What is the point/purpose of a scrog net?

[bobj]

If you can just 'top' your plant and make bushes grow out in different directions, similar to what happens when you 'scrog,' why do people use scrog nets?

Easy Cannabis Training: How to "Scrog" without a Net! | Grow Weed Easy

by Nebula Haze Growers often ask me for examples of training a cannabis plant for better indoor yields. A plant that’s trained to grow wide and flat in the vegetative stage will produce more buds indoors than a natural-grown plant. Especially with smaller grow lights or a short setup. One...

www.growweedeasy.com

 

[TorturedSoul]

Looks pretty obvious just from the pictures in the article you linked to, to me. Guy ended up showing a decent little trained plant - but the one in the first two pictures could have produced (and probably did produce) a nice bud from nearly every "hole" in the screen/net. Which generally means the garden space is a wall to wall... to wall to wall carpet of buds on harvest day, often dense enough that - if you could climb into your tent under the screen and have someone zip it closed - you wouldn't have enough wasted light-energy below the screen to enable you to read the Sunday newspaper.

But it's personal choice, really. And how busy you want to be on harvest day . I used to fill eight square foot poultry netting (aka "chicken wire") screens, and literally have to grab a saw to cut through the main "stem" (it was like a small tree trunk, lol) at harvest. then disconnect the screen from the walls and have a friend help me carry it to the dining room table to do the actual harvest work.

It's all good, though. A true SCROG works best (IMHO) with one plant, which equates to a lot of bud (a gram per watt of old-school HID light wasn't all that uncommon, back in the day, for people doing it) - but no variety, and it tends to require a somewhat lengthier growth phase. So, high gram-per-watt numbers...

...but not spectacular gram-per-watt-per-day ones. For that, do a SOG (Sea of Green) style grow, fed by one or more mother plants so that your flowering space is always flowering. Depending on strain choice, you might be able to run approximately four rooted cuttings (clones) per square foot in a "straight to flower" setup, and harvest "budsicles" that aren't individually huge - but make up for it in numbers, and by probably being able to get an extra harvest each year. Here's a good example of this:

Come SOG With Me: 112 Plants, 2 Liter, Hempy SOG

Hello everyone, It's been a long time since I've ran a journal here. I just started a large SOG grow today so I've decided to journal it here for you. I have 3 Snow White(NLXCinderella99) mothers in my veg room along with a 50 site aero cloner. I just transplanted the first 16 rooted clones...

www.420magazine.com

Notice that, really, that's a pretty simple setup. It's a hydroponic grow - but a low-budget one, and hand-watered. Spoiler: Beaucoup buds, lol.

By the way, an archive of most of the UseNet newsgroup original SCROG discussion from the '90s (I'm not telling you what my user name was back then ) is still available on the old CannaStats website. It's the fifth link down. I'm including the link to the main page instead of directly to the SCROG content because there is other information that might be of use (and because no one is trying to sell anything, and there's no competing cannabis forum on that 'site, so doing so isn't being discourteous to Rob, IMHO).

CannaStats Home Page

CannaStats is a technical reference for the advanced indoor Cannabis cultivator and contains some unique information not normally found in other Cannabis resources. Our mission is to put to rest some of the long debated issues surrounding Cannabis cultivation while at the same time offering...

www.angelfire.com

 

[bobj]

Looks pretty obvious just from the pictures in the article you linked to, to me. Guy ended up showing a decent little trained plant - but the one in the first two pictures could have produced (and probably did produce) a nice bud from nearly every "hole" in the screen/net. Which generally means the garden space is a wall to wall... to wall to wall carpet of buds on harvest day, often dense enough that - if you could climb into your tent under the screen and have someone zip it closed - you wouldn't have enough wasted light-energy below the screen to enable you to read the Sunday newspaper.

But it's personal choice, really. And how busy you want to be on harvest day . I used to fill eight square foot poultry netting (aka "chicken wire") screens, and literally have to grab a saw to cut through the main "stem" (it was like a small tree trunk, lol) at harvest. then disconnect the screen from the walls and have a friend help me carry it to the dining room table to do the actual harvest work.

It's all good, though. A true SCROG works best (IMHO) with one plant, which equates to a lot of bud (a gram per watt of old-school HID light wasn't all that uncommon, back in the day, for people doing it) - but no variety, and it tends to require a somewhat lengthier growth phase. So, high gram-per-watt numbers...

...but not spectacular gram-per-watt-per-day ones. For that, do a SOG (Sea of Green) style grow, fed by one or more mother plants so that your flowering space is always flowering. Depending on strain choice, you might be able to run approximately four rooted cuttings (clones) per square foot in a "straight to flower" setup, and harvest "budsicles" that aren't individually huge - but make up for it in numbers, and by probably being able to get an extra harvest each year. Here's a good example of this:

Come SOG With Me: 112 Plants, 2 Liter, Hempy SOG

Hello everyone, It's been a long time since I've ran a journal here. I just started a large SOG grow today so I've decided to journal it here for you. I have 3 Snow White(NLXCinderella99) mothers in my veg room along with a 50 site aero cloner. I just transplanted the first 16 rooted clones...

www.420magazine.com

Notice that, really, that's a pretty simple setup. It's a hydroponic grow - but a low-budget one, and hand-watered. Spoiler: Beaucoup buds, lol.

