My understanding you take everything under the screen, keep your branching going along the screen till it’s full and then flip. Seems your a ways off from defoliating as you still need to train into a screen.

I’m thinking the fan leaves will clutter up everything under the screen?

A few are currently blocking bud sites.

I need to flip ASAP due to low height.

Like you my friend, I agree with the fan leaves on a plant being an essential component in the plants respiration and overall development. I have been doing a SCROG for the last couple of years, and overall I have certainly increased my bud sites and overall yield. It is the best way to get the most efficiency and consistency of your light(s) across all your bud sites for overall better development of your buds. As a rule when putting down my trellis net, I want a top or more in every hole of the net (if possible). I start a week before I go into flower by bringing down my net to lay down my branches and for that next week in veg and the first 2 weeks in flower I weave my branches into the trellis to keep it consistent in height, especially over the first 2 weeks in flower as it will want to continue to stretch, weaving my tops into as many trellis holes as possible to control that stretch, so that little light hits the floor. So, when I do trim the fan leaves it is everything below the trellis I will strip off, since any bud development beneath the net will not get enough light to ever catch up to the top, but just as importantly the plant redirects its energy for growth to its tops, making for nicer colas that will stack up nicely between the nodes of your branches. As you can see from photos below, I don't remove much above the canopy, mostly below

Kevuk said:

I’m thinking the fan leaves will clutter up everything under the screen?

A few are currently blocking bud sites.

I need to flip ASAP due to low height.

Click to expand...

My bud sites like to be blocked. My best buds grow directly under huge fan leaves getting only 4-5000 lux..

Kevuk said:

I’m thinking the fan leaves will clutter up everything under the screen?

A few are currently blocking bud sites.

I need to flip ASAP due to low height.

Click to expand...

then your going to be doing a SOG then, lots of small plants. set your screen up, let um grow into it, or just lay it right on um now, and flip. As small as they are doubt they will even need the screen.

id just flip um, wait till stretch is over, support what needs support, pluck what ever fans you think need gone.

HaveApuff said:

Like you my friend, I agree with the fan leaves on a plant being an essential component in the plants respiration and overall development. I have been doing a SCROG for the last couple of years, and overall I have certainly increased my bud sites and overall yield. It is the best way to get the most efficiency and consistency of your light(s) across all your bud sites for overall better development of your buds. As a rule when putting down my trellis net, I want a top or more in every hole of the net (if possible). I start a week before I go into flower by bringing down my net to lay down my branches and for that next week in veg and the first 2 weeks in flower I weave my branches into the trellis to keep it consistent in height, especially over the first 2 weeks in flower as it will want to continue to stretch, weaving my tops into as many trellis holes as possible to control that stretch, so that little light hits the floor. So, when I do trim the fan leaves it is everything below the trellis I will strip off, since any bud development beneath the net will not get enough light to ever catch up to the top, but just as importantly the plant redirects its energy for growth to its tops, making for nicer colas that will stack up nicely between the nodes of your branches. As you can see from photos below, I don't remove much above the canopy, mostly below

Click to expand...

Nice

… now at 3.5 weeks later canopy looks full of buds.

HaveApuff said:

… now at 3.5 weeks later canopy looks full of buds.

Click to expand...

Not gonna need a second screen

Kevuk said:

I’m thinking the fan leaves will clutter up everything under the screen?

A few are currently blocking bud sites.

I need to flip ASAP due to low height.

Click to expand...

That’s the idea of the SCROG, to train your plants into the screen and keep um low and splayed out, so then you have many bud sites which limits the stretch.

so you have plenty of time before you have to worry about flipping your plants, if you still intend on doing a scrog.

Your right, not going to need the second SCROG this time, but usually have it there before I lay down the first net...a just in case scenario

HaveApuff said:

… now at 3.5 weeks later canopy looks full of buds.

Click to expand...

I do the same style, only 2 x 4. I notice buds growing in partial shade are bigger, smellier, stickier, and more potent than defoliated buds. Sometimes, depending on strain/pheno, its just way too thick and I have to open it up a bit.

Pike said:

That’s the idea of the SCROG, to train your plants into the screen and keep um low and splayed out, so then you have many bud sites which limits the stretch.

so you have plenty of time before you have to worry about flipping your plants, if you still intend on doing a scrog.

