Help Plz Scrog

[LifeLess]

Hello,
First time scrogger here and could use some help on timing. The strain is Indiana Bubblegum in 4 gallon Smart pots. Screen is 6 sq ft. The light is a 600 Hps. I went with 4 plants so maybe i didnt have to veg quit as long. Im not really sure when i should switch to bloom. IBG never stretches alot for me maybe 1/3 to 1/2. Thnx for any suggestions. LL
Day 1 Under the screen Sept 29


Oct 3rd


Oct 7th


Today Oct 11th

 

[cocktail frank]

id say your ready.

 

[señorsloth]

id say go a bit longer, zip tie the branches and train the tops towards the holes in the canopy, if your strain doesn't stretch much your gonna want the screen about 2/3 full when you start flowering, if they stretch a lot, go with about 1/2...id say right now you have maybe a tenth of the screen full since they aren't even trained to it at all yet by the looks of it. the key is knowing what full is...not full of leaves, but full of growth tips, the leaves you want to tuck under the screen.

as of right now you have a SOG(sea of green) with a screen on top, not a true scrog. for a scrog you tie and train the branches to the screen, try and get the branches to weave through the screen like a basket sorta, so that the stems and branches are all right next to each other, the nodes spaced about an inch apart across the entire screen with no holes, or at least with just enough holes that you know you can fill with the small amount of stretch you expect to get once you flip into your flowering schedule. once flowering begins, growth goes upward from your woven screen of stems and nodes, so that you have a wall of small buds growing upward from the screen, but almost no stems and leaves. that is the basic point of scrog, to get as many nodes as possible packed as closely as possible in a small space...otherwise you wont realize the full potential of the method.

when you're done your buds should all start at the screen and rise upward from it, very densely, about 2-6 inches tall, nice and neat. you wont have any buds underneath the screen, and you should trim any that try to form as they wont receive light under a full screen and will only detract from your quality buds above the screen. you wont have any big colas because the plants are all trained so that at least 2/3 of the plant is laying perfectly flat along the plane of the screen, in place of one big cola and a few small fluffy ones below it you will have many medium sized buds, none getting big enough to shade the others out, but because you veg for so long you can get many more little buds packed into one space.

basicly you have to make up for the extra veg time by packing them in like sardines, and that is what the screen is for, vs a tightly packed sea of green with no veg time(you wont get as many buds in the area but you get more harvests per year) everybody has their own preferences and ideas as to what styles yield more but since your already committed to scrog id say keep em vegging and tie those branches down so the plants mostly grow horizontal, and not vertical like they are now. personally i think if your plant doesn't stretch much and you flower now you will not have as tightly packed buds as you could.

they are looking nice and healthy though and it looks like you have a good start! good luck!

 

[LifeLess]

Thnx Frank

señorsloth after reading that i grabbed some zip ties and did some training. If i had to guess id say there alomost 2/3 full. The first week of 12/12 will deff fill everything else in. Heres a pic after the first training. Im flipping the lights tonight. Peace LL

 

[Scrogerman]

Sorry im late mate, looks about right to me, id of prolly flipped a few days ago myself, but as they dont stretch much, you should end up with a full ScrOG of nice Colas(vertical Colas). Looks good bro! nice pruning job btw!

btw, dont mean to contridict what senor is saying, but you never weave branches(eva) & tying is optional actually(more for bigg ScrOG's ime), better if you dont imo(esp if your still training through stretch). looks like a true scrog to me"! a tightly pack screen can be dangerous, esp with airflow & for a novice scrogger, you dont want too many tops. more tops smaller buds, less tops bigger buds & better airflow, its about finding a balance for your strain, you know the score LL !

Plants can be over trained(esp indica's), ive seen some get greedy with top/cola numbers & they ended up with 200 tops of popcorn in 1.2m2 tent, he didnt listen to what id said & got excited, his second scrog was excellent.

Id say that screen is 90+% full as it stands!

G'Luck!k+

 

[VerdantGreen]

good advice scrogger

i say flip it too, training is best done by keeping the branches all under the screen rather than weaving - then you are still able to move them a little and reposition if necessary.

keep training for another week or so to even out the gaps and the let the colas grow up

VG

 

[Scrogerman]

Quite right Verd bro,
If you weave & try to reposition that lateral & new cola-shoots further down that lat, they gonna go ping/snap, just makes things more difficult & aint the right way to ScrOG im/Our opinions ah.

if you do manage to weave your ScOG is gonna be all over the place & you wont get an even canopy(+ you risk snapping half of em in the process), trust us we've tried it! new shoots/potential colas are always fighting for apical dominance-newest shoots will just take over! simply why you dont weave! leave a shoot to take off with a weaved branch, how you gonna move it? your not gonna do it, i say this for the benefit of peeps wanting to try scrog.

