Let's talk serious SCROG

mrbluesuk said:

quick question guys. i have a scrog coming into it's 4th week of flower. at what point should you stop trimming?? +rep to useful answers. thanks

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profgrow said:

It seems a lot of us differ in opinion on when to and when not to trim.

Personally, I trim all the way until the flush, removing fan leaves that are covering bud sites etc, I leave small bud "clumps" on branches because its just a pain but feel free to trim those off as well. The only reason I don't trim during the flush is because I want the plant spending all its energy on resin production, some will argue trimming won't effect this but I play it a bit safe at the end, its a starving plant, the substrate is neutral, all of its nutrient is being produced from its fan leaves, cutting them off just gives it that much less to work with in my opinion. I will admit I may be wrong but this is how I have done it in the past and the result are always very potent buds, no grassy smell and clean burning.

As a side note, if you are still having to hack large limbs that just aren't producing there may be an underlying problem, low fert or imbalances in nutrition. Nitrogen isn't needed too heavy in mid flower but none at all can cause deficiencies. Phosphorus is needed in relatively large amounts to produce dense bud growth, stringy/fluffy buds are often caused by low P levels.

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legallyflying said:

my two cents... the plant is either going to flower or it isn't. once the critical darkness period is reached, then it starts to flower. Less light in the end will cause a plant to mature a little faster. I never go less than 10 on though. I read a paper done in the 80's where less than 10 hours of light caused a drammtic decrease in yield and overall THC so I'll just stick with that.

a 24 hour dark period is unnecessary and fucks with the plants circadian rythmm even more than going to 12/12 or whatever. I've been alive for 39 years and I have to remember a day in early fall where the planet was blacked out for a whole 24 hours.

Same goes for the whole 24 of light in veg. Plants can really use a dark period and the rate of photosynthesis really slows down after 20 hours of constant light but some people just really think that there plants are going to just keep growing and growing and growing. Its the circadian rythmm thing again, the plant will shift from carb sysnthesis to carb assimilation regardless of having your lights on. I encourage you to google it.

Can you get more growth in a shorter period of time with 24 on..yes, but the actual increase is not worth it to me as you are getting much less bang for your KW buck and its hard on your grow gear.

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legallyflying said:

Well, fortunately I didn't have anyone to teach me how to grow buds so I didn't learn anything right or wrong. I just spend ALLOT of time researching and reading, like a FUCK load of time. There is soooo much bullshit to sift through that I rarely just take anyone's word for it. Well, there are a select few individuals that I completely trust on this website.

having a botany degree and a science background also never hurts. There is a limit to the degree of manipulation that will actually cause benefits. All of that weird lighting schedules and this and that have never really been shown to be of much use. Proper environmental conditions that steer the plant, strong lights, and solid nutrition is what yields the best results.

veg: high temps, high humidity, lots of co2, light nutes
early flower: moderate temps, lower humidity, lots of co2, strong but not burning nutes
foliar feed carbs EVERY WEEK during flower
Late flowering (4-6): lower temps (7 high co2, LOW humidity (<40%), strong nutes
Late late flowering (7- same temps and humidity, REALLY strong nutes... to limit water absorption and increase oil production. Raise the lights a little.
Flush, harvest, dry, sell.

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legallyflying said:

Well, fortunately I didn't have anyone to teach me how to grow buds so I didn't learn anything right or wrong.

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profgrow said:

The plastic coating on the frame of that Lst/scrog reminded me of an important subject we haven't touched on, Screen styles!

Let's start with standard chicken wire pros and cons:

Pro- its cheap as dirt and available anywhere

Con- its very flexible and often needs to be tied down in the middle to keep the plant from pushing it up.

Pro- its very fexable... wait thats a con, w/e its a pro too, flexibility makes it easy to manipulate to the shape of your room/lighting system (think double U shaped setup under 2 lights)

Con- exposed metals are a rust hazard, rust and any heavy metals in the screen can damage plants, effect PH and are very effective at holding heat in the room.

Ok, i ran out of pros for chicken wire, its not the best route to go in my opinion, the dangers seem to out weight the pluses, nothing hurts worse than having a half done crop that get torched by a bad setup.

Now lets talk about temporary fence netting:

Pro- also cheap, can be procured almost anywhere.

Con- needs to be tightly strung and tied down in multiple places to keep the net in the shape you want.

Pro- waterproof and never spoils, just clean it with antibacterial soap between grows.

Con- some plastics give off a gas at higher temperatures, this can kill a harvest if temp gets too high near the netting (this is only an issue early in the grow while your lights are closest to the canopy)

All in all fence netting is a cheap and effective way of SCROGing, some drawbacks but those are made up by the cost.

Now we will go over my personal favorite; plastic coated heavy wire shelf material:

Pro- hard plastic coating on a rigid metal frame gives you waterproofing with a very tense surface area, in most situations this does not need to be tied down.

Con- its heavy, if not secured properly it can fall and break your stalks

Pro- generally has smaller dimension openings, allowing for more tops than the larger chicken wire or fence netting.

Con- it is considerably harder to come by, i got mine from a small greenhouse setup i bought for around 30 bucks, this gave me around 18 sq ft of the material and a bunch of other crap i didn't need- metal frame tubes etc.

Other types of screens i have seen used but not experimented with:

Nylon netting: this can be picked up at most army surplus stores or hunting supply stores

Industrial steel grid: expensive but solid, last screen you will ever buy kinda thing

Cloth string net: Mold hazard! stay away from using any cloth/absorbent material in your grow room.

Fishing filament: I would just worry about the pressure from the plant growing cutting the stalk at any point, thin nets can be dangerous.

Trellis nets: these i have seen often in single plant semi-scrogs, they are sold at any garden store, they look like a tomato cage with a coiled net on top, i think they are used for decorative gardening.

So ya, there's that topic, just stuff to think about while building your net, just because it has holes doesn't make it the right thing for scrog... huh huh holes.

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