ScroG/SOG Northern Lights

Hi folks,


Started my current project about 52 Days ago, from seed, I planted 14 seeds,
all nirvanas 10 Northern lights/4 AK48's

2 NLs showed signs of TMV so I just killed those lol.

was left with 12, and so far 1AK and 1 NL were males...
this was probably day 30ish


shortly before I topped them.

due to 2 TMV infected plants I was left with 12 plants, so probably 6 females , I topped them pretty late to get about 8 clones from each in the end.

I tried to sex the cut tops but that didn't work out, put them under 12/12 from the 1st day and they pretty much all died...and after 10 days with no pistils and no roots I got rid of them.. but the NL's showed all preflowers anyway and a few days later also the AK's. so I am fairly sure that I only have females left. except that one NL which I placed in the front of the ScroG so I can still watch her/him

as for now it looks like I have 9 females
I left the females mostly with 4 main-branches (the upper ones), and cut approx 4-6 clones per plant on the lower part of the plants.

got 62 clones from them, some rooted after 4 days, with the help of a little willow water.. I think now, 12 days later they should all have roots. about 5 or so died, and another 6 will me male clones cause of that one NL male (don't worry i labeled the tray) so I should be certain which are the male clones, hopefully
the rockwool went dangerously dry at one point, like 6-7 days into the cloning process, that was when 5 or so wilted ..pretty stupid mistake also some of the roots got very dry, but after all they look like they've recovered quite nicely.

here's the Scrog so far, It's been a week since the first training, which pretty much was slamming the screen over the plants, it was a little too low so some branches just snapped...it was pretty rough... shortly before that I transplanted them to 6x14l pots and 4x 11l pots .





and one last picture, this is the male-suspect, I know its a blurry shitty picture:

I should also mention that there's a 400 MH bulb over them, since week 2 to be exact.
flowering will be under 600w hps
the screen looks quite filled, but it's more fan leafes than anything else
I got now 3 Ak's and 6 NL's growing into the screen.. I know the NL's and just hope the Ak48's will not stretch like a motha.
I am not so sure about the remaining veg-time, I think 3-4 days and then flip, what would you guys say?

feel free to reply dudes

This is the ScroG after training today....





I ended up giving those clones I cut 12 days ago their pots today

first, mixing soil intended for the SOG/clones

This is my first own mix of soil. I used about 25l worm humus (BioBizz), 30l Perlite, and 120l high quality soil (highest I can get here) it's damn high in N , has 95% peat, and 5% or so, perlite ..

all that dust from the perlite really sucked.


this is just the soil how I bought it (120l)


this after I added the perlite


adding worm humus:



and this is what it looks ready to use:



I don' know how good this mix will be....and hope for the best

mixed 7l more than I needed, but had approx. 40l left after transplanting my clones.. my pots should be 3.5l but they look smaller, and probably are smaller everybody sells them as 3.5 though...

here are the clones: (ghetto dome)


closer look under the dome:



outta the dome:



those are the ones without roots;



I made some really small clones cause why not... backup clones kinda, the 3 that did not have any roots were well developed branches... had 5 of those backup-small clones from the very bottom branches of the plants, I also planted 2 of the smallest in one 3.5l pot

basically 49 clones were rooted 6 were also rooted but male...
I counted 62 a few days ago I don't know how that number came to me..
left a few empty tray-holes maybe thats why

some more:





Sorry for the jump... part two of the SOG will come the next days...

now more info on the ScroG and SOG /watering

removed that one male plant from the screen, which means more room for 2 of the neighbor- northern lights plants to grow in the Screen!

I have to hurry to make my watering system work for the SOG the next days... I'll build it myself from pvc-pipes, not an easy task... my previous watering systems all sucked..so try again

the clones are now under 400w MH, the Scrog-tent lighting is now a grolux 600w

I'll try to get 20g to an ounce per plant on the SOG cause I got another 400hps and a 600hps so that makes 1000w for the clones, 48x20 would be roughly a gram per watt.. heard that an ounce per plant is pretty high-end in 3.5l pots... I yielded 15.6g per plant a while ago, also 48 clones but better selection of NL and in a hydro system with 600w..in the 4x4 tent.

