How to ScrOG Cannabis Plants Without a Net?

If you're a cannabis enthusiast delving into the world of cultivation, you've likely come across the term ScrOG, or Screen of Green. This innovative technique is revered among growers for enhancing yields and fostering uniform growth patterns in cannabis plants. 

Traditionally, ScrOG relies on a net framework to train plants, but what if you cannot utilize such equipment? Whether it is due to lack of space or time, you don't need to miss out on the benefits of ScrOG just because you can't use a net. The fact is that you can ScrOG your cannabis plants easily. 

Fear not, as we delve into alternative methods for implementing ScrOG without the conventional net structure. In this article, learn how to use ScrOG on cannabis without a net. 

What is ScrOG or Screen of Green? 

There are many training methods out there for cannabis growers to try, and one of the most popular ones is ScrOG, short for screen of green. This training method, when used correctly, lets you boost your plant's yield significantly, and the best part is that it works whether you're using a grow tent or otherwise. 

Typically, the screen of green method relies on a net to work well. Here, each grid in the net holds a dominant blooming point of the plant. This net is held in place with a square frame made of PVC or wood, and you need to manipulate the branches through the grids. 

Used by cannabis cultivators to enhance yields and make the most of available space, the screen or mesh ensures exposure to light and fosters the growth of numerous bud sites. If you're a beginner, you may be better off with other training methods that are easier as having a grasp of SCROG basics is essential for a big harvest.

With ScrOG, you essentially create a uniform canopy for your cannabis plant, allowing each budding site to get consistent and equal exposure to the light. Do this properly and your plant will no longer grow into a typical Christmas tree shape. It will have a flat canopy with each budding site producing big buds as if they were the top-tier site. 

Plant Training Techniques with ScrOG

Plant training forms the core of SCROG practices. By shaping how your plants grow, you can establish an even canopy of buds that receive adequate light leading to more consistent growth and higher yields. Below are some plant training methods employed in SCROG:

LST (Low-Stress Training): LST involves bending and securing plant branches to the sides to encourage lateral expansion. This approach aids in maintaining an even canopy level and also stimulates the development of colas.

Topping: Topping refers to cutting off the tip of the plant to force the plant to develop two main stems instead of one like a Christmas tree. This method assists in cultivating a plant with an increased number of bud sites.

FIMming (F*ck I Missed): FIMming is like Topping. Again, you cut off the tip of the plants but the only difference is that you use your hands instead so the plant can sometimes develop more than two main shoots, unlike topping. Topping is more precise whereas FIMming is not. FIMing can result in a plant with way more colas. 

Super Cropping: Super cropping entails pressing and bending the stems to induce stress, which promotes the development of sturdier branches. This method aids in supporting buds and enhancing plant resilience. However, you should stay away from this method if you don't have a lot of experience with it as you can end up hurting the plants. 

Choosing the Right Cannabis Strain to SCROG

Selecting the right strain is key for SCROG. Here are a few things you should keep in mind while picking the strain for your SCROG setup:

• Indica Dominant

Indica varieties are often favored for SCROG cultivation due to their traits that align well with this technique. Firstly, these strains typically grow shorter and bushier compared to sativa-dominant strains. This compact form is advantageous for SCROG as it allows control over canopy height and promotes growth. On the other hand, Sativa strains may not be suitable as they tend to stretch too much and you may have a hard time controlling the height while trying to maintain an even canopy. 

Indica dominant strains tend to produce lush foliage and numerous side branches, aiding in creating a uniform canopy beneath the screen. This thick growth helps create several bud sites, leading to increased yields. 

In addition, Indica-dominant strains will flower faster, thereby allowing you to harvest your buds sooner. This enables you to grow more plants and harvest them sooner, maximizing efficiency and productivity in your growing area.

• High Yield Potential

Selecting strains recognized for their high yield potential is crucial for optimizing your harvest in a ScrOG setup. This way, you know that they will adapt well to your training techniques and produce lots of buds. In other words, opt for strains with genetics that consistently deliver great yields. Research the strain's lineage. Reputed breeders give you a lot of information about the strain including the family history so you know what you're getting. Or, you could talk to other growers and look at their diaries to figure out whether the strain is suitable for you. 

• Resistant to Stress and Diseases

If you want to train the plants excessively, they will experience a lot of stress, so it makes sense to pick strains that are resistant to stress and diseases. Seek out strains recognized for their ability to endure stress and have strong root systems and sturdy structures. These strains can withstand the bending, pruning, and training required in SCROG without wilting or displaying signs of distress.

