To the OP: SOG is the best style for flood and drain in my opinion. Way less veg time and no need for topping and training. Just trim off side branches to make single cola plants which can be packed in close together in 4 inch or 6 inch square pots. I always use hydroton or grow rocks rather than rockwool but It's the least important part of the equation. Rocks and hydroton can be reused infinitely which I prefer to having to purchase rockwool blocks for every run. My last run in hydro I tried SCROG and it was extra work and time and a disappointing yield. I always did better with more plants. Others, of course, may have strong opinions in the other direction. SCROG became popular to maximize yield while obeying ridiculous legal plant limits. Where I am the legal plant limit is zero so it isn't a consideration.
Fascinating. Quick story time...
When I was a teenager I started working with a local cultivator. He took an entire 3 story apartment building and rigged it into a grow. The ro water was in a huge plastic pool on the third floor that was connected to the flower room (s2) with a hose, through a wall and down. There were between 12 and 16 pods, running a perpetual SOG set up. I want to say the trays were 4x3, and in retrospect the only limitation for how many plants plants their were per pod was probably the size of the rez for each pod. Flushing every cube and filling each (roughly) 16 gallon res was enough to empty the pool on the third floor, hence why he wouldn't run a more packed set up...
My mentor was a good dude, but we had a falling out about 6 years ago... He had a mid life crisis. Started hanging with a bad crowd, doing harder drugs, and he ended up dying in a motorcycle accident last year. Thats what inspired me to grow again, with a modified version of what he taught me. I still remember how a room full of HPS lights would change an orange lighter to a yellow lighter as my eyes adjusted to the spectrum, but some of the finer details of what I was taught were lost in the years since. Thats why I come here.
Anyways, I'm rambling. Thank you for your time. - TB
