Is there topping involved in the sea of green method?
- Thread starter Apollo11
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OldMedUser
Well-Known Member
I'm just about to repot about 50 seedlings into 10 - 2gal pots to do a SoG so I hope they grow one fat cola. Once they are about a foot tall with 7 nodes or so I'll flip them to flower and don't plan to top them. Any side branches that are growing out will get topped so that the lower buds on them stay close to the main stem and light can get all the way down so I get donkey dicks. We shall see how it goes. I'll be using 400 and 1000w HIDs for good light penetration but don't think they'll get taller than 24 - 30".
Dank Bongula
Well-Known Member
Yield is based on area...it still defeats the purpose of SOG which is...
If you wanna top your plants and increase the amount of colas for a given footprint, you can, you will just have less plants than if you did a SOG and you will have a longer veg time. Either way you're gonna end up with the same amount of colas either from many plants or just a few.
Example - One plant with 30 colas takes a hell of a lot longer to veg and train than 30 plants with one single cola. Make sense?
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ElGrandeMongo
Well-Known Member
The idea is that with the right # of small plants you won't have space for them to bush out. If you topped and gave them more time in veg, you're likely to end up overcrowded and reduce the # of plants, aka not such a SEA of green.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
^ This, exactly, the whole theory of sea of green is turn em over asap and get another wave growing...ANYHTING you do to slow it down is counterproductive...the reason most people don't SOG is plant count is a thing an a lot of places, the more plants you get caught with, the more you get fucked...doesn't matter that you're only getting an oz or two per plant, they count the same as each big ass plant with 30 colas...so whats less hassle? a few bigguns, or a bunch of little uns? depends on the laws in your state. even if you live in a legal state, it usually ain't legal to have 30 or more at a time
ComfortCreator
Well-Known Member
I understand your Q I think. You will find a similar yield if you did each of the various growing styles and did a great job of each one. What changes is what we call that style.
On one end of the spectrum is manifold and mainline, training an indoor plant into an 8 spoke plant that is equal to say 8 of the SOG plants. So 8 to 1 comparison. It takes much longer to veg a big version of this style plant.
SOG is the other end, where as fast as possible each plant is just a single main cola. Superfast veg here, where more plants and likely more floor space is used to compensate for the speed bonus.
And anything in between are other styles. So if you want a lot of smaller, fast grown plants but want to top them and grow maybe half as many as a typical SOG, that works just as well.
Terminology matters, so if you say you want a SOG, you DON'T want to top or do anything except prune.
Most growers grow plants "as-is" their first time, then pick one of many styles to try after that. If you have no plant count worries, go for anything you want to try.
Doing a good job, whatever you do, determines yield more than style itself. If you grow well, then sharpening your methods will get you higher yields.