Also, since ScrOG will have too many buds in a small space, there's a lot of chance for mold to develop. Thus, look for strains that are resistant to mold. That said, there's no guarantee that the strain you pick will not develop diseases or mold even if the breeder says it's resistant. This is why you should focus more on the environmental factors to ensure that the plant has everything it needs. 

• Does not Stretch too Much

It's crucial to consider a strain's stretch factor during the flowering phase for maintaining a uniform canopy. Almost all strains stretch during the flowering, which is why you train it in the first place. Still, look for strains that don't stretch too much. While some stretching is beneficial for enhancing bud growth, excessive stretching might result in an uneven canopy and even prevent light from being distributed to the bottom parts of the plant. 

While you are still bending and tying the branches here, ScrOG is still not LST. In fact, it can be high-stress for cannabis plants, so you should only carry it out on strains that can handle it. 

The cannabis strain you grow must have high vigor, and dense branches, and respond well to other training methods like topping and supercropping. If you're just starting, here are some of the best strains you can start with:

• Bruce Banner 
• Gelato 
• Super Silver Haze
• Amnesia Haze
• Blueberry
• Purple Punch
• Any OG Kush genetics 

Pick these strains and you won't run into major problems. Still, it is advised that you be cautious. Your local environment and setup may still affect the plant's performance under ScrOG. Keep an eye on your cannabis plant, and if you notice anything, fix the issue right away before moving forward with the process. 

Preparing Your Growing Area for ScrOG

• Airflow

Ensuring proper airflow is essential for maintaining a thriving cultivation environment and avoiding issues like mold, mildew, and pests. If you have lots of fresh air circulating in the grow tent, you'll have plants with strong stems, similar to how plants grow outdoors. In addition, adequate airflow will also prevent issues related to humidity and temperature. 

It can be slightly challenging to maintain enough airflow in the tent, especially when you're scrogging the plants. Here's how to enhance airflow in your SCROG arrangement:

• Strategic Fan Placement

Carefully positioning oscillating fans is crucial for achieving airflow in the growing area. Arrange fans at proper heights to create airflow patterns that reach all sections of the canopy. 

For instance, place oscillating fans both above and below your growing space. High fans circulate air over the canopy while low fans promote airflow beneath it. This configuration ensures circulation throughout the plant. Also, it will help fortify the stems and branches, prevent moisture accumulation on the leaves, and deter mold and mildew growth.

Position the fans in such a way that they rotate or move back and forth to ensure airflow throughout the growing area. This movement prevents pockets of air and encourages consistent plant growth.

Once you set up the fans, tilt and tweak the placement so all plants get enough air. However, don't aim fans at your plants since it can lead to stress and harm the leaves. Also, adjust fan speeds to create a gentle breeze rather than a strong gust. Excessive wind can stress plants and damage foliage whereas a gentle breeze promotes airflow without causing harm.

Ensuring that the airflow is right is key for supporting plant health and warding off problems like mold and pests. In addition to using fans, it's crucial to have a ventilation system in place with intake and exhaust fans or ducting for maintaining air quality in the growing space. 

Position intake fans to bring fresh air into the growing area. Place these fans at the bottom part of the space to draw in fresh air from outside the room or tent.

Similarly, place the exhaust fans near the top of the growing space to expel air outside. Implement air filtration systems like carbon filters to purify the air and remove any odors and pollutants that could harm your plants. This helps create a nurturing environment for optimal plant growth while preventing issues like mold and pests. Adequate air circulation and ventilation are important components in maximizing your SCROG setup's efficiency.

• Lighting 

Lighting plays a major role in indoor grows as you're essentially recreating the light the plants get outdoors. But, it is especially important in SCROG setups. Providing the right light spectrum and intensity is essential for ensuring plant development and achieving high yields. Quality grow lights are instrumental in supporting this process.

In short, purchase lights that support your ScrOG setup. For example, you can go for LED lights that provide coverage across the entire canopy, ensuring consistent growth and bud development. 

ScrOG is great for cannabis plants but they also get overcrowded. This can result in too much heat, so you must choose lights that don't produce too much heat. LED lights are a great choice as their minimal heat emission compared to lighting sources like HPS lights help maintain temperature levels without the need for additional cooling equipment.

Make sure the lights can effectively cover your canopy area. Consider the light's spread and how high it should be positioned above the plants for coverage. This is very important as you'll have clusters of buds and the bottom parts of the plant may not get light at all. 

