen is 70-80 percent full before switching over to the flowering cycle. Having knowledge of how much your strain stretches is helpful when determining when to switch to flowering. For example: If one had a very stretchy sativa. You would want to start flowering her with much less of the screen filled. Just the opposite for a nice stunted indica. Timing has a lot to do with scrog. We go over that soon.

Pulling It Back Through: Okay, so you've got some growth through the screen. Should have about 3-4 inches aye? Don't be a pussy here. lol....... If it breaks. I'll explain what to do later. Reach under the screen and pull that branch back under the screen and place it where you want it to be. Even if it takes tying it in place with the plastic twisty ties. Now I could really get technical and shit and start with the be sure there is an inter-node in each hole of the screen but it really doesn't matter man. Just get the growth under the screen first. In the next few weeks. You will see were to guide the new growth to best suit your needs.

Training: This can seem brutal to some. lol........ Scrog is not natural growth for the cannabis plant. I am sure of that. It must stress the shit out of them the whole cycle of life. Imagine taking a plant that usually grows anywhere from 3-12 feet and making it grow in a space no larger than 2 foot. Training begins in the pulling it back through section. Try to situate your main branches towards the barest parts of your screen. They will branch out the most and usually be the largest bud in the bunch. Use some kind of uniformity to your laying out of the branches. Crisscross/ zigzag whatever you use. Remember there's are going to be a lot more branching when flowering kicks in high gear. So allow some room for that as well. Lesser buds that are now exposed to more light are then encouraged to grow upwards toward the screen through some leaf trimming. An often debated subject but one I feel that is useful in the scrog method.

Leaf Trimming: Now we need to chat about a touchy subject. Leaf trimming. Like I said above. Scrog aint natural for cannabis. At least I dont think it is. Crammed in such a small area with all those leaves. Well, somethings gotta give and its not going to be bud. lol......Here's my rule on trimming. If the leaf is in the way of light for a bud site. Then it needs to be removed. Sometimes I tuck the leaf instead of removing it but most of the time I remove it. Now, when do I do this? Usually when I do a training session. Right afterwards. This trims away leaves and allows the new sites to get light. You will be surprised at how fast they will respond. Use good judgement when trimming. To much is not a good thing here.
Trimming continues into flowering ending during the later stages of flowering. I have found it not to be harmful at all to remove large fan leaves from buds during flowering. If they are blocking light to other bud sites near by. Its all about light penetration and bud sites in a scrog.

Timing: Timing is critical when it comes to a scrog grow. You must be paying attention to the progress of your grow in order to know when to induce flowering. Knowing what strain you are dealing with and what the growing characteristics of the plant are is very helpful when it comes to timing. I cant express the importance of having a good clone base for this purpose. As mentioned above if you induce flowering to early. You will have a lot less of a yield. However, if one was to wait to long. The same can happen as well. An overcrowded canopy is just as much a mess. An out of control scrog is just that. A mess. Not something you want to deal with. Remember, the plants you start to flower are probably going to double in size. Stand back and get a visual picture of that in your head. Ask yourself some questions. If I start flowering now. Can I visualize how big they will get? Do I have enough vegetative growth to start flowering? Do I have to much? Is it time? Time to start flowering?
Okay, so you've decided to start. Bravo! You are going to be amazed at the buds that come out of this grow. lol....... So, you have turned back the timer to 12/12 and it has been 4 days now. The growth from the stretch is starting to show. You get in there and pull all those new shoots back under your screen and put them where you want them to be. A few more days pass. More growth. Now the decision part comes into play. Just how far over the screen do you want your buds to be? If you stop training them early in the stretch. They will grow a little above the screen (maybe 3-6inches depending on the strain). If you continue training them until they start to top out. They will grow only a little more and most of the bud will form right in the screen. This technique is great for those stretchy sativa's. However when doing this method keep an eye out for mold and try to have as much air flow between the buds as possible. I have done it both ways and they are both awesome. It may take you a grow or two to get the timing down to where you want it but once you do. I am sure you will be pleased with the results.

Clones/Seed Grows: Here's an interesting topic that is sure to generate a few questions. I suggest clones for scrog growing over seed any day of the year. Why? With clones you usually already know the characteristics of the plant and how it will perform. With seed its usually a guessing game as to which pheno your going to get unless they are true F1 seed. Plus with seed you don't know the sex yet. Ever tried untangling a male from a screen? Not something I would suggest doing. lol......Anyways, if you grow from seed. Be sure you have cloned the lot and know who your girls are first before going under the screen. This will save you alot of hassle later on.

Damage Control: If you move branches around and bend'em. Eventually somethings gonna give. Don't freakout. Its not the end of the world man.....lol... Cannabis is an amazing plant that can recover from a lot of damage naturally without help from humans but in this case ya want to help if ya can. First aid for the injured cannabis plant is simple as pie man. Just support her wound and leave her alone. She will take care of it on her own. Unless you break her completely in half she can be saved usually. You can splint the wound or support it with some heavy gauge wire around the stem. If the break is not that bad and the branch can somewhat support itself. Leave it alone. In all cases. A knot will form at the break and most times an explosion of growth will happen above the damaged area. At times even new growth sometimes sprouts from the knuckle formed.

