Our editors pick the products and services we write about. When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Learn more.
Essential Guide to Sea of Green Method
In This Article
Why You Can Trust American Marijuana
What is Sea of Green Method?
Sea of Green Step-by-Step Setup
Step 1: Develop Your Seedlings
Step 2: Potting Plants
Step 3: Lighting During the Vegetative Stage
Step 4: Lighting During the Flower Stage
Sea of Green Works Best with Clones
Sea of Green Method FAQs
Why You Can Trust American Marijuana
American Marijuana has been a trusted cannabis site since 2014, with a team of experts in the field working to ensure you’re only receiving premium quality information.
What is Sea of Green Method?
The sea of green (SOG) method is the technique of growing a large number of small plants at once rather than a small number of large plants.
In order to accomplish this, cultivators place plants directly next to one another, in a cluster, during the early flowering phase. The concept behind this is simple, young plants that grow in this method are more likely to grow to about half their size while still providing healthy and productive yields.
In turn, smaller plants take less time, space, and resources, to reach the bud we all grow marijuana for.
Admittedly, this technique does require more of a watchful eye from the grower. You’ll need to ensure all plants are receiving the perfect nutrition, lighting source, and overall care. If perfected, the SOG method is bound to provide you with more cannabis at lower costs.
These higher yields aren’t coming directly from a single plant in and of itself. In other words, it’s only natural a 10-foot cannabis plant will provide more buds than those produced in the smaller SOG output.
However, if you’re able to grow more plants at once, then you’re likely going find you’re also obtaining higher yields.
Sea of Green Step-by-Step Setup
If you’re wondering how to grow marijuana under the sea of green method, it only requires a few simple steps:
Step 1: Develop Your Seedlings
You can manage this step in two ways:
1.) The most common is by germinating your cannabis seeds.
2.) The less common (but more efficient) way is by cutting other plants to create clones. This method is considered more efficient because it allows you to ensure all plants are from the same cultivator and therefore, will grow the same way.
Step 2: Potting Plants
Once seeds are germinated or cloned, you’ll want to place them in 7″ x 12″ pots. While you can manage the sea of green method through other pot sizes, these measurements are ideal for optimal yield.
From there, you’ll need to arrange the plants – preferably placing 1 to 2 pots per square foot. You’ll want to be careful when doing this as you don’t want your plants to be too close together.
If you do place plants too close together, they’ll end up competing for light. In turn, you’ll be left with a mix of highly and lowly developed plants. In order to minimize stress, it’s best to keep them within these measurements.
Step 3: Lighting During the Vegetative Stage
When plants enter the vegetative stage, most growers opt for each plant to receive 18/24 light until they reach about 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 cm) in height.
This stage lasts anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks. Though, some growers prefer adding an extra week or two to further bud yield.
Step 4: Lighting During the Flower Stage
Once a plant exits the vegetative stage, it enters the flowering stage. For this stage, 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness are ideal. This shift in light and darkness forces cannabis to refocus energies into a single cola, offering higher-quality buds.
During this phase, you’ll want to keep light spread out evenly. Furthermore, it’s important to keep light far enough away from plants to prevent hotspots from appearing.
Sea of Green Works Best with Clones
In Step 1 of our sea of green step-by-step guide, we discussed that clones are more optimal for this method than germinated seeds. The primary reason for this is clones will ensure you’re receiving a quality of plant you expect and allow you to avoid sorting out male plants.
However, to top this off, clone plants also allow for the fastest growth cycle. Since a clone is already furthered along in development, it matures quicker than that of a plant starting from seed.
Still, if you’re a newcomer to growing cannabis, we don’t recommend cloning right off the bat. In order to successfully produce clones, you must have intimate knowledge of the cultivator and specific resource requirements (i.e. lighting, soil, pH levels, etc.) in order to garner the best yields.
Looking for more information on topping cannabis plants? Check out our guide!
Sea of Green Method FAQs
7″ x 12″ pots are the most suitable for the sea of green technique.
While you can technically have a sea of green cultivation outdoors, this method is much more ideal for indoor operations as it allows you to customize the environment (namely, lighting).
Each square foot should have no more than 1 to 2 plants. This will ensure you’re keeping plants in low-stress conditions (or, you’re ensuring they won’t compete for sunlight).
In This Article