If possible, use side lighting and under lighting to enhance the yields, especially if you don't have branded LEDs. If your budget allows it, go for high-quality LEDs that provide value. It may be expensive at first, but the investment will be worth your while if you grow cannabis in the long run.  

What are the Benefits of Using ScrOG?

What makes this training method so popular? There are three reasons — ScrOG ensures uniformity in your garden, increases yield significantly, and lowers the number of plants you need to grow. Let's dive into each of these benefits and more. 

• Much Better Yield 

The cannabis plant grows into a Christmas tree shape with the apical node or top node having the best exposure to light. As a result, the buds growing on the top nod tend to be bigger than those growing on the rest of the plant, especially the lower tiers 

With ScrOG, each cannabis bud site gets almost equal exposure to light, allowing them to grow bigger buds. Thanks to this, your buds no longer come in multiple sizes; they grow in equal sizes — large — significantly boosting your plant's yield. 

• Uniform Plants

If you're growing multiple plants, especially of different strains, there's one major problem. Some plants may grow taller than others, shading them from light. Here, if you use ScrOG, you can make each plant grow the same height with an even culture. 

Thanks to this, the taller plants won't shade the shorter ones. Their growth will not be impacted as they all get equal exposure to light without any obstructions. 

• You Won't Have to Grow Many Plants 

Every good cannabis grower must have a goal in mind. For you, it might be growing a kilo of cannabis per season. Since ScrOG gives you a much better yield, you will no longer have to grow more plants. 

For example, instead of growing five plants, you can get away with growing three plants. With the increased yield, fewer plants will meet your cultivation goals. Why is this helpful? It will save you nutrients, stress, and money that goes into sustaining more plants. 

Simplicity and Cost Effectiveness: SCROG without a net offers an affordable alternative to traditional methods that involve setting up physical screens or nets. This streamlined approach eliminates the need for additional materials and setup time, making it suitable for growers with resources or space.

• Flexible

Growers have the flexibility to customize the arrangement of the canopy based on their preferences and objectives. They can guide plants to grow in the direction they want, create spaces within the canopy to allow better light penetration, and adjust the layout to accommodate various plant sizes and growth rates.

• Improved maintenance 

The accessibility for maintenance is improved when using SCROG without a net, making it easier for growers to reach and care for plants within the canopy. This allows for you to use training methods like pruning, and defoliation, and even look for pests as all parts of the plant are more accessible, reducing the chances of overlooking some areas.

• Fewer Chances of Damage

The screen or net you use for ScrOg can tear, sag, or break easily. Sometimes, the entire structure can collapse on the plants, risking their health. In some cases, you may lose the plant entirely. However, if you ScrOG without a net, you don't have to worry about any of that. This means less maintenance and replacement of materials are needed over time, saving both time and resources.

• Utilizing Space

SCROG effectively expands the growing space by making better use of the vertical area. Typically, cannabis plants stretch a lot during the flowering phase; however, ScrOG limits this effectively by letting the plant grow tall with one main cola and letting it spread out the canopy horizontally to make sure all light is utilized.

• Neat Layout

SCROG results in a compact growing environment compared to other methods, but despite this, the plants grow freely. SCROG allows you to cultivate plants in a small area without overcrowding if you do it properly, leading to improved efficiency and a higher yield per square foot.

It also prevents plants or branches from casting shadows on each other by training them to grow laterally. This guarantees that all sections of the canopy receive light, including those that are usually shaded. Typically, these will grow into popcorn buds, but with ScrOG, even such buds will grow well. And, don't forget that SCROG gives you more control and you can grow your plants just the way you want it. For instance, you can mold your plants as you like by adjusting the height, width, and density of the canopy for light and airflow.

With SCROG, growers can train their plants using methods like LST (Low-Stress Training) topping and defoliation. This allows control over growth patterns and encourages multiple bud sites to develop.

Unlike plants that may produce large single colas requiring trimming to encourage side growth, plants that you ScrOG naturally form multiple colas along their branches. This reduces the necessity for pruning.

Drawbacks of Using ScrOG  

• Lack of Canopy Support

Without a net in place when implementing SCROG, plants lack support needed to maintain an even canopy. For this reason, sometimes, the plants may face challenges in staying and developing evenly without a support system, which could lead to irregular canopy growth and potential harm to branches or buds.

• Challenges in Training

The absence of a supporting net can make it tough to guide plant growth and create a canopy. Techniques like bending and securing branches may be less effective without support, resulting in a jumbled growth pattern. Thus, you can proceed with LST as usual by using garden ties and bending them to the sides of the container. This will help keep the branches in place and all you need to do is maintain the top of the canopy and ensure that the plants stay uniform. 