Flowering Cycle: Once a few trimmings are done and all is set in place flowering in a scrog is pretty uneventful. lol......Good time to start thinning out your undergrowth. I take clones around 20 days 12/12. If all that I need root. I clean out the undergrowth around day 35 12/12. Now if I need anymore clones. I can tak'em at this time. All the rest. Its butter making time........Oh yeah.......churn dat budda........talk about a bonus for all your hard work.

Undergrowth: I mentioned it above but thought I should mention it again. The undergrowth is not that big of an issue here. Its an area that should be kept clear of dead leaves and you should also ensure that proper ventilation can get through the canopy via the undergrowth. If it cant. Then thin out some growth. This is an area that is dim and often humid. An open invitation for not so good things to come visiting aye? Some people have mentioned putting a light down there. Why? There's no need for a light down there. There are no buds to be harvested there. Just stems that support the canopy. If one were to put a light there they would just be adding to the congestion of leaves already growing. Not good. It is a good idea to clear out your undergrowth as your scrog takes shape and you have taken the clones that you need for the next grow. Trim all remaining sprouts left on the stems and any other undergrowth. Now lets not get to crazy here. Leave a little growth. Use some common sense here. Take out the sites you know are not going to make it to maturity. This will help the plant direct more energy towards the larger buds instead of wasting energy on the smaller ones.

Ventilation: Here's an issue that can not be overlooked. Once a scrog has been established it is a leafy sight to behold. Air circulation becomes critical as the buds begin to form and things start to get packed in the box. 24hr air movement is suggested 7 days a week. Better safe than sorry. Mold sucks.

Even Canopy: Maybe I should not put it in those words. Your canopy does not have to be perfectly even. Just close. The idea behind this is even light distribution. We are looking for a field of buds here not a forest like in SOG. If a dominate bud is allowed to overtake the canopy. It is defeating the purpose of the scrog. Tame that bitch. Bring her down to size with the rest. You want a somewhat even field of buds to deal with. Not a forest of untamed trees. The even canopy is easy to accomplish if you have been following the steps outlined above.
TrickyTip: Occasionally you will have a stretcher that decides that she wants more light than the rest of her friends. This often happens when the branches are competing for light. If one gets out of hand there is a simple solution to taming her back into the fold of the others and possibly giving her a burst of growth. Reach under the screen and find her stem. Half way up her stem start to pull her back through the canopy till she is even with the rest. Now where she is bent. Crush her at the bend with your fingers. Don't smash it in half. Just crush the stem so as it would not be able to support itself if it were to stand alone. As mentioned above. It will heal with vigor and you have solved your canopy problem.

The Beautiful and Productive SCROG

i have used this method twice love it, but i don't train the plants under the screen, I use flexible pipe cleaners to hook the the stems of the plants to the screen and train the plants across the screen instead of under . so far i have found this easier as your not tucking the pants under the screen just the hook.. so you will not snap any..

but problems came last time as i unhooked the pipe cleaners, to unleash the beast i was having skin head buds as they went mental.. do not unleash the beasts...

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**Oxy** · 05-12-14, 09:24 PM

ANOTHER USEFUL POST......

This information is for growers using the ``ScrOG'' or ``Screen of Green'' method in mini or micro cabinets under small HPS lights, in the range of 70 to 250 watts. I won't spend too much time on 400, 600 and 1000 watt grows, as that's outside the scope of my experience.

Small HPS lights, alternatives

Small HPS lights are perfect for growing cannabis in restricted space conditions, as they produce the most light from a given amount of electricity of any suitable lamp for cultivation, and produce a spectrum that is favorable for flower growth. The spectrum is not the best for vegetative growth, but that isn't really important to scrog growing, as the vegetative period is so short. Lights as small as 35 watts are available by stripping components from security lights commonly available at discount hardware stores. 250 watt lights can produce as much per foot in scrog conditions as 1000 watt lights in room growing. A single 70 watt light can produce enough for an average pot smoker in a space as small as 1 sq. ft.

MH lights are available in small sizes, but they produce less light and more heat than their HPS counterparts, and heat is an important consideration in cabinet-style growing. Some growers like the MH spectrum for vegetative growth, but there is no real vegetative period in most scrog growing. Some believe the MH spectrum produces tighter buds. I tried a 250 MH and found it to be very hot and much weaker than the HPS. In fact, the 220 HPS conversion bulb has performed better than the MH with the same ballast.

Regarding fluorescents, the light to heat ratio is even worse than an MH, and I am not aware of any situation in micro and mini growing where I would favor them over small HPS lights (see second part for a discussion of small-scale fluorescent scrogs). Compact fluorescents have been quite popular on the boards recently, and they look quite bright to the eye, even the 20 watters. But the plants aren't fooled, and the dull yellow glow of the small HPS lamps is manna to cannabis.

