Most efficent method of growing

I need some advice from my fellow growers.

After our last test grow, we are going to going to expand to the whole space, which means to committing to a "style" of growing.

Here is our current grow journal, so that you can see how we are doing things now:

https://www.rollitup.org/aerogardeners/516473-mir-aero-system-v-2-a-2.html

We are currently doing SCROG, but have also been interested in the type of grow, where you go into flower very quickly and work with many more plants. With that style you end up with something like this:



Obviously we spend a ton of resources to build our system, so how many holes we cut and how many cross member we install, makes a big difference.

From a production standpoint, which method do you think is more efficient? SCROG, with more veg and less plants, or the straight lollipop method?? I like SCROG a lot, but am having a hard time justifying 40 days of veg.

The person who is doing the grow in the above picture "scalped" the plants at 30 days into flower. He has said that the scalping causes the plants to stress and he gets a pause in the progress of plant growth.


I would love some opinions on this subject.

I would think that SCROG on a larger scale would be extremely innefficient because of all of the space you would need. That picture above is more like SOG which I think is one of the most efficient horizontal lighting setups for large scale grows.

I recommend 12" to 18" tomato cages. You can still move your plants around, yet get most of the same benefits as a SCROG. The thin green ones though, they sell them in the garden area at Home Depot, not the big heavy metal ones. They make things very neat and simple for me. With the 12" ones you can keep plants in 3-5 gal posts and keep 12 plants under a 1000w light and they keep it in a 4'x4' for you.

i love sog done right you can get a harvest about every month, i veg for a weekish depending on roots an upward growth rate. but i use like 24 plants in a 3x3 tray lollipoping gradualy over like the first month then let them do there thing, i can just see when to stop cutting. u dont go up far enough gets to branch to far up u loose bud, an doing to much to the plant will stress them out for you. hope this helps have a growtastic day