By the way, an archive of most of the UseNet newsgroup original SCROG discussion from the '90s (I'm not telling you what my user name was back then ) is still available on the old CannaStats website. It's the fifth link down. I'm including the link to the main page instead of directly to the SCROG content because there is other information that might be of use (and because no one is trying to sell anything, and there's no competing cannabis forum on that 'site, so doing so isn't being discourteous to Rob, IMHO).

CannaStats Home Page

CannaStats is a technical reference for the advanced indoor Cannabis cultivator and contains some unique information not normally found in other Cannabis resources. Our mission is to put to rest some of the long debated issues surrounding Cannabis cultivation while at the same time offering...

www.angelfire.com

Doesn't look obvious to me, looks the exact same. In fact, the site even makes mention of, and I quote: "Today you’ll learn how to make a “scrog” without a net. Get the same results with less effort!"

So why do people go out of their way to do something that's been made redundant by this technique? Is it typical stoner shenanigans similar to those who insist on flushing their plants? These are all real questions too btw. I've never before grown and I'm getting to the point where I need to think about training my plants for the first time, which is where this question has come from

 

[Regrowth]

Topping doesn't make SCROG redundant at all.
Topping is a high stress form a training - it slows down your veg cycle by weeks.
Occasionally it can even stress the plants out and cause them to herm...
Think of it like this - Why would you trade 3 tops for 2?...
Bending and LST is the way to go and that's what SCROG helps with.

If you don't want to SCROG but you're thinking of topping - do it once to break dominance then LST afterwards.
When you're first learning to grow it's tempting to just 'top, top, top' and you're doing yourself a disservice.
Been there man.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I'd rather have a room filled with buds than some buds in a room.

 

[Regrowth]

I just don't understand the big push for symmetry that comes from obsessive topping and high stress training.
The fluxing and mainlining thing seems ridiculous to me and I don't mean to offend anyone.
It does look the part but it's an easy way to add time your veg cycle.
And even though filling the net takes a bit of time, I would rather that than to constantly chop off growth and wait for the plant to recover. Funny enough, once a plant has a budding canopy you can't tell how it was trained so why put all this time into making it's undercarriage so presentable.

This was my first and only SCROG. Sure, not the best... Was still learning... I still am...
But I liked it and plan to do it again someday. It's not traditional since it was multi plant / multi strain and I had pests to deal with that made me waste a solid month of veg time.

 

[bobj]

Topping doesn't make SCROG redundant at all.
Topping is a high stress form a training - it slows down your veg cycle by weeks.
Occasionally it can even stress the plants out and cause them to herm...
Think of it like this - Why would you trade 3 tops for 2?...
Bending and LST is the way to go and that's what SCROG helps with.

If you don't want to SCROG but you're thinking of topping - do it once to break dominance then LST afterwards.
When you're first learning to grow it's tempting to just 'top, top, top' and you're doing yourself a disservice.
Been there man.

I don't know what to do, tbh. I just gotta have an idea in mind soon so I know how to proceed with this grow.

 

[bobj]

I'd rather have a room filled with buds than some buds in a room.

& that I'll get, I have all of the fertilizers

 

[bobj]

I just don't understand the big push for symmetry that comes from obsessive topping and high stress training.
The fluxing and mainlining thing seems ridiculous to me and I don't mean to offend anyone.
It does look the part but it's an easy way to add time your veg cycle.
And even though filling the net takes a bit of time, I would rather that than to constantly chop off growth and wait for the plant to recover. Funny enough, once a plant has a budding canopy you can't tell how it was trained so why put all this time into making it's undercarriage so presentable.

This was my first and only SCROG. Sure, not the best... Was still learning... I still am...
But I liked it and plan to do it again someday. It's not traditional since it was multi plant / multi strain and I had pests to deal with that made me waste a solid month of veg time.

one of the reasons it might not be beneficial for me to do scrog is because I have a sliding door closet that I come in and go out of, I'd have to engineer some sort of contraption to anchor the net in place, and one of the walls for this enclosure is always in motion.

 

[Regrowth]

I've been doing the thing people here call 'carhooking' since before I joined the community. Even did it with plastic drinking straws once - but don't do that... leaving open holes to your root region is just asking for trouble. lol.
It works well though. Maybe top once and give it a try.

 

[bobj]

I've been doing the thing people here call 'carhooking' since before I joined the community. Even did it with plastic drinking straws once - but don't do that... leaving open holes to your root region is just asking for trouble. lol.
It works well though. Maybe top once and give it a try.

I don't know what carhooking is. I kind of don't want to top my plants if you say it's as bad as it is. I'm trying to do as natural and straightforward as a plant in the dirt grow as possible. No extra unnecessary shenanigans

 

[Regrowth]

Fixed my post and added a link.

 

[SmokingWings]

If you can just 'top' your plant and make bushes grow out in different directions, similar to what happens when you 'scrog,' why do people use scrog nets?

"...why do people use scrog nets?"

I often ask myself the same question when I see some of the contraptions, using string, twine, wire or bungee cording, that some growers come up with.

A lot of the time, especially when a very new grower, often on their 'first grow' I feel that they think the 'SCRoG' net is magical and if they build one out of what they have then the big buds will come.

From all the reading I did on the use of a SCRoG net there two of the big points that I remember. One was that the net made it easier to maintain an even canopy so that all the buds and bud tips would be getting light. The other was that the net, if properly set up, acted as an anchor to hold 'heavy colas' up so that they were not falling over into the buds and colas next to them.