Note that these lights are quite weak compared to 400, 600 or 1000 watt lights used in production growing. Intensity means that the light can be farther away from the plant and still be bright enough at the bud surface to produce. Intensity is necessary for tight bud formation.

To get the most out of a small HPS light, you must keep the bud sites within the productive range of the bulb, a lopsided sphere extending out from the lamp source. For a 250 watt light, that circle of light extends out about 20" from the lamp. For a 70 watt light, the maximum distance is apparently around 8". A group of tall, skinny plants under such a light would only be properly lit at the very tops of the plants, leaving the bottom parts shaded out and in a low intensity light field, producing small, lightweight buds at best.

Ideally you would like all the buds within that magic circle of light intensity, and you would like that sphere of light completely filled with buds. How can that be accomplished?

The scrog method

The essential detail of the scrog method is a screen, usually poultry netting, typically suspended between the planting medium and the lamp. The plants grow up to the screen and then are ``trained'' under the screen, resulting in a flat table of plant growth, a field rather than a forest. Because all the buds are growing at the same height, it is possible to get all the growth within the effective circle of light from the lamp, maximizing production from the space. It's really that simple.

Before discussing the method in detail, let's explore the other alternative for small HPS lights, the plantlet sea of green method.

Sea of green

The plantlet sea of green method was developed to maximize the speed of cannabis growing in limited height situations. In a typical sea of green setup of this type, clones are planted at densities as high as 9 per sq. ft. Within a short time after being established, the lights are switched to a 12 hour dark period. What happens to the planted clone?

The clone could just sit there, stretch a bit under the light regime, and flower, producing a tiny little bud with a couple of seeds. But that rarely, if ever, happens. Instead the clone takes off in a rush of growth, forming a woody main stem and branches. If the plant is suitable for sea of green growing, it will stop short of the lights and flower. Most indica dominated plants stop short enough to be grown using this method. That process is at the heart of the sea of green method, as it results in the smallest possible plant flowering in the quickest possible time.

Why does the clone act in this manner? The actual process is subject to debate. Your author suspects that the clone reads the light switch as fall, and has a mechanism that recognizes that it's too small to produce seed. So the clone goes into a furious growth mode that stops when the plant reaches a minimum height set within its genetic software, and then flowers. Others argue that the clone's response is just a variation on the normal stretching process that happens when flowering is forced in any size plant. For purposes of the discussion here, it doesn't really matter why the response occurs, just that you can rely on it.

The problem with the sea of green method under small HPS lamps is that it produces a number of small spikes under the lamp, a forest rather than a field. The plants crowd each other out and shade the lower portions, which in any event are too far from the light source. As we discussed above, tall and skinny is not productive under a small light. I grew initially using this method, based on books and magazines that I read before designing my 250 watt system, and it worked well for many years, yielding just over 1 oz. per ft. Not bad, but it can be so much better.

Note that in the mid-90's, the term ``sea of green'' started being applied to much larger plants and grows, even multiple 1000 watt installations over room-sized grow tables, with 3 foot plants spaced at one per foot. It seems the original meaning of the term, the SSSC plantlet method, has been almost forgotten.

Basic flat, fast scrog

The screen method used by pH relied on a long vegetative period for the plants to cover a large area of screen held close to a series of fluorescent tubes. The method I will describe here uses the same sort of growth process that occurs in a plantlet method sea of green plant, and is very fast. The screen should be set about 8-12" above the planting medium, if possible. There are two purposes for that gap. First, you have to get your hands underneath the screen in order to handle the plant shoots and to remove excess growth shaded out under the screen. Second, there needs to be sufficient space for the plant to branch. Branching is essential to scrog. I prefer a space of about 10" for a 250 watt light, but some growers prefer shorter gaps for smaller lights, as little as 4-6".

Note that the screen does not have to be absolutely flat, and there are good arguments for dishing the screen to match the curvature of the light field. I don't radically dish my screen, but I do tie down the middle of the screen to prevent the screen from being pushed up, which would be counter-productive.

The clones are set under the screen at a density of about 1 plant per sq. ft. Experience in using the method with various types of plants may result in more or fewer plants, but 1 per ft. is a good starting point. Note that plant density is much lower than for plantlet-method sea of green. That means fewer clones to manage and fewer plants to be holding in a bust, a factor in sentencing guidelines.

Why clones, by the way? By the time you find out which plants are male and female from seed, it would be impossible to extract the males from the foliage wound into the screen and fill in the gaps with female shoots, without a real mess on your hands. Seed plants also waste several inches of height before a mature stem section is reached from which branching can begin, whereas clones branch right from the medium. Height control is typically a limiting factor in cabinet growing. With female seeds it may be possible to grow a predictable scrog by raising the screen height, making up for the wasted stem length. Seed plants may react differently to forcing as well. I have no experience in scrog from seed.