I hand water the ScroG

almost forgot to say something about the willow water!

this time was the first time I used willow water, I cut some really young willow branches in small chunks and soaked them for 12-20 hours in demineralized water.
after cutting the clones I put them into normal ph'ed water (6.2) then after a few minutes placed them into the willow water for another few minutes, some clones were only dipped for a few seconds in the willow water...
then straight into the pre soaked 6.2 ph'ed rockwool cubes. I think I squished those too hard...
after 4 days under the closed dome, 7-9 already had roots after 6 days at least half of them or so... then the rockwool cubes lost too much water.... watered them immediately after that, and after 6 more days watching out, and me spraying and looking carefully for dried out cubes everyday, all roots looked OK.
that damn rockwool...
and all this with 16/8 light cycle, / 36w fluoro's and a pretty high PH, I don't know why but I feel that a higher PH is better for developing roots in clones. I would not go below 6. ever. some cubes can have lime on them... but most of the time, I think they're neutral.
24/0 light cycle like many growers do, is also not that great in my eyes.
this schedule became more frequent in the growing scene over the last years. I don't see the point, maybe in VEG but not for clones.


more pics soon will come

Still pending with the SOG... 2 some of the clones had a problem with the 400MH, those clones came straight from the dome.. so 5 clonse started to droop.. 2 still have a problem now as I changed lights back to 36w fluoros (maybe 2 more days so they can shoot their roots down in the soil) I think the humidity was too low, that rockwool tends to dry out pretty fast too, so I made an improvised huge foil-dome to hang it over them... looks ugly.. so no pics for now
never had problems to throw my clones under the 400, but with correls and in a grow tent.. way easier to keep a high humidity in those tents.. my clones are just standing in the room so far..

so another update on the ScroG, I made those 2 pictures right after the daily training.
they currently get 0.6 EC. my tap water is about 0.4 , every 2nd to 3rd watering they get a little nettle tea I made earlier this summer, and some alga mic (only 0.2 EC rise both combined) I think the soil still has plenty of nutrients , I just give a little nettle tea for the microbes in the soil really
before that, I used to do a 1:1 mix tap water/demineralized, and every 3 waterings I gave them Epsom salts also... 2g per gallon. which was too much, I think calcium got locked out cause of that. some leafes showed signs, so I stopped giving it to them. and started to bring that calcium/mg ratio up with my tap water, which contains plenty of calcium.
maybe I'll get some magnesium-citrate in the future, so I can make my desired 3:1 Ca/Mg ratio.. I could do it with Epsom salt also but not that happy with it so far.
I heard epsom salts contains about 10% Mg, rest is water and some sulfur, is that about right?
so in 10 l of water with 300mg Ca and 40mg Mg I would need to add 60 mg Mg which means 600mg Epsom salts=0.6g, can somebody confirm that?
maybe I just need to get some magnesium-citrate....

Hey Man, You got it all going on, including some pretty funky concepts I never even heard of before, like that willow water cloning thing, that's a new thing for me. Also you're doing Nirvana NL, which is a great old school under rated strain. I love the detail you include in your posts, would be easy to learn some new tricks from you. Hope you don't mind if I pop in for the ride. Reading your posts, you had a bit of chaos at the start with cloning etc ( I would have binned that rogue maybe its male, maybe its female clone you were worried about ) but the later pics show a good healthy canopy of potential tops. I need to read up on this '' ghetto dome'' thing you do as well. I'm an old time grower who had to give up growing for five years or so because thanks to my teenage boy finding out my grows , he was robbing them to smoke with his friends and obviously I quit growing , it wasn't worth the hassle. Now I'm free to go again , good luck mate I,ll check out your posts, add the occasional words of encouragement, all good stuff, keep em coming.