Also, using a net helps manage the canopy height by guiding plants to grow. Without this support, growers struggle to regulate plant growth. This issue is particularly troublesome for strains that tend to elongate during flowering, resulting in uneven canopy heights and light distribution.

Remember, growing SCROG without a net poses difficulties in confining plants within a designated area as they continue to expand. When plants aren't guided by a barrier they might lean beyond their designated space, causing problems and potential harm to nearby plants or equipment.

• Risk of Overcrowding

If you don't ScrOG the plants properly, there's an increased chance of overcrowding within the canopy. Overcrowding can lead to airflow restrictions, higher humidity levels, and the creation of unfavorable microclimates that promote mold, mildew, and pest issues. It also triggers competition among plants for resources like light, water, and nutrients, ultimately reducing yields and adding stress on the plants. This is why you should prune the plants properly to ensure that there are no issues of overcrowding. 

How to Use ScrOG Without a Net?

Let's come to the meat of the matter — what if you can't use a net? This is a common concern with many growers. Sometimes, you may not have the time to set up a net, other times, your setup may not allow the use of a net. For example, some grow tents are tiny and don't have fixtures for such nets. 

In such cases, what do you do? Can you still use ScrOG? Yes, you can. You just have to be a little creative with it. Below are some steps you can follow to use ScrOG without a net while growing cannabis. 

• Start Topping Your Plants 

In normal ScrOG-ing, you have to start by topping your cannabis plants. The same applies here. Once your cannabis plant is in the vegetative stage and has developed its fifth node, you need to top the plant. 

After topping, it will break its apical dominance; instead of one dominant bud site or cola, your cannabis plant will grow two colas. Your plant will start growing wider since the top cola is no longer rushing to the sky. 

You can continue to top the branches that grow over the canopy. But remember, you must only top your cannabis plant in its vegetative stage. Do this in the flowering stage and you're only cutting off bud sites from your cannabis plant and reducing the yield. 

• Start Bending the Branches 

Next, you need to bend the stems. So, take the taller branches and bend them down to create an even canopy, which may get wider, too. Your canopy must look like a flat tabletop surface. 

In a regular ScrOG setup, you'd bend and direct the branches through the net, but since that is not possible here, you need to use other methods to keep the branches in place and the canopy flat. While you can be as creative as you want, the best way to do so is to use gardening ties to tie down the branches, like you would with regular bending training. 

Don't worry, you're still not LST-ing your plant. LST begins early in the vegging stage but ScrOG begins later. So, wait at least two weeks before scrogging your vegging plant. 

• Keep Reflattening the Canopy 

Once you've trained your plant initially, you need to keep doing it every couple of weeks to maintain the canopy. As the stems grow, some of them may grow over others or in random directions, but you can keep them in place by regular training. Ideally, you want to do this once every 7 to 14 days and only do it during the vegetative stage. 

• Switch to Flowering 

You'll probably have to train your cannabis plant 2 to 3 times during the vegetative stage to keep the canopy flat and even. Then, once your plant is ready for flowering, you can switch to a 12/12 light cycle. 

But before you do that, you need to keep a few things in mind. The branches must be spaced adequately, the canopy must be consistent and even, and the height should be manageable even down the line. The training method must not put any stress on the plant or lead to any deficiencies — they will only compound during the flowering stage 

If you notice any problems with your cannabis plant, fix the situation before switching it to flowering. If you've followed the routine properly, the lower branches should be in line with the apical node. 

Then, switch to a 12/12 light cycle. This signals the plant that winter is close and it will start flowering. Remember, your plant will stretch one last time, so ensure it has enough space to grow taller. 

Wait for some time until the flowering period ends and you'll be met with a ton of big, bushy buds. Seriously, the screen of the green method is terrific and known to produce large cannabis buds even from low-tier branches. 

Summary: How to ScrOG Cannabis Plants Without a Net?

Despite the absence of a traditional net, ScrOG-ing remains a viable and rewarding approach to cannabis cultivation. By using this technique for ScrOG without a net, you can unlock the full potential of their plants, achieving robust yields and fostering consistent growth. 

So, what are you waiting for? Get your gardening ties (or anything else you can use) and start ScrOG-ing. Just make sure whatever type of tie you use is not too harsh on the soft tissues of your cannabis plant. Other than that, you don't need to worry about anything else.