🥒 Project Blue Tent – Week 5
Pickle Lemon Haze F1 – Pheno A (Folder 14A)
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another update from Project Blue Tent! 💙🌱
If this is your first time stopping by, welcome!
Project Blue Tent follows four individual plants, each documented in its own dedicated diary from seed all the way to harvest. Every plant receives the exact same environment, nutrients, lighting, irrigation and care, allowing us to observe how each phenotype expresses its own unique personality despite sharing identical conditions.
This week marks another exciting milestone for Pickle Lemon Haze F1 – Plant A.
After recovering beautifully from topping, it was finally time to install one of my favourite training techniques...
The SCROG net.
🌿 Week Five – The Canopy Begins
This week was less about vertical growth and more about shaping the future.
With the plant fully recovered from topping and growing faster than any of the others inside the tent, I decided the timing was perfect to install the SCROG net and begin spreading the canopy.
Plant A immediately confirmed my suspicion.
She has become the most vigorous plant in the room.While the other ladies settled comfortably beneath the screen, this phenotype almost seemed eager to escape it. Every branch wanted to continue growing upward, so the goal this week became gently guiding that energy sideways instead.
One branch at a time.One square at a time.
Nothing forced.
Nothing rushed.
SCROG is very much a daily conversation with the plant rather than a one-time training session.
Looking at her today, I already have the feeling she may end up occupying the largest portion of the canopy.
Only time will tell, but she's certainly making a strong case for herself.
🕸️ What is a SCROG?
SCROG stands for Screen of Green, and despite the name, the net itself doesn't actually support the buds.
Its primary purpose is to control the plant's shape.
Instead of allowing one dominant top to grow taller than everything else, the branches are gently guided horizontally beneath the screen. As each branch reaches a new opening, it's carefully tucked into the next square, encouraging the plant to spread across the available space rather than simply reaching toward the light.
The result is a flatter, more even canopy where many growing tips receive similar light intensity.
Instead of producing one large cola and many smaller ones hidden underneath, the plant is encouraged to create dozens of equally productive flowering sites.
It's one of the most effective ways to maximize light efficiency inside smaller tents.
🤔 Is SCROG for everyone?
Not necessarily.
One important thing many new growers don't realize is that once the plant is woven into the screen, moving it becomes extremely difficult.
Need to remove the pot?
Almost impossible.
Want to rotate the plant?
Not anymore.
Need to carry it somewhere else?
Forget about it.
The plant essentially becomes part of the tent.
For growers who frequently move their plants for maintenance, watering or photography, SCROG can quickly become frustrating.
Personally, I don't use it on every grow.
But in compact setups like this Project Blue Tent, where every square centimetre matters, I absolutely love working with it.
There's something incredibly satisfying about visiting the tent every day, gently guiding a few branches, watching empty spaces slowly disappear, and seeing the canopy become flatter and more uniform with each passing day.
It isn't a technique everyone will fall in love with...
But it's definitely one I encourage every grower to try at least once.
Only by experiencing it can you decide whether it's the right style for your own garden.
🌡️ Environmental Conditions
This week the environment remained stable, allowing the plants to focus entirely on recovering from training and continuing vigorous vegetative growth.Average conditions were:
• 🌡️ Day temperature: 30°C• 🌙 Night temperature: 25°C
• 💧 Relative humidity: 58%
• 🥥 Root zone temperature: 24°C
• 💦 Nutrient solution: 18°C
• ⚗️ pH: 5.8
• ⚡ EC: 1.92 mS/cm
• 💨 CO₂: approximately 450 ppm
• 💡 Light schedule: 18/6
Even with slightly warmer daytime temperatures this week, the plants have continued to show excellent vigor thanks to stable root temperatures, consistent irrigation and healthy airflow throughout the tent.
🥥 Feeding Update
One observation from the previous couple of weeks was the slightly lighter shade of green across all four plants.
Although they remained healthy and continued growing without slowing down, I felt they were asking for just a little more food.
Rather than waiting for deficiencies to develop, I made a small adjustment to the nutrient solution.
Current feeding now consists of:• Plagron Hydro A — 1.9 ml/L
• Plagron Hydro B — 1.9 ml/L
• Plagron Hydro Roots — 1 ml/L
This small increase has already made a noticeable difference.
The fresh growth is returning to a richer shade of green while maintaining the vigorous posture I've been seeing throughout the project.
One of the things I continue to appreciate about growing in coco is how quickly plants communicate with you. Small adjustments often produce visible improvements within just a few days, making it much easier to fine-tune nutrition before small issues become bigger ones.
🌿 Pickle Lemon Haze F1 – Plant A
This phenotype keeps reinforcing the impression she's given me since the beginning.
She's vigorous.
Responsive.
And full of energy.
Even after being bent beneath the SCROG net, every branch seems determined to keep pushing upward, which is exactly the kind of behaviour I was hoping to see before entering the next stage of vegetative growth.
The stems continue thickening beautifully, making the training process much easier than it would have been with weaker growth.
The internodal spacing remains compact, the foliage is healthy, and the plant has handled every bit of stress I've introduced so far without missing a beat.
At this stage she already feels like a plant that's going to demand plenty of room.
Whether she ultimately becomes the dominant lady inside Project Blue Tent remains to be seen, but she's certainly making her intentions known.
🔍 Looking Ahead
Over the coming week the focus will remain exactly where it should be.
No rushing.No unnecessary stress.
Simply continuing to tuck new growth beneath the SCROG screen while allowing the canopy to expand naturally across every available square.
I'm excited to see how each phenotype responds to this new training style.
Some plants naturally embrace SCROG.
Others fight it every step of the way.
That's one of the reasons I love documenting projects like this.
Every week the plants teach us something new.
And I have a feeling Pickle Lemon Haze F1 – Plant A still has plenty more to reveal.
💙 Thank You
A huge thank you to Zamnesia for making Project Blue Tent possible, from these fantastic Pickle Lemon Haze F1 genetics to the complete ecosystem surrounding this grow.
A heartfelt thank you to Plagron for providing the Premium Growbags together with the Hydro nutrient line, delivering consistent nutrition and allowing these plants to thrive week after week.
A sincere thank you as well to Phytonaut for the outstanding LED lighting that continues producing compact growth, excellent structure and an incredibly even canopy across the tent.
Thank you to GrowDiaries for giving growers around the world a place to document their journeys, exchange knowledge and inspire one another every single day.
And finally...
Thank you for following along.
Whether you've been here since germination, recently joined the adventure, leave comments every week, or quietly follow these updates from the background, your support genuinely means the world to me.
Project Blue Tent isn't just about growing great plants.
It's about sharing the entire experience—the experiments, the lessons, the successes, the mistakes, and everything we learn together along the way.
I hope you're all having an amazing week, and I can't wait to show you how this canopy develops over the next few days.
Until next time...
Growers Love, happy growing, and take care everyone! 🌱💙