damn that robbery thing sucks teenagers do stupid things I guess...

well that willow water stuff was my first time doing it too, it worked pretty nicely. last time when I was making clones, I went without any hormones or anything.. worked also, but it did take about 7-10 days to see the first roots... willow water was extremely fast in comparison...

that ghetto dome thing was a bit "amateurish" on my side.. it was just a grey box , wrapped with plastic foil.. it fit exactly to the 70x grodan rockwool tray. a real humidity dome is def. worth it though had to buy so much stuff in the end, it's crazy. I still have so much equipment, but 3 years of not growing and here and there things disappear.. and I also underestimated the cost of such a big run, the nutrients alone cost me some decent amount of money, it quickly adds up..

I'll be using bio bizz bloom and grow.. and figured I would need at least 1-2 bottles bloom if not more...and of course bio grow.. it's not really a 2 part fert. but it's highly recommended to use bio grow along with bio bloom so....

I really wonder why there's no decent ScroG journal anywhere on all the MJ forums... I was reading up on this topic the last weeks but did not find any decent ScroGs, only people switching way too early. or training till the stretch stops, most guys also just let their plants grow through the screen, and all they got in the end, is some plastic screen between the buds with no real purpose let's hope this journal will be a decent ScroG example I'll do my best!

I switched the Scrog the night before so its now day one into flower... waiting any longer, it would get way too crowdy with all the leafes overlapping.. sweating on each other...and I am trying to avoid so much defoliating, so I hope the stretch will be how I wanted it... in the Screen are 3 AK48's and 6 Nl's , so that will be interesting to watch during the stretch.. If they stretch like a sativa I will def.have a problem we'll see.

Day 1

Looking great, when I use the bio bizz range of nutrients and it comes time to flower and you switch to 12/12 most users will keep on giving bio grow in addition to bio bloom for a week or so. You may notice more lower leaf yellowing due to nitrogen deficiency during the bloom phase, so it does no harm to add a bit of bio grow in addition to the bio bloom. A teaspoon of Epsom salts added in to the watering mix every third week of the bloom phase keeps magnesium deficiency at bay. Just a couple of suggestions which is what I find when using bio bizz.aapart from those little points I love bio grow, its organic, and impossible to overdose on the stuff as its basically just seaweed exctract. Nicre journal, keep the info coming man.

yep I am using epsom salts, did it every few days or so, I did 2grams per 5l and got calcium lockout (I guess) cause of excess Mg
not entirely sure but I used water with 30mg Ca per liter, and every 3rd watering I added epsom I know i'ts probably too early to do so, but my ca/mg ratio in the water is like 30/4. so I did.

If my calculations are correct, 2 grams Epsom will give my water 200mg of Mg which is about 40mg Mg per L and 30 mg of calcium /l, but I think I just guessed that every 3 waterings it would kinda normalize, but then calcium deficiency spots on the leafs, curled fresh leafs, and some holes in them, now I don't think this was good for my plants, especially so early in veg, and also not having a good schedule when to add it, and so I changed it to this:

I diluted 25grams of epsom salts in 1L of water this makes a 0.25% Mg supplement, I wanted to go for 1% Mg, but all I got left were exactly 25 grams epsom

so this stuff has 0.025% Mg in it... which is a bit weak... this equals about 2.5 mg Mg per ml solution ...
I need to go from 8.5mg Mg up to 20 mg ... so I'll need additional 11.5mg per L added to my water, that's about 4.6ml of my epsom salts solution per L, it's quite a bit due to it's high dilution rate...

I hope this will give me about a 60/20 ration Ca/Mg..over the whole cycle.

and currently I am using unfiltered tap water, had my problems with it in the past, and it has plenty of calcium, but then again never dialed in those Ca/Mg ratios perfectly in the past..

here's a question I couldn't solve so far:

does anybody know what the perfect Ca content of water should be? and what is considered as too much Ca? my tap water has 60mg/l in it, I thought this is too much, so diluted it with demineralized water to come down to 30mg per liter .. but someone recommended somewhere else that you should use 2ml of 1% Mg solution in one liter of water, (every watering) this would mean that this particular guy recommends 20mg Mg per liter which would also mean that the Ca should be something like 60mg (3:1 ratio) so his words made sense.