Cheers bro, you know it makes sense!!

 

[Scrogerman]

imagine if i tried to weave this:



lol, id of been in big trouble!

 

[GP73LPC]

i'd flip em now...


btw, i use to tie down with plastic twistie ties on top of my screen. easier to harvest....

 

[señorsloth]

yeah id say you are ready to flip, don't know if they are just vegging really fast or if it's the pics but they seem much more ready to go in your updated pic, looks like you have a great start!

Plants can be over trained(esp indica's), ive seen some get greedy with top/cola numbers & they ended up with 200 tops of popcorn in 1.2m2 tent, he didnt listen to what id said & got excited, his second scrog was excellent.

nothing wrong with contradicting posts, especially if the previous poster is unclear or wrong! i currently am in a scrog/sog situation, started as a tight sog, but i got a lot more stretch this time around than i did with the mom's, i'm thinking because it's the first run of clones from plants that were just revegged, and many weren't as rooted as others but i ran out of room to let them all fully root. also my light was a bit high because my new setup involves a fixed position light, though i have since replaced it with a better system. anyways i just strung a screen across to cut back on about 6 inches of height, nothing major, no real "weaving" so to speak, but i'm now at about 6 weeks flowering and it seemed to really solve my problem, stretch is over and the canopy is right in the effective zone for my light.

when i said weaving i didn't mean to imply spirallng and growing shoots all over like a basket, or bending already woody plants so that they snap, more like directing branches toward empty spots, spreading the plant out more like an upside down triangle verses the sort of pine tree shape they take naturally with one tall bud and many much shorter branches below it... much like the original poster has done...i can definitely see what you mean about overdoing it and ending up with nothing but tiny buds. to that extent i was wrong as well because i did make it seem like in my post that was how it was done, i'm not an expert on this technique and i probably would have been guilty of overdoing it at least a little bit if i were to give it a full hearted attempt, but i am a sog guy and probably always will be, it's what i know and what i like, thank you for educating me scrogger! i'm curious though, if you don't weave your scrogs at all(by this i mean tie down not spiral all over)is the screen basically a replacement for stakes or other methods of tying down an lst bush style plant? i don't remember that being the case back when i used to see them a lot and experimented a little with the style in the overgrow days...

 

[LifeLess]

Its official i flipped today. Thnx for stopping in and helping out.

Scrogerman was wondering where you were. Thnx again
Ill update weekly here.

VerdantGreen im looking at a daily training for the next week or so. Thnx for stopping in.

GP73LPC good looking scrog there.

señorsloth i knew what you ment. And the zip ties helped out. Im planing on just leaving them on long enough for things to grow into place. Hope ya stick around threw the grow.

Ill get a new pic up in a few days. Hopfully im not Overgrown. Peace LL

 

[LifeLess]

One last question before the stretch starts? Whats the max height i want the shoots after the stretch. I can keep moving branches around till the end but then there wont be much above the screen. Wasent sure if theres a standard. Personal preferance ? Thnx LL

 

[VerdantGreen]

with a 600 you've got a good depth of usable light - so anything up to a foot or more would still be in decent light - i think of a scog as a 3D box of colas rather than a plate of buds, you need good ventilation for this though. for a non stretchy strain then 6" is ok.

 

[cocktail frank]

600 will penetrate nicely.after the stretch, trim away everything under the screen for better airflow.

 

[LifeLess]

VerdantGreen,cocktail frank Thnx for the info.

Heres an update on the stretch after 5 days. Dosent seem to be outta control. After another week or so of stretch i should be at about 7-12 inchs. If i should change anything feel free to tell me. Thnx in advance. LL

Day 1 Veg


8 days veg


14 days veg


5 days 12/12

 

[GP73LPC]

looking good so far...

when the tips grow up over 6-8 inches i would tie them down again. repeat until just before stretching stops, about half way thru flowering. you can tell, you'll have some nice buds making there way upwards by then.

i also trim'd any fan leaves blocking bud sites. always worked great for me, although some don't like it...

keep up the good maintenance

 

[VerdantGreen]

looking great!

 

[jungliedunglies]

Yeah man, I was just thinking that too. Very well executed fill of the screen....there is a certain je ne sais to that whole thing.

The pseudo-aristocratic sarcasm isn't gonna translate well there, but nice scrogger dogger.

 

[LokiLoki]

I can't really give you any good advice that señorsloth or Scrogerman havn't said yet. Im just here to say thats a damn fine scrog you got there
Good job on filling that screen and keeping the canopy even

 

[Scrogerman]

Nice Scroggin mate, looks spot on!