1st time grower with some questions

[SwAggNiFiCeNt]

SwAggNiFiCeNt, at the end of the day, much comes down to the grower's personal choice. Consider the theoretical situation where there are two ways to do a thing. One is greatly more efficient, the other not so much. But - for whatever reason (more work, more precision required, you just don't like it, et cetera) you do not care for the more efficient method... Over the course of the grow, which method do you think - in practical terms - will turn out to be the best for YOU? In other words, if a person chooses the method that is best on paper, but then ends up half-@ssing the job, well... That method probably didn't give them greater performance after all, lol.

I think coco coir, like many other things, can perform well for you, assuming you care to do a little research/learning about its specific traits. IDK if you are familiar with the concept of "hempy bucket," which looks like a soil grow at first glance, but is actually a hand-watered hydroponic setup. Some folks have done quite well with such things. Here is a journal from someone who is no longer a member (so you won't be able to do Q&A with him, but the information remains in all its glory). 420,420,420 ( ) individual budcycles, lol, all in individual 2-liter bottles:
Come SOG with Me - 112 Plant - 2 Liter - Hempy SOG

How'd you like to have that in your home? Yeah... Me, too.

Read about different methods/styles of growing. When you find one that seems like it would fit YOU, give it a try. It might be best to grow only a single strain at first, because the care/feeding requirements can differ significantly - and so can the growth characteristics. If you're trying to learn how to race on a road circuit, you don't jump in a different sort of vehicle every few laps, because it makes it more difficult to learn the basic mechanics of performance driving in competition situations. But that's just a suggestion.

I'm a big fan of SCROG. I don't like cutting away parts of my plants (aka "topping"), and the scrog method provokes branching without this thing. It also provides for an even canopy, so you don't have to worry about low-growing plants lacking for light because you had to raise your lights so as not to burn that tall one. And, speaking of lights, the grower can pretty much park the lights at a certain height in the beginning and not have to raise it until the point in flower when he/she decides to stop forcing the plant back down under the screen each time a tip sticks out far enough to be moved into a different hole. And you can't beat it for convenience when harvest day rolls around and you are able to just saw through the plant's trunk below the screen, disconnect that screen from the walls, and have a helper assist you in carrying the entire thing to the dining room table.

Unfortunately, some people seem to confuse the screen with a simple support device, instead of a way to do all the above. Still, if it works for them...

The only downside, IMHO, is if you like to move/reposition your plants. Because you pretty much can't. Unless you mount the screen to the plant's container instead of the walls. That presents its own issues (again, IMHO) but - also, again - if it works for the grower...

See the common thread here, lol? Figure out which method works for YOU. We can all make suggestions, but they're just that - suggestions. Pick one and try it. Come harvest time - or after harvest when you're looking at jars full of curing bud - you'll probably end up thinking, "Wow! <SMILE>"... but just don't make the new grower mistake of thinking that, because it worked so well, it's the best way. It's just A way. There are lots of ways....

Thanks for the feedback.

How high should I build the scrog net. I plan to make my own using pvc n string. Still leaning to try the coco + pertile method. Also safest way to start i agree is 1 strain 2 plants. Just to get a feel for the process and set up. Lots of time left to sort things out.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Height above the top of your containers is, like so many other things, up to the individual grower. You won't have any growth down there (other than the stems/branches/trunk, obviously). But that's where your hands/arms will be every time you do your (oft times, daily) training. You'll need sufficient space to be able to pull each growing tip - that is sticking up through a hole - back down so you can move it to a hole that is further away. And that's all well and good to begin with, lol. But... You need to do that but the nearest free hole is way over there, and you've got a literal three-dimensional example of a Gordian knot to go through. Multiplied by the 642 tips that inhabit your screen. Sometimes, moving a growing tip means moving others so as to open up a hole closer to that tip. And... rinse/lather/repeat, lol.

14" is probably a good ballpark. Again, modified according to YOUR situation. If you can reach under there from multiple sides, you might go a little tighter. If you can only access from the front, maybe a little more distance.

 

[SwAggNiFiCeNt]

Height above the top of your containers is, like so many other things, up to the individual grower. You won't have any growth down there (other than the stems/branches/trunk, obviously). But that's where your hands/arms will be every time you do your (oft times, daily) training. You'll need sufficient space to be able to pull each growing tip - that is sticking up through a hole - back down so you can move it to a hole that is further away. And that's all well and good to begin with, lol. But... You need to do that but the nearest free hole is way over there, and you've got a literal three-dimensional example of a Gordian knot to go through. Multiplied by the 642 tips that inhabit your screen. Sometimes, moving a growing tip means moving others so as to open up a hole closer to that tip. And... rinse/lather/repeat, lol.