...and then my tap water should be close to perfect. but I dunno if that is really the case...

for now I'll stick with it and watch out for weird things

It's flower, day 7 right now for the ScroG

let them run too dry 2 times... but nothing too bad...and I snapped a few heads during the last training... but hey, i't looks pretty good so far

I tied down a few out-breaking tops again, (a few Ak48's were a bit outta control but could be worse..)
I think I'll let them go now.. also tired of snapping branches here and there it hurts...

It's also time to let them grow their way now, cause I never really trained them past one week into flower..
also had light-related problems, so I tried stuff changed some gear, and accidentally left my lights on for too long, they got a 15 hour day one time at day 4-5, but I gave em 12 or 13 hours of darkness right after that, and I shifted the day-phase too, 3 hours forward.. which I already thought about. so I just did.. and I don't really think they'll care too much.

EC is about 0.7-0.9 , which is about 1ml Bio grow and 1 ml bio bloom..(also rhizotonic and MG solution) and some fulvic acid...
my calcium/Mg levels should be about 30mg/10mg per liter...

PH is 6.66

so here we go:




and here the first SOG pictures, right now they are rooting pretty good, they really start to grow now, but as I mentioned, I have a few lamp-related problems right now, I am on it, solving those problems, but till then they'll get only 400w MH.. we'll see, I placed those clones close together for now,
they will get another 600' soon, and then my clone-grow area will be about 4x8 feet....400+600w

those are 15 Ak48's and 33 Northern lights.. clearly the AK's are growing faster so far..
I also planted some small clones I had left in one pot/ 2 clones per pot.

as you can see I placed the small ones right in the center, right under the bulb....



here are the AK's: (most of them)


and the NL's ( not all but those are all NL's)


they get Rhizotonic right now, and still their stems are pretty weak, so I'll give them another week or 2 before switching to flower... I need at least 20g per plant to hit 1g/w

Looking great, everything healthy and green,

hey! thanks man, made a few more pictures with lights off!

in the ScroG there are 6Nls on the left and 3 AK's on the right made a little paint thingy here

I also changed the water, hope this will be ok, the plants had a few slight problems, they showed Ca deficiency, not much but the next watering will be just regular tap water, which has about 60mg Ca in it (previously 30mg with my mix), I'll adjust the Mg level also to 20mg/L with epsom...

this makes an EC of about 0.43 I think, base EC of the water is about 0.38

and since it's now week 2 in flower (day9) I raised the nutrient level Grow/Bloom from 1ml/L / 1 ml/L to 1.5ml/L and 2ml/L Grow/Bloom, which results in an 1.15 EC level.

almost all of that EC is the grow fert, bloom barely rises anything... previous EC was 0.9...

some leaves under the canopy were also yellowing, they don't get any light, but I also think the plant is sucking out the nutes of these leaves... don't think there's much nutes left in the soil by now... so I went somewhere in between the 2 biobizz schedules (light/all mix)
don't think I'll go much higher with the grow fert though...


here we go








Oh and I am also thinking bout topping my clones... they will get more space/light soon, and will have a little more space between them, most of them are hitting one foot by now , and I can't let them grow any bigger than 2 feet, so it might be a good Idea to top them, they are also not very bushy... and I plan on giving them at least one more week veg. under 1000w...
only fear is that the roots may fall behind, when I top them... they still need to grow way more roots...when I look into the sides of the pots there are barely roots growing... some yes, but not much, does anybody have knowledge if topping helps rooting/hinders rooting?

not sure..

just realized how beautiful that last picture is, even though my cam sucks ... but remember guys, now it's flowering time and what happens in flower.. stays in flower... the flowering time kind of separates the men from the boys and we're early in...

