Upside Down Red Diesel SCROG Journal

:holysheep:
Hi all,
So after being told it was impossible to grow a plant upside down I immediately tried it...I hate being told I can't do something don't you?
In answering someone else's post I mentioned how much I hate reflectors and think they are a waste of money. I was asked to prove it, so here I am!
For this journal I am going to be using two Barney's Farm Red Diesel plants. These two plants were part of a group of 3 that were grown from seed and rejected as potential mothers for the garden. There is nothing wrong with them, the third was just much more hardy and since it has already been sexed as female, I do not wish to continue with these two. They were going to be destroyed but I decided to do this journal instead. Unfortunately since these two plants came from seed I am unaware of the *** yet. Therefore hopefully at least one of the two will end up female and the journal can continue through the entire growth cycle.
My other hope with this journal was to take two clones that were near identical in their growth, and do an upside down SCROG and a right side up SCROG in order to compare yield, but that will have to wait for another day.
Before we go any further I just want to mention two safety precautions I took for this experiment. First, I never ever ever ever hang a plant directly over my lights (cool tubes with reflector removed so light can exit the tube a full 360 degrees). You never want to have moisture drip on a running bulb, you are just asking to kill yourself. When I water the hanging plants I remove them completely from the garden, water them, and allow all excess moisture to drain before returning the hanging planter, this is typically done right before the lights turn on. Secondly, all of the Topsy Turvy planters are hung and secured to the ceiling with 40 lb test hooks and chains even though filled with dirt and a fully mature plant the weight will not exceed 20 lbs. The last this I want is a plant crashing down on other plants below....other than it crashing down on the light.

Perhaps you are wondering why we are doing this in a SCROG. Well the answer is simple. Take a marijuana plant and hang it upside down for an hour, come back and all the leaves are lying pointing straight toward the ground, this is because of the way the plant has evolved, to grow against gravity. They wll also try to turn themselves over. Using a SCROG allows us to assist the Fan leaves in staying open toward the light. Since no plant is ever hung directly above the light the SCROG screen will be tilted toward the light field. It hangs 7 inches below the planter on one side and 13 on the other so that it slopes. The screen that I am using here is 15"x16" and has rectangular holes that are 2"x3" (the screen pictured is slightly different, but it is not the one I am using although it is the same material).
I have selected Barney's farm Red Diesel for this journal because #1 I like it...a lot. #2 It is a smaller plant, very Sativa dominant with smaller fan leaves that do not branch very far from the stem. And since we are growing upside down we want to avoid plants that have a lot of potential to stretch. Growing upside down might exaggerate stretch even more, but this is not something I am sure of.

For those of you that are interested in why I hate reflectors, please feel free to read the following, if you are just interested in the journal please feel free to skip to the next post:
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I have felt that reflectors are a big waste of money when I learned how much light they reflect versus Mylar. Really all a hood and reflector is good for is "catching" light, and "throwing" it in one direction. This would work great outside, but inside it does not really take advatage of man-made lights. Why? Because man-made light is not effective over distance. Light loses power by a factor of 4 as distance doubles, meaning a plant 1 foot from a light receives 4 times as much light as a plant 2 feet away. So picture your light (or look at it), all of the light it produces is being "caught", and "thrown" down. So your bulb, which emits lights in all directions, is only illuminating a flat surface below it, this is horribly innefficient, hence the invention of systems such as the colleseium and why some are designing lights that hang vertically down from reflectors so that plants can be placed AROUND the lights. In order to get more plants under your light and hood/reflector, you must keep RAISING your light, therefore reducing the power and lumens it is giving to each plant. The desire to do an upside down SCROG around cool tubes with plants also growing on the floor is an attempt to take advantage of light emitting in all directions from the bulb. To illustrate my point consider this... how many plants can you fit under a light and have them all 1 foot from your light???? You certainly can not light more than a 3 or 4 square foot area on the flat ground with a conventional light and hood only 1 foot from the ground. However, a ball with a 1 foot radius has a surface area of over 12 feet, meaning that if you work in a 3 dimensional garden you can get much more plant surface near your lights.

Ok so here are our two plants that are hopefully female. I still need to trim off the undergrowth as well on both of them, these pics were taken right before I took the undergrowth for clones just in case one of them happens to be a great plant. Again, they were grown from seed and rejected as potential mothers so I am still unsure of their ***. I was going to trash them but decided to do this journal instead. They were in pretty neglected shape so I spent a few days bringing them back. They are both 6 weeks old and were grown in DWC under a 100 watt CFL specifically for small plants, hence the tight inter-nodal spacing. Today I trimmed them up, took a few of the lower branches for clones, transferred them from DWC to soil, and went ahead and placed them in the flower room.
My plan is to leave them in flower for a few days in their pots before transferring them to the upside down planters in order to minimize stress.

As you can tell they have been neglected But with a little TLC they should be fine.

This should be interesting

Good luck :aok:

eace:

So I have given them 5 days in the flower room to recover from the transfer and the trimming, and today they are going into the planters. Give me a bit and I will post some pics. The stretch from the the onset of flower and the "trim job" (sounds dirty doesn't it, like someone performing a *** act on a plant?) for the SCROG has set in so I know the transfer from their neglected DWC in the corner of my mother cabinet to the soil couldn't have stressed them out too much.

Everyone please feel free to comment

gonna sit in on this one if you don't mind.

This looks interesting, I'm in.

So, I got delayed and gave the plants 5 days in the flower room before making the move upside down, and unfortunately one of two hopefuls has already shown balls! I was shocked to already see them after such a short time but there they were, so our attempt is down to one. Anyway here is a pic of....her?

I will try and get another shot up in a bit when the lights turn on, and if this one shows male too I have another I can throw up there and continue the journal.

