i just closed down a failed SCROG breeding program with a bunch of great strains. well the breeding part went well this time actually,
I don't think you and I have the same definition of the word "well".
but the "concentrating all growth on buds" top down & bottom up pruning left my gals with too little fan leaf for making babies and they eventually died off leaving just bud leaf. i knew i didn't like the sound of "get rid of any leaf that's below another one or and bud in the shade because it'll be popcorn blah blah blah" SCROG method. if you get rid of too many leaves, your plant won't have enough growth energy. from now on, i'm just going to let my gals stretch out & overlap at least one layer as i'm going to keep breeding.
To "keep breeding", implies that you have been doing so already. Clearly, you have not.
Again, for the benefit of those who might actually try to take what you're saying seriously, "breeding" implies making crosses, planting many seeds from those crosses to create a variety of offspring, doing selection from the offspring to isolate desired traits, and then recrossing the selected plants over multiple generations to stabilize the new combination of traits. Merely crossing plant "A" with plant "B" isn't really "breeding". . .even if you actually manage to get viable seed by doing that.
Some use the derogatory term 'pollen chucking' for this sort of amateurish crossing. And like learning how to stand before you can walk, being a successful "breeder" requires first that you be a strong grower.
The problem here isn't with the SCROG method (which seems to work pretty well for lots of people), but rather with your implementation.
To try and salvage something out of this disaster of a thread, let me point out the following:
The
proper SCROG technique is to guide multiple tops through your screen so that each top has its own little space. The point is to create an even field of tops, like a mini forest canopy, to maximize light utilization, and therefore yield. By spreading out the plant horizontally, a SCROG also keeps the overall plant profile lower, which is useful for stretchy sativa-type plants.
To do that, the SCROG squares have to be size-matched to the cola-size of the particular strain, but mostly to the overall size of the grow (which affects the cola size). BIG grows with big plants make big tops and require BIG SCROG squares to accomodate the width of large flowering colas. Small ones, the opposite.
No, its not "brain surgery", but if the SCROG squares are too BIG, then you're going to waste space between the tops.
If the squares are too small, tops put next to each other in adjacent squares will touch each other and fight for space, causing them to stretch, and ruining the nice even field effect you want to achieve. Note that there is no rule that says you have to fill every square in your SCROG, and much of the time you probably shouldn't.
Now, in terms of pruning, its simple. Once the tops are established and growing, you prune off all growth UNDER the screen. You DO NOT prune off the fan leaves or any part of the growth ABOVE the screen, so long as its viable and growing. The only reason you *might* do this is if you get branching ABOVE the screen, in which case you'd want to nip off any side growth. If your SCROG squares are too small, and you have tops growing too close to one another, you might have to prune their sides so they don't fight each other for light (see above).
But if you do your SCROG right from the beginning, neither of these things should be issues.
Its true that some growers like to "lollipop" their plants, pulling off all the fan leaves and possible even doing a rough manicure cutting off some bud leaves. I've always been highly skeptical of the value of this practice, but even the ones that do it, don't typically do it until the end of flowering.
Doing it before then? Not smart, in my opinion.