had some slight problems in my past grows.. basically with either Mg/Ca or phosphorus deficiencies most of the time... it's important to know what exactly the plant needs in which phase of flower, not an easy game to land it perfectly right
yellowing plants due to deficiencies do not yield that much worse than healthy green plants..and it's not as harmful as over fertilizing is to them, It just kind of bugs me, losing that optimum beauty of the plants...
I really don't like seeing a nice green healthy plant turning into something more unhealthy..unless its time to ripe of course
mostly this kinda BS happens 3 weeks into flower to me this time we'll see.....

My yields in the past were pretty good, some also really good, last grow was chronics, also in ScroG and they yielded about 550g in the 4x4, same wooden frame, 6 plants, that time I had problems with TMV, which reduced the plant's light absorption/energy producing level, and deficiencies do have much higher impact with this condition (especially Ca/Mg)... still worked fine, but in reality, chronics should have yielded much more than that in ScroG...

I am also looking forward to compare this (mostly NL) ScroG with my chronic ScroG, even though I have 3 plants more in the Screen this time... once did a hydro run with Northern lights, 3.5L pots and 49 clones and they yielded 750g in the 4x4, this was hydro , where the growth really explodes when doing it right, so don't think it will touch this result, but hopefully it will yield somewhere in between the chronic ScroG and the NL SoG this time

It's about VEG day 10 for the SoG, (they needed some time to get enough roots till they started growing.. ) lights is still only one 400 MH for them, but they are growing really fast height-wise and are not really shooting out branches.
I think its not enough light, so yesterday I decided to top them all (except the small ones).. one day earlier I tried to FIM, but because FIMing isn't really consistent, and this would be my 1st time, I just topped them one day later to be sure this works. (even though topping means a longer recovery time) the plan behind this, is to create some additional veg time for my small clones (have about 5-7 of them) so they can catch up, and the bigger clones can grow a bit wider, to fill out all the space hope after that they'll be all about the same height and fill out a nice even canopy... I also need some time to make my 600' work ... so

the small clones are in the center of the picture (others are really overgowing them...)

small update...
ScroG:
did a watering with 60/20 CaMg in the water, but noticed some spots, so I switched back to 325Mg/155 Mg (switched also to 2:1 I think they need Mg now.. flowers begin to form pretty early also gave them some alga mic.. 5ml grow, 20ml bloom and 3.5 ml PK 13/14 (max dose is 15ml) all per 10l water....
the PK raised the EC at about 0.1, so I think thats ok, I know I use bio nutrients, but I also don't really think that little pk really bugs any microbes or something... the thing is they already put out little flowers, so a small amount of readily available p and k should help them..

I also reduced the bio grow, cause leaves are pretty dark green right now... figured less N but a tiny lil bit more pk

and I defoliated, it's pretty crowded, leaves overlaying eachother, so I am a bit worried about those leaves sweating on each other too much, removed some, mostly the leaves, shading some budsites or those overlaying.. well did not much, :









the removed leaves are partly twisted, but nothing really to worry about I think..

alright another update on the ScroG! it's day 16

guess what happened...

here's the problem:



one Northern Lights and I hope it's only one, turned hermie...
thought about only plucking the balls, since there were not that many of them.. but this early in flower I decided to kill that damn hermie. don't need pollinated buds..

only the lower budsites were showing balls, and only a few.. but 16 days into flower is way too early for this...
hope it wasn't my fault cause my SOG is still in veg and I am not that sure if total darkness is guaranteed in the tent...
this Northern Light hermie was the one who was growing very compact but thick somehow.. but she/he wasn't the best plant of the bunch so I guess It's not worst case... I also suspected this plant being male at some point in veg. sometimes female preflowers appear to look like male flowers in the beginning... but are indeed female flowers, thought this was the case as soon as I saw hairs and calyxes on this plant.. but now I am pretty sure she already showed some male preflowers a while ago... it was shitty selection on my side... northern lights is a really slow growing strain.. so I kept as many plants as possible..DAMN


this is the whole plant, thought about making butter, but decided to cut those tiny premature buds down... only found 1-2 male balls on those but also plucked a few lower branches earlier this day , about 3-4 or so had balls, found them as I was doing a "below the canopy maintenance" session... plucked the lower small branches and leaves under the canopy and I also plucked some fan leaves above the canopy, cause there were too many leaves transpiring on each other... not a fan of defoliating though...

