Once a breeder has taken it’s first steps into the world of growing cannabis, they probably get to the point where you feel like expanding your horizon. A good time to start looking for new insights and techniques to make the most out of every next harvest. From there on, experimenting with different grow methods only gets more interesting. Ultimately, it helps you develop your personal style to match your experience, your goals, and your circumstances. So, are you ready to learn something new and boost your harvest while you’re at it? Well, if you are, then the SCRoG, or SCReen Of Green technique, may be just your kind of thing.
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What Is Screen Of Green?
In our tour of various grow techniques, today we’re zooming in on the Screen Of Green technique, a.k.a. SCRoG. We will look at the technical underpinnings of SCRoG and then hand some practical tips to give it a try at home.
Before we dive headlong into the technicalities of Screen Of Green, perhaps we should take a moment to consider the basic concept of the approach. SCRoG is a grow method based on optimizing the amount of light your plants absorb. To make it work, growers use a grid or framework, or in other words, a SCReen. That explains part of the name. The Green? Well, that’s obviously your plant, in this case growing straight through that framework. That in turn ensures that all plants, branches and leaves are neatly aligned and evenly spread out. That way, your cannabis grow can make the most out of every last available ray of light, allowing photosynthesis to make every plant grow thick, glistening buds..
Frameworks, Screens, And Clever Setups
The frameworks used for scrogging ensure maximum spread of canopy foliage. That means covering maximum surface with a minimum number of plants. Viewed this way, SCRoG seems like the exact opposite of the Sea Of Green (SoG) technique. Using SCRoG, you’re basically growing less plants on the same surface. The trick is making each of them grow at the same pace and along the same dimension, ensuring an evenly-spread and uniform canopy. Behold the Screen Of Green: your very own framework full of healthy green leaves!
Most SCRoG screens measure about one square meter, accommodating four plants per screen. Still, there’s nothing stopping you from DIY-ing your own custom screens, making them as big or as tiny as you like.
Usually, the SCRoG grids in the frames form a flexible net made of wire, but plastic materials or a metal grid should work just as well. The net is attached to a square structure, generally made of wood or PVC. The Screen of Green system is either built to reach a practical height, or it can be adjusted using a rope and pulley system or some other clever mechanism.
Regardless of the specifics, though, what you’re trying to do is make you plants grow neatly through the openings in the grid. This allows you to up your cannabis yields without expanding your required grow surface. It’s all about allowing your leaves to soak up every last ray of light they can get.
Hands-On Tips For The SCReen Of Green Approach
So, care to ramp up your harvest while saving on plant space? That’s a pretty interesting proposition for just any grower, right? Mastering this technique brings many benefits, so let’s find out how to make this technique work to maximum effect.
You can bet that this method is worth a try. Generally speaking, yields produced by weed plants grown SCReen Of Green style tend to be larger than those of plants raised according to their natural structure.
Left alone, cannabis plants tend to grow in a more or less bushy structure or shaped like a Christmas tree, roughly speaking. Both these natural shapes prefer sprouting one or several dominant buds as they flower. Once these dominant buds have matured, the plant will direct most of its energy to these prime colas. That means less energy for the other buds. As a result, only the main cola will grow as big and trichome-laden as you’d like.
At the same time, the lower branches and leaves are obscured by the top canopy. That reduces the amount of light they can absorb, further reducing their potential bud size. The question is: how can we manipulate our cannabis plants into producing as many buds as possible, each as big and fat as it can be?
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Dominant Buds
The answer to this question comes down to levelling the playing field for most of the buds or grow tips. That way, you’re making sure that buds bound to end up at below-average size will now reach the same size as any dominant bud would have.
As you can see, extra light and a bit of support allows all buds to grow along the Screen of Green, producing maximum harvests as a result.
Instead of growing a single dominant bud weighing, say, 20 grams plus a multitude of smaller flowers weighing some 4-8 grams each, you can now look forward to a grid filled with buds weighing 20 grams or more each.
That explains why SCRoG is claimed to up your harvest while reducing the number of plants you need. That makes the SCRoG method worth a try; especially for any homegrowing hobbyist working with a few plants at a time.
The Verdict: SCReen Of Green Is Worth A Shot
Are you itching to expand your grow techniques after seeing how your current approach yields a few dominant buds and a bunch of small flowers with limited production?
Well, in that case, SCReen Of Green may well be the perfect method to grow the weed you need. Get maximum produce using a bare minimum of plants and space. Added benefit: since you’ll distribute the light more evenly between plants, you’ll be working more sustainably and cut power costs while you upgrade your traditional grow approach!
Added together, that absolutely makes SCReen Of Green worth a try!