The cool thing about these planters is that they fit perfectly over the pots I had been using so I do not have to uproot the plant and move it to the planter, I can just slide the planter over the pot, flip it upside down, and presto. The second pic was taken lying on my back underneath (you can just make out the cool tube in the top left), the 3rd pick is the plant hanging (not exactly above) the light with the ventilation system in the background and the top beginning it's weave through the scrog.

So the plant has been upside down for 24 hours. It seems to be doing well in it's new home. One of the first problems I am going to have to deal with is a pot leaf that is turned upside down will right itself according to gravity, not where the light is coming from. This is why I went into this project with a SCROG in mind and this can be seen after only 24 hours of hanging upside down. After all, we are fighting against millions of years of evolution here. If you look at the pics closely you will notice that the leaves not held in place by the SCROG are turning back upwards, facing away from the light source.

I am happy to report that the grow tip is hanging further beneath the SCROG after only 24 hours so apparently she is still chugging along.

:ciao: okay I like it..and im going to fallow along..good luck..

right on cant wait to watch her grow

Subscribe me please

pulling up a chair

Funny as hell. Pullen up a chair.

So it has been two days upside down, the plant is still growing, you can tell from the pic the plant tip is further below the screen and that the leaves are expanding. Another day or two and the tip will be long enough to start weaving back through the screen.
So far so good! Our plant is obviously stretching and growing upside down.
The leaves not held in place by the SCROG were again turned over today when the lights came on. I am quickly realizing that this method of growing would not be economical in a large scale situation because each plant will need tweeking daily.

But hey, the plant is growing still.

PS- I know it looks like there are two plants hanging in the pic but that is just the reflection of the one on the mylar.

something new. rollin a fatty and pullin up an easy chair.

Any updates? Hows she looking after a few more days?

still growing strong, I will put up a pic in a bit when the lights turn on, I also need to go over her closely and see if I can *** her yet (she was a seed plant).

So our specimen has been upside down for 6 days straight now in the flower room and been flowering for 11 days total. I am still not able to tell *** yet but our plant is still coming along. I have neglected the SCROG weaving figuring a few pics showing it still growing and stretching would be a lot more easily done without all the greenery woven up.
In this pic I held a black towel up behind the planter to block the light reflecting off the mylar, it is a lot easier to notice the growth with the black towel there since it has been placed upside down. There are more fan leaves, the tip is much further below the screen, and I am even getting new growth coming out from the main stem that I had pruned completely back. Still, any growth not held down by the screen still turns right-side up so that the undersides of the leaves are facing the light.

Well this alone proves that a marijuana plant CAN at least survive upside upside down...hopefully the experiement proves it can actualy yield something as well, but I have no doubts at this point that the plant will live all the way through the life cycle. It may produce 2 grams of utter crap, or it may produce almost as well as a plant on the ground, but either way I am confident I can grow it to maturity....time to get in there and start weaving!!!!


(SORRY PIC IS OUT OF FOCUS A BIT)

I dont think anyone doubts you can manipulate a plant to grow upside down. Just that its a lot of work manipulating a stimulus just to make it happen.

plants contain a chemical which makes them receptive to gravity. Roots will always grow downwards due to gravitropism. and the leaves of the plant, will always grow the opposite of the roots.

but theres also phototropism, so it may overcome the leaves reaction to the certain chemical detection of gravity, and make the leaves move towards the light source. I'm not sure of the "strength" of reaction to gravity VS light in leaves. I would assume that like I said, phototropism would take lead in fan leaves, and gravitropism in the roots. Roots also detect phototropism from what I remember though.

seems to me, and this is just speculation, making the plant work much harder to get its essentials would just draw away from THC production.

cool experiment either way though. keep in mind all of what I said is reference to an old bio II class and some reasoning. I could be way off base. lol.

hypcodiihop said:

I dont think anyone doubts you can manipulate a plant to grow upside down. Just that its a lot of work manipulating a stimulus just to make it happen.

plants contain a chemical which makes them receptive to gravity. Roots will always grow downwards due to gravitropism. and the leaves of the plant, will always grow the opposite of the roots.

but theres also phototropism, so it may overcome the leaves reaction to the certain chemical detection of gravity, and make the leaves move towards the light source. I'm not sure of the "strength" of reaction to gravity VS light in leaves. I would assume that like I said, phototropism would take lead in fan leaves, and gravitropism in the roots. Roots also detect phototropism from what I remember though.

seems to me, and this is just speculation, making the plant work much harder to get its essentials would just draw away from THC production.

cool experiment either way though. keep in mind all of what I said is reference to an old bio II class and some reasoning. I could be way off base. lol.

Click to expand...

In order to at least address the root issue I used plants that were already established in pots with developed root systems. Then I slipped the covers over the pots and flipped everything upside down. This way I was not just putting the plant in the planter with all of the roots sitting in the bottom. That is what most people assume about this experiment, that I am asking the roots to grow UP...I am not. This way the roots have developed in their first pot down to the bottom of the pot. When this rootball is turned upside down in the planter, the roots that were in the bottom of the pot are now at the top of the planter and can grow downward back toward the bottom of the topsy turvy bag. Werther or not the plant is working harder for it's nutrients I am not sure...don't see why it would be, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me either if that was the case.
Regardless, the plant is surviving upside down. The roots in the planter upside down are absorbing nutrients and contributing to the growth below. In a smaller grow space anything produced in these is simply bonus weed. So even if I get 2 grams it was 2 grams I didn't have and two grams that could not have been grown in an already full garden below the lights. I'm not expecting to grow anything that will end up featured in High Times, but if I can get more grams per watt then that is more :bong: for me!!!!!!