The clones are established and kicked into vegetative growth. Assuming an 8-12" gap, just about the time where the growing tips penetrate a few inches above the screen, say at two weeks, the lights are switched to a 12 hour dark period. Ideally a response similar to the sea of green method kicks in as explained above. Instead of stopping and flowering, the plants take off, filling the screen with growth. At a density of 1 plant per ft., it usually works out that the plants stop and ``crown off'' just as the screen is filled. It's really magic to see it happen. Note that this timing method is not universal. Different plants may require more vegetative growth, or perhaps even less. My advice is to start by forcing early, because overgrowth creates an unproductive canopy, more salad than buds.

The timing is so critical. You must be around during this period to guide the growth under the screen, and to make sure all gaps in the screen are filled, one bud site per screen hole with standard poultry netting (2 x 3 inch holes). I have no position on removing fan leaves in general, but in a small scrog grow, fan leaves would overwhelm the neighboring buds, and normally they are removed. Get a good sharp, clean set of pruning scissors and just leave them with the grow. You'll need them every couple of days during this period. Note that some growers disagree, so feel free to experiment. I'm no expert on the matter, but I haul out tubs of leaves and get pretty decent results, I think.

Training really isn't difficult. With a limber plant I usually let the shoots grow vertically above the screen and then pull them under by the stem, re-orienting the stem horizontally under the screen to line up bud sites with screen holes. You don't have to tie anything down, as the upward pressure of the stem will nail the foliage to the screen, but some growers like to tie off stems to the screen during the early phases of screen filling. Here's what one grower has to say on the subject

``I swear by twist ties and have a huge stock. They can be found just about anywhere. Purchase ties which are most flexible (wire with the smallest diameter) and coated with plastic not paper, as the paper will eventually mold.

``So why twist tie? Two reasons when training for in any screen application.

1. Pre-training. (Exact placement of main stems, growth shoots and branches)

2. Bud-training. (Bending, stem crushing/crimping, and repositioning)

``When initially induced to 12/12, the main tip/tips that hit the netting are immediately trained 90 degrees perpendicular to the netting. This allows for the light to concentrate the most productive part of the plant, forcing the most efficient production the plant can dish out. Branches under the netting are allowed some time to reach the light, but less than half will see light because you're concentrating on efficiency. The most efficient growth will occur where the main stem bends on a 90 degree and beyond, which receives the most light.

``I like to leave the ties long enough for the plant hold the shape desired. Main stem usually around the second week (give or take) , and branches will always vary. Branches coming off the main stem parallel to the netting are spread as far from the main stem as possible making for a even canopy, more bud sites per square, and controlling overall height.

``To a certain extent the buds freeze at a certain point and height/stem length slows. The canopy height is close to being established, but some plants are more vigorous than others and continue stretch beyond the rest of the crop. When bud training the longer colas are controlled by bending and tying down to the screen with twist ties. In extreme cases crushing/crimping is necessary. Moldy buds can be avoided by repositioning buds growing against each other. By using twist ties each bud can be positioned where air flows between each cola allowing efficient light dispersal within the canopy and better air flow.

``Without ties? Yield was lower. A few larger colas had to be tied down shielding smaller buds from direct light, not to mention forcing the light to be raised higher, lowering production (This can be resolved by switching to a more intense bulb) . Some branches grew buds with LONG stems between the screen and base of the cola to compete with the large colas. Hybrid vigor in some cases, or plants which tend to "stretch" more than others eventually straighten out the 90 degree angle exposing less area of the most efficient portion on the plant and eventually stretches to a point where more stem was exposed to direct light, above the screen than desired. A view from the bottom (planter to the screen) showed that efficiency could be improved.''

Some plants have brittle stems, and are difficult to train. It is possible to bend a stem by crushing it lightly at the bend. So long as the structures in the plant that carry fluids aren't damaged too much, the shoot will heal and be just fine (thanks to Uncle Ben for that trick). It may also be possible to top brittle plants under the screen, so that the future growth will be in several, more slender shoots. I have no experience in training a scrog grow by topping.

After the screen is filled all growth under the screen must be clipped off. Shaded growth quickly shrivels and dies, leaving ideal growth mediums for mold. Excess leaves and shoots should be clipped close to the stem, to avoid leaving stumps as mold sites. Robert Clarke recommends pruning away from the stem, but a lot of the standard advice has to be discarded when dealing with the special conditions of a scrog grow. The space under the screen is dark and humid, and you want as little plant material under there as possible. You will haul out buckets of leaves and excess shoots from a scrog grow, but the plants can take it. Clip away.

Subsequent pruning is really limited once the plant sets buds and stops growing. Some plants develop large leaves from the buds themselves, and if the leaves shade out neighboring bud sites, I find they must be removed. But that's about it. Most of the flowering time in a scrog grow the maintenance level is near zero.

If everything goes well, the extra time required for the plants to reach the screen before the flowering period is lengthened by only about two weeks. No additional time is required to fill the screen, because that time is the same used by the sea of green method to add height. The plants end up just as long, but the growth is directed horizontally. Typically a flat scrog grow ends up resembling a tropical forest canopy, with all the buds in a thick carpet extending 8-10" above the screen. The area underneath the screen contains the tree trunks that support the canopy, like piping connecting the root mat to the canopy.

