This isexcerpted from the forthcoming How To Grow Wiser: A Cultivator's HandbookFor Growing Cannabis Sustainably, by The Farmer in the Sky. Permission isgranted to copy or reproduce it solely for non-commercialpurposes and with attribution. All other rights are reserved entirely toMichael Wolf Segal and/or his designees.
It is a well-duh that maximizing your bud sites' exposure to light is beneficial. Most canopy management is intended to accomplish this. For the vast majority of cultivated varieties (cultivars) of cannabis the Sea of Green (SoG), Vertical Sea of Green (VsoG) aka Emerald Cavern (EC) and TRUE Screen of Green (TscrOG) are the most effective ways to do this. These are my preferred methods for those places where the regulations are based on canopy footage rather than plant count. You will also find the appropriate techniques here for canopy maximization in those areas where the regulations are based on plant count rather than canopy footage...
TRUE Screen of Green:
TscrOG was sent out of the federal prison complex at Sheridan, Oregon in the Fall of 1991 or 1992 to High Times magazine. It was sent by the originator of SoG who had been busted with the highest plant count–12,000+ plants--of anyone arrested in connection with Operation Green Merchant. Prior to his arrest he had been unaware that Federal Sentencing Guidelines made sentencing for each plant, regardless of actual size, the same as that for a kilo (1000 grams) of cannabis. This meant that he was originally looking at the same sentence as if he'd been taken down for 12 tons. He thought about this long and hard as his sentence for the 3,999 plants he pled down to began and, not wanting other to also fall afoul of the sentencing guidelines, he devised TScrOG. You may wonder what makes something that is horizontal trellising NOT TRUE Screen of Green. If the distance from the top of the medium you are growing in is more than 15'-18" from the growing tips of your plant it is horizontally trellised, which many now call "scrogging" but is not a TRUE Sreen of Green because it loses the advantages that are the very reason for the existence of these techniques.
Advantages to SoG and Related Methods of Canopy Maximization
a) The plant gives 3-4 nice heads (14-56grams, processed) per square foot.
b) The entire plant is in the "Grow-Zone" where there is neither too much nor not enough light to make the flowers achieve their full potential.
c) The plant does not have to spend a lot of energy translocating nutrients from the roots to the tips because this distance is kept minimal.
d) This in turn means that the plant doesn't spend those nutrients and energy making larf and lumber.
e) You will not have to spend time and energy removing larf and lumber.
f) There is a higher root mass to meristem ratio.
g) There is a shorter window of opportunity on any given cycle for plague, pestilence or people problems to present themselves.
h) Your work flow is more evenly distributed through the year.
i) You get 5 crops a year that are SoG size crops (on an 8 week of long night schedule) with 1/12--1/16 as high a plant count.
This is also the sole disadvantage of TScrOG vs SoG; eg. that you only get 5 (start to finish) crops per year vs the 6.5 you get with SoG.
For SoG, TscroG and VsoG, cuttings are taken FROM SEXUALLY MATURE PLANTS. (If, in nature, a plant's vegetative stage would have been 9 weeks, prior to flowering do not take cuttings of that cultivar from a mother which is not at least 9 weeks old. Cuttings taken from sexually-mature plants are sexually-mature even if they have not been triggered into flowering. Cuttings from plants which are not sexually-mature will not give you all their genetics are capable of in yield or effects.)