Click to expand...

There are six plants LST’d in the original pic I posted. I’m expecting them to double due to stretch when I flip.
These pics were taken on the 6th, when I transplanted them from solo cups into 11 lt pots, and LST’d with weights.

I'm gonna add my 2c to the conversation about defoliation.

First, defoliation imho shouldn't be looked at like removing all the solar panels. Pot plants are extremely adaptive and will bounce back from a lot more stress than you might think, and, solar panels regrow.

What defoliation in combination with what I consider a tactical pruning does, is it restructures the entire plant to focus only on the regrowth that appears during the stretch phase. With the idea being that most of the stuff you remove during the strip, would have been shaded out anyway by mid flower. Also, crowded plants grow slower and are more susceptible to pests and diseases. By stripping them it gives them plenty of room to grow and keep humidity under control.

My process; First it's important to have the plants trained to deal with the strip well, during Veg I top my plants twice. Once at about a week in veg to promote side branching, and again a week before flip I top each side branch to make each become 2 branches. Then 2 days before flip once all the nodes are regrowing after the last stripping, I prune the plants by removing every single node except the very tip of each branch, and then also remove every single leaf except the ones at the very tip of each branch.

It looks wrong, but if the plants are healthy they will rebound into a much more productive structure than you started with. All new growth is up top in the goldilocks zone, there will be zero larf down below, the plants are pre-lollipopped and every new budsite that grows is kept to flower out.

One caveat, is I would only do this in a fast growing system like hydroponics or even coco. Though I've heard of people doing it in soil too.

It works. It's strategic, and I can assure you is far more benefit than it is harmful to the crop layout

Here is my plants before strip when they are ready to flip. If I flipped these the room would be way overcrowded in a couple weeks and require a lot of pruning, which I try to avoid once in flower.

After stripping they look like this, and I go to bed wondering if I'm losing my mind, or if I've killed my plants..


But then a week later they look like this again, and the canopy is far more manageable, and doesn't require any further pruning. I will pull off some more leaves at day 21 in flower, which is next week. But it's pretty clear to me that stripping did more good than harm.

Plants look great, seems to me that you should have had the screen up when you were vegging and working the branches into the screen as the plant grew into it.

ive Done a few outdoor scrogs using hog panels on single plants, work very well but a real ass pain to harvest.

you were prolly thinking you had to LST to get the plants to lay in the screen nice, the plants are pretty pliabl, and if ya have a woodier stem you need to lay in the screen, crush the Hurd easy like and lay it over.

anyway, all looks good and best of luck

Well you definitely pulled up the great debate so if your gonna do a true SCROG everything below the net needs to be gone just gonna suck up energy that should be focused to the top day 21 strip it get those leaves gone again great debate but I’ve done both ways no strip no light is getting to lower areas so pretty oblivious you need them gone and they grow back quick but the time it takes those buds have grown usually enough to get the light they need yes they do provide energy to the plant so does light and nutes and like I said those leaves grow back pic shows it that a week 5 of 9 week 3 I trimmed almost all the upper leaves

Screen is in. Didn’t want to push it any lower as the canopy would be too close to the coco and I wouldn’t have been able to adjust the drippers if and when I need to.

Looking better today. Lights went out when I was putting the screen in last night. Plants were in sleep mode.

Phill said:

Well you definitely pulled up the great debate so if your gonna do a true SCROG everything below the net needs to be gone just gonna suck up energy that should be focused to the top day 21 strip it get those leaves gone again great debate but I’ve done both ways no strip no light is getting to lower areas so pretty oblivious you need them gone and they grow back quick but the time it takes those buds have grown usually enough to get the light they need yes they do provide energy to the plant so does light and nutes and like I said those leaves grow back pic shows it that a week 5 of 9 week 3 I trimmed almost all the upper leaves

Click to expand...

The large fan leaves I cut never grow back. Only smaller sugar leaves that weren't cut off grow. How do you get your large fans to "grow back"?

Not sure I run jacks and silica co2 1000 83-85 degrees 60 percent I play with my vpd to make plant uptake as much nutes as possible