Tucking is a training method in which a leaf that is shading a bud site is folded behind a stem, slid under a neighbouring leaf, or pushed beneath a trellis net, instead of being cut off. In SCROG, tucking also means pulling growing tips back under the screen so they spread sideways.
In practice
Tuck daily while plants are in late veg and the stretch; leaves are pliable and stay where they are put once they reorient to the light. Large fan leaves can be tucked under the stem of the leaf next to them. The leaf keeps photosynthesising, the bud underneath gets light, and nothing needs to heal.
Myth check
House position: "tuck, don't pluck" is GenetixBay's standard advice. Maximise leaf surface area, like a solar farm for the buds, and prefer tucking and training over stripping. Whether heavy defoliation helps or hurts is an open question for Bay Trials; tucking gives the light benefit without the gamble. Evidence: Grower practice, house-endorsed. See defoliation and lollipopping.
Don't confuse with
- Defoliation: removes leaves; tucking only moves them.
- LST: bends stems; tucking usually refers to leaves and tips.
A trellis is a net, mesh or frame that supports plants and spreads their branches, either as a SCROG screen or as support for heavy colas in flower.SCROG (screen of green) trains a few plants under a horizontal net, tucking shoots so the canopy forms a flat, evenly lit layer of many tops.The zone of dividing cells at the very tip of a shoot (or root) that produces new leaves, nodes and stem; removing it is what topping does.The stretch is the rapid increase in height in the first two to three weeks after switching to flower, when many cultivars grow 1.5 to 3 times taller.A large palmate cannabis leaf with several long leaflets on a long petiole; fan leaves do most of the plant's photosynthesis and carry few trichomes.Schwazzing is an aggressive defoliation method that strips almost all fan leaves on day 1 and again around day 21 of flower.Bay Trials are GenetixBay's member-run controlled grow experiments that test growing claims side by side and publish the results openly.Defoliation is removing fan leaves from a plant to open the canopy to light and air; GenetixBay's house view is to tuck leaves rather than strip them.LST (low-stress training) bends and ties stems so the plant grows wide and flat, exposing more bud sites to light without cutting or breaking tissue.The canopy is the top layer of foliage and buds across a grow, the surface that intercepts most of the light and where yield is mostly made.
