Z Cultavation

The SOG cannabis growing method

Sea of Green

SOG or Sea of Green is a cannabis growing technique used to take advantage of all the available growing space. Basically, we only need to completely cover the whole space with relatively small pots, as many as needed. The number of pots used will depend on both the size of the pots and the available space. For our example, we will use a 1m2 growing tent and tell you a few tips that everyone should remember in order to achieve a successful SOG crop.

SOG indoor cannabis crop

The main goal of this kind of cultivation is reducing as much as possible the time needed to grow and flower the plants, while getting the best possible yield of our growing space. With this method, one can achieve the same results in two months – using cuttings – than in 3-4 months when growing cannabis seeds . Saving money in our light bills or being able to perform more crops per year are some of the benefits from this interesting growing technique.

How to set up a SOG crop

After getting all the needed growing gear (pots, lighting systems, fertilizers, etc.), the first thing to do is growing a mother plant from which we will take cuttings . For this kind of cultivation, it is very important having identical cuttings from the same mother plant – or at least from the same genetics – to achieve a homogeneous crop. Working with several genetics will surely cause problems regarding size, height, flowering time, nutrient needs, and a number of factors that will decrease the overall yield of the plants.

Once we have our mother plant ready, we should determine how many plants we are going to use per m2.; the amount of cuttings may depend on several factors and needs, but 25 plants/m2 is a good number to start with. Now we know how many cuttings we have to take from our mother plant and how many pots are needed to plant them.

It is advisable taking more cuttings than needed; this way, we can keep the best 25 ones for our grow room and discard the rest of them. We must choose the stronger and healthier ones, with similar heights, discarding those that would not form a homogeneous crop, what is crucial when using the Sea of Green method.

Ak47 clones ready to start a SOG crop

Another important aspect of this system is the type of irrigation that we are going to use for our plants. The best option is setting up an automatic watering system with dippers, connected to a nutrient solution tank. In this way, all plants will receive the same exact amount of nutrient solution, what will equally increase the production of all the plants.

Growing cannabis cuttings using the SOG technique

Plant each cutting in its respective pot ; we can perform a couple of transplants before flowering our plants, and the final pot’s size will depend on the used substrate. If we are using coco coir, 3-4 liter pots will be perfect; otherwise, if we use soil, we should use bigger containers, about 5-6L. Transplanting our plants saves space, helps to control the height of the cuttings and promotes growth with a shorter internodal distance, improving yields.

As the growth period of our clones will be short, we must use a quality root stimulator to enhance root growth, so they can quickly develop a well-formed rootball. Roots will drastically slow their growth after the pre-flowering stage – 2nd/3rd week of flowering – so we can stop adding root stimulator to the nutrient solution at this time.

Our plants should only have a main central bud with 2-3 side branches. We can prune the lower parts of the plants if needed, for we only want perfectly formed buds which usually only develop at the tops of the plants.

Plants should be about 35-50cm tall at the end of the flowering stage, so growing either Indica or Sativa strains is of key importance. We don’t want taller plants since the light emitted by the bulb would not reach the lower parts of the plants, developing few and squalid flowers. Indica marijuana strains are generally smaller and more compact than Sativas, which take more time to stop growing once the pre-flowering stage ends; for this reason, if we are using Sativa varieties we’ll flower them a bit sooner than the Indicas.

SOG of Ak47 cannabis plants, 3rd week of flowering

Cannabis SOG, almost ready to harvest

The SCROG cannabis growing system

The SCROG training technique is a growing system that allows us to get the best yields from our grow tent with very few plants.

SCROG are the initials of Screen of Green, a technique in which plants are grown, literally, through a mesh or screen.

Cannabis plants flowering in a SCROG setup

Growing cannabis with the SCROG method

To use this method we only need from 1 to 5 cannabis plants for each m2 of crop. At the end of the flowering stage, the result will be the same regardless the number of plants, since we’ll get exactly the same yields using one, three or five plants. The only thing that may vary is the time needed to harvest our plants.

To make a SCROG setup we place a screen or mesh (preferably made of 6/8mm diam. bamboo sticks) with 5-10cm holes approximately 20cm above the pots. As plants grow, we train their branches using the mesh to control their height, always leaving the tops at the same height than the mesh. This way, the apical growth of the plant decreases in favour of horizontal growth, developing more branched plants.

This process should be carried on until 70% of the available space is covered, what will highly depend on the chosen strain. Now we only have to change the growing photoperiod (18/6) to flowering (12/12). During the first days, our plants will continue growing and stretching, what allows the plant to fully occupy the growing space. During the entire blooming phase all our flowers will be at the same distance from the lamp, what produces first quality harvests of first quality buds, homogeneous and almost identical.

Flowering should be performed as usual, without any special care, doing exactly the same that we’d do in any other type of cultivation.

Lower part detail

The Screen of Green method

This method is highly recommended when flowering sativa marijuana strains that tend to grow too much and have a notable stretching during the pre-flowering stage, being difficult to control in small growing tents, but that can cover all the growing space (mesh) very quickly. It is also advisable when growing in small spaces. Any strain is suitable for this technique, just bear in mind that if you are flowering Sativas you only need to have 50-60% of the growing space covered before changing the photoperiod, while if you are flowering Indicas 80% of the space should be occupied by the plant before flowering starts.

If we want to use this method with a single plant, we must use at least a 25L container and grow our plant for 5-7 weeks before flowering it, so it occupies 70% of the available growing space. Once the mesh is covered, change the photoperiod to flowering and the plant will cover the rest of the space during its stretching or pre-flowering growth.

On the other hand, if we are using 3-5 plants per m2, we need 12L containers and give our plants about 3-5 weeks of growth before flowering them.

Mostly Sativa plants easily cover all the available space

One of the main advantages of this technique, besides the fore mentioned saving in cuttings or seeds, is the easy maintenance of the system; once the plants stems have been properly trained through the holes we just have to water very few plants per m2, which is a lot easier than watering 20-30 plants, as is the case in other high-yielding systems like the SOG – Sea of Green

FOLLOW LINKS BELOW IN SUBPAGES