hated to destroy my even canopy... but it's really not that bad...tied down a few branches, in direction of the empty space, but I really don't think they will grow really that much anymore...stretch is pretty much over.

here what's left of the hermie




I am worried about another plant too.. shows some funky looking "things" on some nodes.. but no balls yet, hope this doesn't turn into some hermie party...

this is what I've cut down from the hermie branches posted above:


maybe I'll do a small amount of oil from this, or small amount of butter... or just vape it if it doesn't taste like shit... for it's stage, its already pretty sticky, lol

a lot was happening the last weeks...


firstly I have found out that all the clones or maybe 3/4 of them were hermies.

I realized a light- leak, on the clone-side which lasted for maybe a few days into flower, it may be one reason,
around the same time I realized that the clones were infested with thrips, I ordered some aphid-lions and treated with nematodes also (root zone)...
I asume those genetics are pretty hermish.. bad growers making bad regular seeds...
the clones were stressed out a bit yes, cloning alone is stress, the light leak didn't help but it was the first few days only, and only a small beam, the ones in the darkest place of the room were the worst herming ones also...
So idk, I think bad/unstable genetics, combined with lots of stress is the cause of this,
the ScroG had only one hermie in the screen, the rest still looks reallly good, no pollen sacks so far which I can see)

I don't know but I've had my problems with nirvana seeds in the past, one strain I order always tends to herm so damn easy. I grew Northern lights, and power plant from nirvana some time ago, and power plant was herming also badly. maybe those cheapo-seed growers use femmed female mothers or something to make the seeds...I'll stick to better genetics in the future for sure. time to learn from this lol


since I have 1000w over those clones, I've decided to keep the ventilation to a minimum on the clones, and pluck the balls... 47 clones and every few days inspecting them... hard work..plucked lots of small developing pollen sacks the last week, trimmed the lowest, smallest branches, right now only they hermed, so it's a bit like a popcorn bud worthy stuff-removal after 2 weeks.. and it seems like the tops don't grow these at all , . only the lowest part of the plants so far. from the point, when the main stem divides after the topping I've seen no sacks at all I think.
not sure of the nanners though, they grow more randomly I think...so far no polensack opened, but those damn nanners... also found one calyx growing a seed so far...

I think I can still pull off some seedless weed, at least a pound from the ScroG hopefully, the clones may end up seeded as fuck..---> hash or oil maybe,

I also figured that my ScroG had some kind of Mg def. due to lockout (mostly Bio Grow overdose) maybe also too much Mg in the soil, stopped giving them Mg even if it looks like Mg def. I think its lockout-related, I tested this on 2 plants and they seem to get better after watering with a bit drain and a low EC.


one AK in the Scrog drained about 250-500ml and this Drain was 2.5 EC (watered with EC 0.25)
which is fine. this plant only had light Issues with Mg...

the other AK with the serious Mg def. drained also about 250-500ml and I measured an EC of about 5..

I think that is too much, the Drain-EC is not easy to analyse though.. high EC is common in drainage. especially with small amounts of drain. and in soil.
they look a bit better now also... buds still growing...

It may also have something to do with too much light...as the def. appears more under the bulb than on the sides.
enough talk


newest pics are flower day 43 (ScroG)
clones are day 26 If I remember it right...

I tried to sort them chronological:

next bunch:

and here the clones in the beginning of flower






and on day 26:






my cam sucks. something's wrong with the flash... the red pictures were taken when the lamps went on..