Does it matter how the canopy is created? Not particularly, in my experience. There does not seem to be a lot of difference between buds that would come from sites lower on side branches from those at the actual tip of the plant. For the most part, a bud is a bud in this method. Note that the buds grown in a scrog field are each a piece of what would be a vertical cola. Each bud grows up vertically 90 degrees from the stem. You are familiar with how a cola is made up of individual bunches of flowers connected to the stem in an overlapping spiral, producing a structure that looks like a single unit. In scrog, each one of those florets matures into a small bud in their own right, typically 4-8" tall, about the size of a cigar. They aren't donkey dicks, and you won't impress the editors of High Times into featuring your buds in the centerfold, but weight is all we're interested in, not appearance. As I say, it all looks the same in the bong bowl.

How much weight? I have shown that it is possible to reach over 2 oz. per ft. with a suitable plant and enough light density. 400 watt growers have reported up to 2.4 ounces per foot in a flat scrog. In a compressed grow, using shielded lights in a box of screen, I did nearly 2.6 ounces per foot, measured by canopy area. I suspect that 70-75 watts per sq. ft. is about the minimum to reach that kind of production, but I don't know for sure. Your results may vary, but certainly you will do better using scrog than small-scale sea of green at any light density. As an experienced plantlet-method sea of green grower, I feel comfortable stating that as a fact.

Anyone can reach the benchmark production numbers, but you must concentrate on filling the screen quickly and completely. If loose and tall would yield better, then scrog wouldn't work in the first place. You want the canopy to be low and tight, except on the edges, and one bud per hole. Screen fill density is all important to making weight.

What can go wrong with a flat scrog grow? The worst thing you can do is to allow the plants to grow too long. You would think that excess growth could be cut out or moved to vertical screens, but in practice I find it's difficult to recover from a badly overgrown screen. Plants that grow into and fill the screen seem to put on better bud weight than overgrown plants that are tied down and whacked back to fit. Error on the side of forcing early, learn from what happens and adjust on the next crop.

Vegetative fills, FIM and topping

The fast, flat method relies on the flowering stretch to fill. It's the fastest, most reliable method, and the most likely to produce a short and dense canopy.

Sometimes it is not possible to use one plant per foot, particulary for grows with feminized seeds, where the grower cannot afford room to clone and hold mothers. Some growers believe vegetative fills are beneficial, but I haven't seen the weight reports to prove it.

Other growers believe that topping or FIM treatment might be beneficial in producing more branching. I think that might be true for some stiff indica's that do not branch well, but most plants will produce more than sufficient branches under the fast method at one plant per foot.

My advice is to stick with the proven method at least the first few times out. Make the benchmark weight, learn what that takes and then you can experiment. For growers who must make fewer plants cover the screen, be cautious and do not let the plant grow too long. Error on the side of short filling the screen the first time, and then adjust accordingly. An overgrown screen is difficult to recover from, particularly in the tight quarters in which a low plant density grow is likely to occur (no room, no money, usually means a micro grow).

Interrupted flowering

Also known as ``buddus interruptus'', the procedure is to switch the lights to 24/0 for a day or two about at the end of the fifth week of flowering, when the buds seem to stall out. It should only be done once during the crop, and for no more than two days. The best technique is to switch for one day, wait a couple of days to observe the effect, and then give it one more day if the buds haven't responded. This is not the same as ``double budding'', as the plant is never actually kicked into vegetative growth.

If the plants react well, you will see tufts of additional flowering parts standing out from the sides of the buds like little towers. Done early enough, these extra parts should finish in time, and they will add extra weight to the crop. This technique can be particularly valuable in scrog, given the large number of smaller buds.

A caveat is in order, not all plants respond well. Some don't react to the light change at all, and a very few may be disturbed into uncontrolled growth from the tops of the buds. You might be concerned with a tendency for male parts to be produced, but I've been practising this method for a long time, and I've never seen a ``hermie''.

Bog methods

Many people have been excited about the scrog method and have dreamt up all sorts of ways to expand production, myself included in the mad scientist crowd. The most common variation is the ``bog'' method.

Bog for ``box of green''. Added to the horizontal screen are vertical screens around the perimeter. Either additional plants are used at the edges, or the scrog field plants are grown longer, but either way, the additional foliage is allowed to grow up the outside of the vertical screen, taking advantage of wasted air space above the field. It also allows plants at the edge of the field to get into the circle of intensity from the bulb.

Imagine the light field as a circle sitting tangent to a horizontal line. Imagine your plant as a point on the line outside of the circle. How can the plant get inside the circle? By going up. You might equate this method to an ``arena'' grow in this regard. An extension on the bog theme is spiral bog, first coined by chthonic. In a spiral bog the plants are allowed to add considerable vegetation, which is trained around the box in a laid-down spiral, like this (but flatter): //////. This method allows all the screen area to be densely filled with bud sites.

