Hugh Ghit
- 13
- 3
How many of you guys out there LOVE a good full sativa! Me too!! It is rather unfortunate the logistical problems associated with growing them indoors. They get so tall that even if you have a high enough ceiling, the lower branches get little to no light exposure without supplemental lighting.
One night I was sitting around thinking about this problem. In my first successful grow I used the strain Blueberry and grew in in a SCROG style, inside a grow tent. I assumed that I had to grow indicas because of the height issue. After watching the plants and how they interacted with the screen I became even more interested in exploring this method of growing.
I believe the next inspiration came when I was sitting outside reading some Jorge Cervantes. There was this one picture of a plant that had been bent horizontally, practically paralell with the ground. This got me thinking and then it hit me. Why not train a tall and lanky sativa around a cylindrical SCROG? As the plant grew you trained it like a coiled spring!
It seemed too good to be true, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. One wrap around the coil would be 4-5 feet depending on the diameter of your cylinder. Wrap the plant around 2-3 times and you have a 10 foot tall plant coiled into around 3 feet!! When the plant is coiled like that the lower braches have more light exposure. Branches can be trained inside and outside the cylinder. You can also train multiple plants on the same cylinder like a DNA helix. All these ideas just came flooding to me and I decided that I had to give it a shot.
I lucked up by finding some Malawi Gold seeds at a local dispensary. I planted 6 seeds to get a good mother. They took FOREVER to show their sex. Once I had a mother I took 10 clones to make sure that I got one. I knew that if I was going to train them to be coiled tight I would need to start from when they were very young.
They say the best way to find something is to buy a replacement. In my case I had somewhat given up on my Malawi clones because the roots weren't showing. I was just going to grab some clones from another dispensary. The dispensaries in town didn't have many quality clones, and the ones they did have were usually indicas so I decided to make a trip. I came home with 1 Durban Poison and 1 Sour Diesel x Trainwreck clone. Much to my amazement when I picked up the Malawi clones to throw them on the compost pile, 2 of them had pretty white roots snaking out from under it.
So...now I've got 3 awesome strains and room for 1, maybe 2?? I decided to put the Durban and the Malawi in my 2'x4'x5' grow tent and the Sour Wreck in my closet under this extra grow light that I had. The grow tent has a 600W setup with MH or HPS bulbs, but the closet light is just a 100W HPS that I've had for years.
SO...that's where I'm at now! All 3 clones are just now touching the screen. I'm hoping that 2 clones in the tent aren’t too ambitious. If it gets overcrowded in there I may have to sacrifice one of them. I hope it doesn't come to that, but I don't really know what to expect here. I have a lot of book knowledge, but no actual experience on growing sativas.
I've tried to find info on anyone else doing anything like this. The only mention that I have seen is a reference in Mel Thomas' book "Cannabis Cultivation". It sounds like he is just talking about using the cylinder for support, not for training the plants to grow around it in a coiled fashion. If anyone else knows of someone using any variation of this technique, I'd love to hear about it. I'll post pics and updates as things progress.
Questions, comments and suggestions are welcome
One night I was sitting around thinking about this problem. In my first successful grow I used the strain Blueberry and grew in in a SCROG style, inside a grow tent. I assumed that I had to grow indicas because of the height issue. After watching the plants and how they interacted with the screen I became even more interested in exploring this method of growing.
I believe the next inspiration came when I was sitting outside reading some Jorge Cervantes. There was this one picture of a plant that had been bent horizontally, practically paralell with the ground. This got me thinking and then it hit me. Why not train a tall and lanky sativa around a cylindrical SCROG? As the plant grew you trained it like a coiled spring!
It seemed too good to be true, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. One wrap around the coil would be 4-5 feet depending on the diameter of your cylinder. Wrap the plant around 2-3 times and you have a 10 foot tall plant coiled into around 3 feet!! When the plant is coiled like that the lower braches have more light exposure. Branches can be trained inside and outside the cylinder. You can also train multiple plants on the same cylinder like a DNA helix. All these ideas just came flooding to me and I decided that I had to give it a shot.
I lucked up by finding some Malawi Gold seeds at a local dispensary. I planted 6 seeds to get a good mother. They took FOREVER to show their sex. Once I had a mother I took 10 clones to make sure that I got one. I knew that if I was going to train them to be coiled tight I would need to start from when they were very young.
They say the best way to find something is to buy a replacement. In my case I had somewhat given up on my Malawi clones because the roots weren't showing. I was just going to grab some clones from another dispensary. The dispensaries in town didn't have many quality clones, and the ones they did have were usually indicas so I decided to make a trip. I came home with 1 Durban Poison and 1 Sour Diesel x Trainwreck clone. Much to my amazement when I picked up the Malawi clones to throw them on the compost pile, 2 of them had pretty white roots snaking out from under it.
So...now I've got 3 awesome strains and room for 1, maybe 2?? I decided to put the Durban and the Malawi in my 2'x4'x5' grow tent and the Sour Wreck in my closet under this extra grow light that I had. The grow tent has a 600W setup with MH or HPS bulbs, but the closet light is just a 100W HPS that I've had for years.
SO...that's where I'm at now! All 3 clones are just now touching the screen. I'm hoping that 2 clones in the tent aren’t too ambitious. If it gets overcrowded in there I may have to sacrifice one of them. I hope it doesn't come to that, but I don't really know what to expect here. I have a lot of book knowledge, but no actual experience on growing sativas.
I've tried to find info on anyone else doing anything like this. The only mention that I have seen is a reference in Mel Thomas' book "Cannabis Cultivation". It sounds like he is just talking about using the cylinder for support, not for training the plants to grow around it in a coiled fashion. If anyone else knows of someone using any variation of this technique, I'd love to hear about it. I'll post pics and updates as things progress.
Questions, comments and suggestions are welcome
