Just about everyone who has frequented any of the canna sites in the past 5 years knows the theories behind the SOG technique. Most have an inkling that SOG is a technique where small plants are packed tightly and reduced to one main cola, but if you ask 10 people how they do it you will find 10 different answers. Even if you restricted your search to ICMAG alone, you can get wildly different answers. It all depends on your individual situations.

In this thread, I thought I would walk you through my eden and give you a peek into how my garden grows. It’s an easy system to manage, if everything is done right. If you don’t have all your ducks in a row, then it can get messy…but that is true for most indoor applications.

I have spent a lot of time looking for ways to weed out the ineffective, inefficient, and unnecessary steps that have been consistently taught for traditional bush style gardening and then find a better and more efficient way to accomplish the same task in a shorter period of time. One way to do that is to reduce the size of the plants and increase the numbers, the SOG technique... So, basically I pack 4 plants in the same space that used to have one plant. The yield is very comparable between the two methods, but I cut my veg time to nothing, so I get 2 more crops a year this way. Obviously, we live in a time of draconian laws and an increase in numbers is an increase in risk. So the obvious question you should ask is, is it worth it? Personally, It is not about the buds…as long as I don’t run out I am fine. With my old method I was able to keep my medicine chest full, but I like having plants to play with…I can only do so much testing on 8 plants, especially when I am relying on them for my medicine. If I have 50 plants, I can use a couple as guinea pigs without the risk of loss. Whatever your motivation for using the SOG, you will find that if you get it dialed in, you can achieve excellent results. And the best part is…no more popcorn buds

Sometimes the size of your garden is predetermined…as in, a cabinet or closet or other micro type garden. Sometimes you have a whole room to play with; personally I have a rather small closet. My space is 3x4.25x4, and I have a single 600 air cooled. So that comes out to 47 watts per square foot and a bit over 7,000 lumens per square foot. *I am charged .07 cents per kilowatt hour x 12 hours a day, so it takes $15.12 per month to light my fire.

The 1020 method…

In order to understand how the 1020 method works, it’s helpful to know a few things about the SOG technique. In traditional SOG techniques, the plants are packed in tightly and encouraged to grow one top cola, but with no predetermined pot sizes or shapes or whatever... The 1020 method is obviously an offshoot of the traditional SOG. In the 1020 method, we do have established plant sizes, pot sizes and shapes, and tray sizes. The backbone to the 1020 method is obviously the standard 1020 seedling flat.



A 1020 flat (read 1020 as "ten twenty") is a vacuum-molded, plastic flat that measures 11 inches long, 22 inches wide, and 2¼" deep(why they didn’t call them 1122’s is beyond me). 1020 flats represent a greenhouse industry standard size which is produced by many manufacturers. The 1020 flat, in combination with a wide selection of inserts and accessories (such as clear domes), provides a flexible system for growing a variety of greenhouse and growth chamber crops for research and teaching. . Eight 5¼" square pots (5.125" deep) will fit perfectly in a 1020 flat.



The flats are like mini trays…you can move a tray at a time, so it makes moving plants easier. You can water a tray at a time, I like to water from the bottom and the trays make this so easy.

Right now, I’ve got sort of a mish mash of strains in the flats, but the goal is to have one strain per flat. That way I can customize their feeding schedules, and so I can harvest one flat all at one time.

The timing is important for me especially because I wanted to have a perpetual garden. It makes the most sense to me. If I was farming for commercial purposes, then I would want everything to ripen at once so it could be harvested together and sold together. But with my garden I want to stagger my produce, so that I can use it throughout year for daily consumption, and it is always fresh. Timing is also important when it comes to veg time. The sativa’s I have needed absolutely Zero veg time in this system. I take them directly from the rooting tray to the flowering tray. Indicas are another story; I have to test each strain at different veg lengths between 3 and 10 days, to see what works the best for that particular strain. I’ve got some diesels that were put in at 3” and ended up at 15”, with one solid bud. I’ve also got some afgooey’s that I put in at 3” and it ended up at 6”, so it looks like I need to veg the afgooey’s a bit longer The key to See of Green is that you want the plants to develop their top cola only and everything else is to be trimmed off. So the longer you veg, the more you have to cut off at the bottom of the plant. Anything that is cut off at the bottom is wasted. Wasted time on veg, wasted nutrients on that veg, wasted energy from you and your light, wasted vertical space, just a plain old waste. So the trick is to get your timing down so that you can get the plant into flower soon enough, so that it doesn’t have time to grow the bottom branches…it just grows into the top cola naturally.

Yields are moderate at this point I am averaging 90 grams per flat, so around 45 grams per square foot. By the time this thread has run its course the plan is to double that number. If I can get 160 grams per flat I will be satisfied

Follow along in my journey to find the perfect 1020 garden…who know’s we all might learn something along the way.

[mrwags]

What a great thread. Details are your co-pilot are they not kokua? Well done as always my friend.


Mr.Wags

I want to watch!

it's all in the details...

A sad fact is that our favorite plant/hobby/medicine/pastime has some serious effects on short term memory. It is totally acceptable as a lesser of two evils, but it sucks nonetheless. I find that the better notes I keep, the smoother things go. In the garden and in life. I've got notepads all around the office, and all around the house.

ICMAG provides me with an outlet to share my notes with others. It allows me to bounce ideas and theories off of other growers who are trying equally hard to perfect their hobby. I am grateful for this opportunity and I am not going to waste it. This thread is for notes and thoughts on this new method that I am toying with. I hope others join in and offer their input. Maybe we can even find a few others who employ similiar techniques, and we can compare notes...hopefully

I am still learning alot about the strains that I have going right now, so it will be awhile before this grow is dialed in and running smoothly...it should be a fun ride

[Babbabud]

Ill be here watching if i can "remember " how i got here. Great looking begining to what im sure will be a very informative thread. Thanks for taking the time to share your notes and teach what you know

It is not the size of the plant, but the maturity and quality of the product that counts. Twice as many plants grown half as big will fill the grow space twice as fast, so harvests take place almost twice as often....That's effecient gardening

These are some of my first attempts, both are low to medium yeilders...




Here are some good threads here at IC that are inspiring to me...


https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.p...t=quick+boring

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=14745

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.p...5&page=1&pp=40

hey! that's it?

[HYDROJUNKIE]

great thread!!!,...im currently trying out different sog methods with different size pots and plant numbers.
so far im taking a liking to 2 gallon sqaure pots/coco/25 per 4x4 tray.
ill get some pics up soon...

[dimid]

I'm going to be using 1020's to start a SCROG, in the mean time i'll be getting clones ready for a SOG using the 1020's i was just looking at inserts today, did the ones you use show any signs of coming close to getting root bound? Do you think you could have gone with smaller pots and a few more plants or do you think it would affect the yield?

[JustinCase]

Sorry dimid sunnyside is no longer with us. I highly doubt the answers your looking for will come from him.