SOG (Sea of Green)

Sea of Green (SOG) is a high-density cultivation strategy in which many small plants — typically 9–25 per m² — are transitioned to a 12/12 photoperiod after only a brief vegetative stage (7–21 days), producing a shallow canopy dominated by a single dominant cola per plant. The approach exploits short plant stature and rapid turnover (harvest cycles of ~8–10 weeks from clone to cut) rather than intensive training to maximize grams per square meter per year. SOG was developed in the Netherlands in the 1980s by Dutch commercial cultivators working under restrictive plant-count limits and is documented as one of the foundational indoor methodologies in the early European cannabis horticulture literature (Clarke & Merlin 2013; Zheng 2021). Clonal uniformity and compact indica-dominant genotypes are preferred. Etymology: calque from "Screen of Green"; Dutch cannabis cultivation, 1980s. Synonyms/slang: sea-of-green, SoG. → See also: SCROG, Indoor, Pruning, Yield (Industry).