14" is probably a good ballpark. Again, modified according to YOUR situation. If you can reach under there from multiple sides, you might go a little tighter. If you can only access from the front, maybe a little more distance.

Ok that makes sense. I'm gonna go ahead and try to make one now and just make it height adjustable.

What size is good for the squares of the screen? My tent is 2x2.5

 

[TorturedSoul]

Ok that makes sense. I'm gonna go ahead and try to make one now and just make it height adjustable.

What size is good for the squares of the screen? My tent is 2x2.5

You won't be doing much adjusting of the height of your screen after your plant(s) grow up to them, methinks. But preliminary adjustments will surely be possible.

I've mostly just used poultry netting (aka "chicken wire") because it's cheap - locally, I can get a large roll of the stuff in several widths up to five feet (IIRC), but I can also purchase exactly the amount I need by the foot at an actual hardware store (as opposed to a department store that sells hardware, such as Lowes or Home Depot :rolleyes3 ) . It's thin enough to work with easily, it can be cut by just about anything including a decent pair of scissors (which, admittedly, won't be decent afterwards ), and comes in both 1" and 2" hole sizes.

Some folks might think, "Only two-inch holes?" and shake their heads. But it gives me more holes than something like a 4" square hole pattern. And - while I am doing the training - it's not like I'm allowing a foot of plant to grow up through each hole, lol; as soon as each growing tip has shot up enough that it can be moved to another hole (in which it doesn't stick up significantly), I will do so. In other words, a large hole is not needed.

After the point when I feel that the screen is full enough (in early flowering) that I stop training, of course, hole size is not a factor. The "trunk" of the plant, directly above the surface of the medium... sure, that trunk would sometimes be of a size that one couldn't easily fit it through a small hole. But not the branch diameter at the canopy. So it's not like a 2" hole - or even a 1" one - is going to cause girding of the stems. Might there be an issue where the bud begins just below the screen and continues up through it, making it impossible (for all practical purposes) to cut that individual bud loose and pull it up through the hole? Well... Sure. But that has never been a problem for me. I am past the point in my life when I worried about growing buds that had the size and girth of two-liter pop bottles, lol, having found that they just don't fit into my bowl :rolleyes3 . And, when I am using the "scrog" method, I conduct my harvest by sawing through the plant's trunk, disconnecting the screen from the walls, and carrying the screen along with the canopy of buds to the dining room table. (I use a helper for the extra set of hands). It's not like anything is going to fall out of the screen at that point. It works for me... I am not exactly concerned about how the harvest presents itself (so to speak), as I am not motivated by trying to win any looks-based award or "bag appeal" - although, come to think of it, a six- or eight-square foot piece of chicken wire, with a nice bud growing up through most of the holes... well, that sort of qualifies as eye candy all by itself, lol. I suppose that I could do minor trimming on the buds while everything was still basically one unit (screen plus all the buds), and then hang the screen upside down for drying, but I have never done this.

I'm not doing the scrog thing at the present time because I am running three (possibly four if I don't toss the WWxBb seedling) different strains in a tight space. Id either have to set up three individual screens, or deal with trying to harvest ONE of the plants at a time from the same screen. Meaning that I had to do all the hard work in the grow room instead of while sitting at my dining room table. That might be the lazy attitude, IDK. My brother uses the phrase "Work smarter, not harder."

This is just the way that I do things when I am using the scrog growing style. Others will undoubtedly have their own preferred methods, hopefully ones that they have arrived at by trying multiple ones instead of just picking a method, trying it, and automatically assuming that one method is the best (and, worse yet, the best for everyone). As in all things, your mileage may vary. At the end of the day, it's what works best for YOU. It is certainly not unheard of for a grower to have more success with a method/style which is clearly not as good in the technical sense, because that "better" method just does not fit the grower.

 

[Gotrox]

Grown in everything. Current grow started in hydro (aerogarden), primary veg under T5HO in coco (autopots), final veg and flower in dirt under the sun.
Its a weed, and will grow in just about anything, anywhere.
No need to make it complicated unless you want a career in growing.