There are two ways to fill the vertical bog screens, as I mentioned. The first is to use more plants, which are added to the edges of the grow. When the horizontal scrog field plants are forced to flower, the plants on the edge are allowed to grow vertically like sea of green plants, the resulting growth being trained to the vertical screens. If the growth is too tall for the screens, it can be laid down at an angle, like a spiral bog grow. The advantage of this type of bog grow is reliability and speed, since the horizontal field is filled in exactly the same manner as in a normal scrog grow. The disadvantage is that the number of plants is increased to near plantlet-method sea of green levels.

The second method is to use the same number of plants as in a standard scrog grow, or thereabouts, but to allow them to grow longer before forcing, around another week or two of growth seems to be about right. This process proved to be tricky for me at first, but once I piled up some experience in timing and training, I found the method to be superior. Several growers have been successful at 70 watts. Here's what chthonic, a pioneer in the method, had to say about his experiences with 70 watt HPS lights:

``The quickest and most successful approach that I have found to train a bog grow is to lower the horizontal screen to within 6" of the soil and grow 2 plants per sq. ft. straight up to the vertical training screens. As it's a box driven by a 70-watt bulb, the height from the horizontal screen to the roof is only 12". The plants grow unhindered 18" from the soil up through a narrow band of the horizontal screen and onto the verticals until they touch the roof. Then they are laid down horizontally and trained in a spiral fashion /// around the vertical training screens. Spiral bog or s/bog. The cabinet is small; spiral training is the only way to direct the shoots so it just happens...

``The spiral training can go one of two ways. The entire plant can be bent over in one direction and trained along with the rest of the plants in a clockwise or counter-clockwise fashion around the vertical training screens. Or the plant can be trained as it naturally branched, trained in opposite directions along the vertical training screens.''

Finally, hollow screen forms do not have to be in the shape of square-cornered boxes. I've seen one grower using small HPS lights who shaped his screen into a deep bowl shape, with the light suspended in the middle. Posts on ADPC describe inverted V shapes, and cylinder forms have sprung up at Cannabis World. A single ``correct'' way to do this probably doesn't exist.

At this point, these methods are so new that every grow provides significant information. My advice to those new to the scrog method is to get a few fast, flat scrog grows under your belt first to get used to the process. But do add the vertical screens regardless, and capture whatever excess growth you can on the verticals, as there is no reason not to handle as much growth as you can.

V-scrog

The final extension of this concept dispenses with the horizontal screen entirely. I coined the term for the method, ``v-scrog'', for vertical scrog. Vertical screens extend from the plant medium all the way up to the top of the growing space. The light is not in a reflector at the top of the space, but is suspended vertically in the middle of a tube of foliage, approaching peg's Rama concept for zero-g cannabis growing. Note that the entire light field is used, not just from the bottom half of the lamp and what comes off the reflector. The foliage area is stunning. Imagine a 2 x 2 cabinet with a v-scrog screen held 4" from the walls, with a gap in the front screen for maintenance. Suppose the buds fill up about 3' of the vertical screen. We're talking 4 screens, each 4' in area (16" x 36"). Take off a couple of inches for corner overlap and a gap in the front for access, and that's nearly 14 sq. ft. of screen in the same space that supports 4' of flat screen. Even if the production per foot were half, and it would be less due to the loss of the 3D flat scrog field, you're still talking 3 ½ ounces per foot!

Can that really be possible? Not so far. I have grown two v-scrog's that were mostly failures, but I have modified the growing space to correct the problems and I will continue testing sometime in the future. The problems so far involve the time needed to fill the screen area, which could reduce the production over time substantially, and the ability to handle the moisture load produced by the massive amount of foliage. I am also not the world's most talented trainer, but chthonic, Ultimate, Eugene and others have done very well in tiny vertical box forms with 70 watt lamps.

Even if production isn't dramatically better than horizontal methods, v-scrog is a promising solution to growing in very restricted height conditions. It might be possible to grow a productive crop with 150 and 250 watt lamps in as little as 2', maybe less. Since the light-to-foliage gap is horizontal, the only absolute vertical needs are for the plant container and a gap between the end of the downward-pointing bulb and the planting medium. Plant growth could be controlled by training it across the vertical screen, which could be any reasonable height.

First-time growers, fluorescent lights

Scrog is not a difficult method to use, and new growers should not hesitate to try it. In fact, because most new growers are using small lights, often fluorescents, getting a reasonable harvest almost requires scrog, or a similar method such as paper-clip training or FIM (look it up). I favor scrog training over FIM because it is easier and quicker. FIM is probably a better method for larger lights, 400 and up, where the height of the bud wand can be handled

A good first choice would be a 70 HPS lamp or two in a space about 1-3 square foot, using soil or DWC. The cost of the materials needed is minimal, and the output from 70 HPS lamps is proven. You can expect to get 1-2 ounces per foot, and in presentable buds.

If fluorescents must be used, avoid compact bulbs and stick with tubes. As mentioned above, scrog as envisioned by pH was designed to be used with fluorescent tubes, stacking multiple grows in a single space to make up for the lower production. The design keeps the canopy flat and a few inches away from the surface of the bulb. Compact fluorescents tend to wrap the tube surface inside themselves, making the light from those surfaces available only by reflection. Further, by being compact they act as a point source without the required intensity to back it up.

