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Week 4 of fill, net is finally coming together
Running a 4x4 scrog this cycle with a Gorilla Zkittlez, started filling the net somewhere around day 18 of stretch and i am just now getting close to where i want to be. Maybe 75 to 80 percent coverage right now. The back left corner gave me some trouble early on because two of the four plants were lagging behind the others, so i spent a week just tucking those branches more aggressively and redirecting the dominant colas from the front plants away from that dead zone.
The canopy is starting to level out pretty well. I've got a good even layer sitting right at net height, maybe an inch above in a few spots where i let some tops breathe intentionally. Those will get tucked one more time before i flip, probably in the next four or five days depending on how fast the trailing corners catch up.
Defoliation pass yesterday, took off everything below the net that was blocking airflow and anything above that was shading another bud site. Left maybe 20 percent of the fan leaves up top, just enough to keep the plant doing its thing. Felt aggressive but the structure underneath is clean now and i can actually see every tie point.
Post a pic of your nets if you're running scrog right now. Always curious to see how other people handle corner fill, that's where most setups fall apart in my experience.
3 Comments
Corner fill is the part nobody talks about enough. Most scrog threads are just people posting the middle of their net looking full and gorgeous while the corners are still half empty.
One thing I started doing that helped a lot is running the two corner plants offset from where you'd think. Instead of putting one plant in each quadrant symmetrically, I'll push the corner plants physically closer to their respective corners in the pot placement before the net even goes up. Sounds obvious but I wasted two cycles doing symmetrical placement and wondering why my corners always lagged.
Gorilla Zkittlez should reward the patience too. The phenos I've run from that cross tend to stretch decent enough that you get long lateral reach if you let them go. One of my keeper phenos was all about the citrus gas, super loud fruity funk with that rubbery backend. Those terps are worth the extra tuck work, trust me. A lazy canopy on a strain like that is a waste.
How are the two laggers looking now compared to the front plants? Curious if they caught up or if you're going into flip with uneven tops.
Corner placement tip in the previous reply is solid, but i'd also look at what you're doing after the net goes up. When i had lagging corners in my 3x3, the issue wasn't placement, it was that i was being too conservative with the dominant plants and not redirecting them hard enough early. By the time i noticed the dead zone, the lead branches had already locked in their direction and were a pain to move without stressing them.
What worked for me was basically ignoring the laggers for a bit and focusing entirely on pulling the front dominant colas across into those empty corners. You can cover a surprising amount of dead space that way without needing the weaker plants to do the heavy lifting. Sounds like you figured that out on your own anyway by week 4, but doing it in week 2 of stretch saves you a full week of waiting.
Curious how aggressive your defoliation was below the net at this stage. Going into flip with a really clean undercarriage is smart but losing too much too fast before flip can sometimes slow the fill on those trailing spots if the plant pumps the brakes a little.
The part about ignoring the laggers and pulling dominants across is real, that's exactly the move. My one pushback is on the defoliation timing concern -- in my experience a moderate clean-out a week or two before flip doesn't slow fill at all, and going into the dark with a cluttered undercarriage just creates more problems than it solves. I'd rather deal with a couple days of the plant catching its breath than fight larf and airflow issues for the whole back half of flower.
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