Hydroponic screen of green (SCROG)

One of the more creative methods for growing weed indoors is the use of a screen or netting to train growth and to limit the height. The goal of a Sea of Green is to produce a large number of equal-sized colas instead of one main cola. This maximizes your weed harvest and keeps the canopy at the same level getting full utilization from your grow lights.

How it works

A cannabis plant uses hormones called auxins to determine where the apical tip or main cola is (the bud located closest to your lights.) All of the other bud sites also contain auxins, but at a much lower concentration. By slowly and gently training your marijuana plant to grow horizontally instead of vertically, the level of auxins to the secondary bud-sites will be increased dramatically making them all appear about the same size as the top cola.

Essentially there is no longer one cola nearest the light so the plant attempts to make many apical buds as a survival mechanism. Done properly, ‘popcorn’, or small, undeveloped buds, becomes almost nonexistent. Your marijuana flowers will all mature around the same time unlike vertically-grown weed. Having uniform, full buds makes harvesting and trimming that much easier.

How to SCROG

The screen can be made out of chicken wire, fencing, netting or string and mounted on a wood frame. You want openings from 1.5 – 3” square, and is generally set at a height of roughly 10-14” above your media. Your SCROG marijuana plants are allowed to grow through the screen and then gently tucked back under much like weaving. This process is continued until about half your screen is filled. At this point, you switch to flowering. The plants may double or triple in size and will need to be trained further until vertical growth slows or stops. When the plants start getting crowded, much of the growth underneath the screen is pruned for better airflow to prevent mold or rot.

Screen of Green grown weed is often topped several times to increase bushiness though this is not required.

Because your plants are growing sideways more than up, only a few plants are needed to fill a large area. Allow a 1’ X 1’ minimum area per plant up to 2’ X 2’.

To calculate the minimum wattage of the LED grow light or HPS grow light required, the general guideline is to multiply your square footage * 50 for HPS grow lights and use 65 as a multiplier for MH.

Broad or full spectrum LED grow lights will use around 1/8 of the power when compared to an equivalent HPS light.

Let’s say your grow area is 9 square feet * 50 = 450 watts of HPS and around 60 Watts for LED according to these full spectrum LED grow lights.

Therefore you could use a 400W HPS with supplemental lighting or move up to a 600W HPS.

V-SCROG

Also known as a stadium SCROG, this takes the Sea of Green concept to the next level. Everything is the same except your screen is in the shape of a V, being lower in the middle and raised on the ends so that the V forms a 120-150 degree angle. This is based on simple geometry in that a point source of light has to travel further to the ends of your frame, thus the outsides get less radiance. The other advantage is that you increase the surface grow area some 12-20%.

Try either a V-SCROG or a flat Sea of Green to increase your harvest when growing marijuana indoors.