A fluorescent tube grow could be accomplished in a space as small as 2' square, to accomodate a series of tubes, or a footlocker-type space, maybe the bottom of a closet, to take 4' tubes. It would be wise in either case to mount the ballasts outside the growing space to help with heat.

Getting the most from a fluorescent grow requires keeping the canopy tight and close to the tubes. Use one plant per foot, an 8-12" screen gap and force when the plants hit the screen, which will produce the fastest and most predictable screen fill, and will tend to keep the canopy in check. Using vegetative growth to fill the screen is an advanced technique, and I would avoid it unless you are restricted to a fewer number of plants by circumstances.

There are several myths floating around the boards about fluorescents vs. HPS lamps. It is often said that HPS lamps are expensive, but it isn't really so. Security lights containing HPS bulbs and ballasts can be purchased at discount hardware stores, and separate ballasts are available from online sources at very reasonable prices.

It is often said that HPS lamps are hotter than fluorescents, but that too is a myth. Fluorescent lamps, aside from corporate b.s. by Lights of America, are less efficient than small HPS lamps, and therefore produce more heat per watt. To say an HPS lamp is hotter in the context of growing is to say a burning match is hotter than a radiator; it's true, but which will heat a room? A fluorescent spreads the heat over a larger area and therefore feels less hot to the hand. HPS and fluorescent tubes have an advantage in separate ballasts that can mounted outside the growing space. Compact electronic ballast fluorescents are more efficient than magnetic ballast tubes, but all of the heat they produce is confined in the growing space.

If you must use fluorescents, be realistic and don't expect to be bowled over by the buds. Depending on the plant they will either be light and feathery, or hard, but very small. You can grower larger and harder buds with fluorescents, but only by stacking up a wasteful amount of wattage on a very few bud sites. If you would like to compare some fluorescent and small HPS grows by wattage, there is a link below that will lead you to a post that compiles the best near-harvest pictures on a non-judgemental basis. People get very heated on this board pro and con regarding fluorescents (guilty), so look and make your own decision based on real grows.

Scrog growing works best with clones, but that requires a mother area which may not be possible for a new grower. Feminized seeds from Dutch Passion should work as well, though I would provide a couple more inches of screen gap to allow for the portion of the seed plant stem that will not produce branches. Branching is fundamental to scrog.

If it is not possible to produce clones or to acquire feminized seeds, then I would not use scrog. An alternate method would be to grow each seed in separate soil containers and use plantlet method sea of green, paper-clip training or FIM to control height. When the males show, they can be removed from the growing area, and the remaining females re-arranged to best suit the light source. Using a plantlet method pretty much requires an HPS lamp to get decent production, as much of the growing surface will be vertical. Fluorescent tube lamps lack intensity, as they spread their light over a large area, and compact fluorescents simply lack enough punch to act as point-source lights. Use a small HPS lamp and keep the plants trained low and flat as possible, and you should yield at least an ounce per foot.

Basic design elements

There are essentially two classes of HPS lamps when it comes to scrog growing, the small ``security light'' types, in the 50-100 range, and larger lamps in the 150-250-400 range. The best way to plan your own design is to see what others are doing. Exercise the search engine and look for scrog grows with similar-sized areas and lamps, analyze their results and plan accordingly.

The smaller lamps need to be held quite close to the canopy, as the effective range in which they will produce tight buds is limited. A 70 HPS has a range of about 8", for example. That means the distance from the screen to the light should be only an inch or two outside the range, to allow for some vertical stretch, and the distance from the lamp to the edge of the space has to be computed keeping in mind that the light is traveling on the longer diagonal out and down to the canopy. Using the standard of 50 HPS watts per square foot of canopy will produce good results, but I would shoot for more like 70-75, meaning that a 70 would be perfect for a square foot of screen. If you wished to grow with two or more 70-100 HPS lamps, the lights should be distributed over the canopy, not bunched together.

The 50-70 watts per square foot rule applies to the larger lights as well, but as power increases the limit is more negotiable. Within the confines of a scrog cabinet or box, a 400 watt lamp has a lot of power directly underneath it. Asking a 400 watt lamp to light an 8 square foot area means skirting the lower limit of the lamp power, but for the areas close to the lamp the intensity is far greater. By keeping the canopy directly under the lamp short, and by allowing the growth on the fringes to get taller, one can leverage the power of the 400 to a larger space. 400 watt lamps are therefore an excellent match with an arena, or bog type of grow. It is also possible, but not confirmed, that 400 HPS lamps could produce better with a supercropping type method, like FIM, instead of scrog. It's probably a close thing, and maybe a mixture of a horizontal scrog canopy under the lamp and FIM-type plants around the edges would be superior, a true ``arena'' grow.

