Hey DGC! I absolutely love the podcast, I’ve been listening since July when cannabis became legal to grow here in Virginia. I am a first time grower, most of my info on how to grow has been from the DGC. My question is I used the scrog net technique and had an even canopy in veg. Basically within a week of switching to flower all hell broke loose. My plant has stalks of all different sizes and now into my 4th week of flower I have a back row of stalks that are twice the size of other ones. Is this normal? I’m growing gorilla glue #4 in a 4×4 with a spider farm sf 4000 led light. Should I defoliate some leaves this far into flower so the smaller areas receive more light or should I leave the fan leaves so the plant receives proper nutes and isn’t stressed out. Any advice on my first grow would be super helpful.
When you flip to flower, a typical plant will “stretch” or grow about another 50-100% in weeks 2-4.
Okay, there are multiple steps to scrogging. You need to do the next step which is bending down (horizontally) all those branches and hooking them under the netting.
As you get your plants stretching, “bend and tuck” the tall colas into the next square. Over time, you’ll basically be growing the plant horizontally UNDERNEATH the scrog net so that it stretches horizontally instead of vertically. As each branch starts growing horizontally, it will produce all new growth along the (now horizontal) branch and those growths will all grow vertically and turn in to their own colas.
If it was your arm, imagine if you’re pointing toward the sky that’s “normal” vertical growth. Now imagine you turned your arm horizontally and had fingers growing vertically toward the sun all along the length of your arm. That’s basically what you’re doing with a scrog in that horizontal shaping. So get those tall branches bent down and hooked under the netting and watch all the new growth you get that all stays about that same range of height.
-Dan
Get yourself another SCROG net and place it about what looks to be about a foot above the current one and spread them out into it. Happy Growing 🙂
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So I also fall into societies scary person mode (being a felon for making the other stuff) and my world is all about my grows but I am needing lots of advie so I appreciate the good turn and your good advice about not going for a 90% bend. I also need a patron to get my thoughts going are you open to that. Good stuff.
Actually after looking more closely to your specific situation, you’ll either need to 1) raise that single scrog up about another 6″ and then tuck those colas all under the net or 2) simply add another scrog net 6″ up rom the first, and bend the colas under the new one. The whole point to a scrog is that you’re growing horizontally instead of vertically.
Take yarn or non abrasive twine and tie those colas down to itself they will bend back up even with the canopy.
Overall that canopy doesnt look bad to me, especially for a newer grower. Great work!
Heres an article I wrote with some tips on growing an even canopy:
https://growerslove.com/blogs/grow-tip-of-the-week/grow-an-even-canopy?_pos=1&_sid=31026abd3&_ss=r
Just looking at your pics I would say… put that scrog net to work! You’ve got a net in there which is great, but with the way you are using it its not really doing very much to flatten the canopy. Use the net to bend branches down in early flower. Take the tallest branches and tuck them down under the net so they grow outwards instead of upwards.
Using multiple nets is a good idea too. Use the first net to spread the branches out and help fill up the canopy. Then later in the grow add a second net to help support your fat chunky buds. 🙂
Ty everyone for the great advice. The package of scrog nets I received has two nets so I’m going to go with that technique. 6” above the bottom net. I’m worried about the stems breaking now that they are hardening and becoming less able to bend. Almost 5th week of flower so I do t want to stress the plants out too much. Next grow after this one, I will be better at this scrog method. Thanks for the support everyone who commented!
So now, your only real potion is either put another net up And try to bend them down and keep tucking. Or, Honestly as your first grow I would stake it at this point so there’s no harm no foul. And next grow you know what to expect. This growing thing isn’t a one and done thing. It takes time to learn your techniques and your ways. What works for the eight guys up top might not work for you. Ya know. Not saying not to try it. The DGC taught me everything I know about growing. But finding your own way is more important then anything else.
I can only add that your net right now is good for branches that are about eight inches above your canopy and do it slowly gently and thoughtfully I have bent some limbs and fortunately the girls kept plowing through my learning mistakes. Good comments and a lot of super growers inputs keep on truckin and great question for all of us.
Nice grow man. Looking at the pics what i evaluate is your scrog net isn’t doing the purpose of what a net should be doing. Once you setup the net for the first time you have 2 options if you do it before flipping to flower than set the height of it near the very top of your canopy and over the next week of veg make sure each branch stays below the net, then after flipping to flower i would repush each branch down in the first 3 days, and try again like on day 6-7, if you cant than youll need another net 4-6″ above the other one, maybe less depending on the strain. Otherwise what I do is wait til i flip to flower and within day 1-3 of flower i setup the scrog net to be about 6-8″ lower than the canopy and i flatten all the branches under the net, it looks scary the first time but it takes less than a day for the branches to readjust and start to go vertically again then every 2-4 days I push branches under the net until around day 20. Its a form of art, some days you push these branches down so lower ones can grow up higher, and other days you push the other branches down etc but the goal is to keep every branch under the scrog til at least day 15, than decide do you want branches to become more vertically or not which is strain dependent as some obviously stretch more or their node spacing is different.
I did the two nets and made the canopy pretty even. Very happy with the results and it seems like almost all the nodes are receiving proper amount of light. Now I have white crystals forming all over the leaves near the bud sites and I’m super excited. My hands were so sticky when I finished moving the branches around. Going to be a lot to be thankful for this thanksgiving which is when I hope to harvest!
lots of ways you can go here.. once your plants are in the stretch/transition they go wild. best you can do is tame em.. by weaving them through the trellis and tucking and tying off here and there.. you can supercrope them by squeezing the stem until its maleable. then bending it over. and evening the canopy out that way.. one benefit of using old school hps is that it helps kill some of the stretch due to its intensity.. another thing to check is the distance from your light to canopy, also the strength of your lights.. lack of intensity or being to far away will often cause them to stretch. there are other ways you can help tame the stretch with how you feed, but being a new grower i wouldnt recommend messing with what you got, because honestly man that looks pretty nice! youre absolutely killing it!
Thanks bud, I appreciate the positive feedback. I used the second scrog net and it helped out tremendously with the stretch. The reason I was worried was exactly what you mentioned about the plants getting too close to the light. The sf 4000 is a pretty strong light which I have on max setting for flower. The plants were 16” from the light (the light was maxed out in height it can go) which I know from research should be 18” minimum. I was worried about light burn but the problem seems to be taken care of for now. I think the stretch is now over.
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