The 150 and 250 watt lamps don't have that kind of power, and the canopy must be kept relatively close. The 250 has a reach of 20" within which it can tighten up buds, and therefore a 2' x 2' space is about as far as you can push the lamp and keep the production per foot up. Because the area under the lamp is relatively small, using a bog or arena type of grow becomes more difficult, as the most productive area, the horizontal field, becomes pinched down. These lamps are probably better used with a basic flat scrog, although there is no reason not to allow some growth on the vertical walls if it can be arranged within the space. Certainly, in any flat scrog grow, you have nothing to lose by letting the very outside row of buds grow tall, even to the extent of using additional plants to get that result. I see a lot of flat scrog grows where the growth thins out on the edges with bare walls surrounding the bulb. Error on the side of higher plant densities, and use the outside space to your advantage.

Note that while the smaller ``security light'' HPS lamps lack reach alone, added to a larger lamp's light field they can be useful as supplements to balance out a light field and to add some punch. For example, in a 2'x 2' cabinet, a 70 HPS added to the empty end of a 250 HPS hood would provide a combination of 80 HPS watts per foot, and would illuminate the overall space more evenly. If you are inclined to try a small MH light, perhaps you could add both light and some spectrum balance. I've also seen compact and tube fluorescents added as supplements, but that's like lighting a candle in sunlight; not much help, unless some extra heat is needed. If you're adding watts, make them count.

Height is often a restrictive element when designing a cabinet grow, particularly if mother and cloning space is needed in the same space. An unshielded (open bulb) 250 grow is perfectly suited to a space 2' x 2' x 4'. But by using a horizontal shield of tempered glass, or a plastic like lexan or plexiglass, the heat from the lamp can be confined and controlled, and up to a foot of space can be recovered by tightening up all the other elements as much as possible. Lexan or plexiglass sheets are available at discount hardware stores, can be cut with normal tools (sawed, or scored and snapped), and are modestly priced. Designing such a grow means using an extra fan to cool each compartment space, or providing for airflow from the growing area through the barrier.

Designing a cabinet in terms of the vertical space needed is best done by working backwards. Start with the known dimensions of the basic elements, the height of the plant container, the medium to screen gap and the thickness of the lamp/hood assembly. That leaves the growing space above the screen, which is somewhat negotiable. If you keep your canopy low and tight, using the flowering stretch to fill the screen in the classic fast, flat scrog fashion, none of the buds will get much bigger than 8-10" above the screen.

There has to be a gap between the top of the buds and the lamp for two reasons. First, obviously, the whole canopy must see the lamp. Second, the tops of the buds can't be fried by the lamp. Even with shielding some gap is necessary, as the tops of some varieties react badly to being in close proximity to an intense light source, producing thick stem growth that erupts from the bud tops.

Cooling and airflow are the final design element. Even with shielding there must be adequate airflow through the canopy to avoid mold, and to carry off the moisture load created by the plants. A 4' canopy under a 250 HPS will pull about a half gallon per day through the leaves, and that water has to be removed, regardless of the temperature. With the smaller HPS lamps probably ``muffin'' type axial fans are sufficient, available at many hardware stores.

Larger setups require more fan power, say about .5 to 1 CFM per HPS watt as a decent guide, and are usually best ventilated with an industrial ``squirrel cage'' type blower, available from the same sources. Grainger has a nice selection at reasonable prices, with several different configurations to match the requirements of cabinet growing. Usually room has to be made available in the cabinet for the hardware, so look for designs that are compact and easy to mount in a given space.

Usually the fan is mounted to blow the air out, sucking it up through the canopy from an inlet into the box. It would be better in theory for the fan to blow into the confined space, to produce an over-pressure rather than a partal vacuum. But it's easier to light-proof a space with the fan power sucking the door against the seals than to be fighting air pressure.

Fans for smaller grows can simply be controlled by the light timer, always on when the lights are burning. Larger grows with squirrel cage fans need to be controlled by a line thermostat. I would avoid the cheapo hardware store models and go with something decent. If you're using a shielded grow with outside air inlets, you may find humidity is the problem rather than temperature. In that case a line humidistat or a thermostat and humidistat in parallel might provide the best control.

Fresh or room air inlets should be a match with the space and the airflow. A general guide is to provide about .03-.05 square inch of inflow space per HPS watt. For example, a 3" circular plastic tube inlet would be a minimum requirement for a 250 HPS grow. Air inlets and outlets need to be arranged to avoid light leaks into the growing space. Turning the air duct 90 degrees and avoiding reflections with flat-black paint inside the duct is sufficient. For example, a ABS plastic plumbing elbow seems to be popular these days.

The prototypical scrog screen is poultry netting, which consists of 2" x 3" irregular hexagons, about 24 per foot. Poultry netting seems to space out the buds just right, in my experience. I see other growers using various types of square plastic netting, and quite a few weaving their own between sticks with wire or fishing line. If you use square holes, I would tend to size them at about 2 1/2" or a little less, but in no case would I go smaller than 2". Poultry netting costs nothing, but it does have the disadvantage of cut wire ends around the edges which always seem to be diabolically placed to slice up your hands and arms. Whatever you use, remember it doesn't have to be very sturdy. Don't steal growing space with wide wood pieces around the edges. Use something like a thin dowel, or stiff heavy-gauge wire to secure the screen.

all the best scroggers..