Strain and wattage.. Master Kush with 400HPS

Not sure where you heard that from, most first time growers will get much less than 0.5g per watt for their first grow.

The best I've ever seen is about 0.95g per watt from a 600w HPS, experienced growers should be getting at least 0.5g per watt if they're getting less their not maximising their potential and if they're getting more they're doing something right.

There's a much more sophisticated system for calculating 'grow room efficiency' that does factor in the flowering time as well as lighting wattage -

Grow Room Efficiency Calculator

You need figures for -

Total light wattage
Total flowering time in days
Light cycle hours
Total yield in grams

For example. A 600w HPS system used on a 12/12 hourly cycle in flowering for 60 days which produces 20ozs (560g) of dry bud.

1) Divide total lamp wattage by 1000 to get Kw/h.
600w/1000 = 0.6.

2) Multiply this figure by the hours of the light cycle.
0.6 x 12 = 7.2

3) Multiply this figure by the number of days in flowering.
7.2 x 60 = 432

4) Now divide the gram yield figure by the kilowatt figure.
560g / 432 = 1.29. That's 1.29g per K/w

Experienced growers should be shooting for a GE (Garden Efficiency) rating of 1.0, so anything over 1.0 is very good going.

very interesting. I hope I can get 0.5 gram per watt. this is my first time though.

But I think I am doing everything right im using GH nutes using hydro have 400 watt HPS/MH on 4 female plants, growing "Big Bud" strain (which is supposed to be a hi yeilder.

plants were about 18" by middle of week 4 when I began flowering now been flowering for about 2.5 weeks and my tallest plant about 40" - 44"

i hope I can get somewhere near 0.5 gram specially since im growing a strain that is "supposed" to have high yeilds.

Also just started using CO2 last night and will use it every night from now on and I will add the molassis in the 4th to 7th week of flowering.

I have my fans blowing, also my PPM meter is showing a steady 1000 - 1200 ppm at 75% nute strength which tells me from what mogie posted that my plants are drinking just about as much water as they are nutes since my level of PPM stays the same as the water goes down. which I guess means they have all the nutes they need right now.

also so far had zero problems and they look healthy.


you think I have a good chance to atleast make it babygrow, to like around 0.5 gram per watt. I sure hope i do as I spent a lot of money doing my set up and im also hoping that most beginners do not get to 0.5 gram per watt because they may be not as thorough since they may be young or just plain stupid .

what are your thoughts baby grow. its the most annoying question you guys get on here how many grams per what will i get


PS> I think your first grow must be the hardest one to wait for cuz I wanna shoot myself in the face cuz im so tired of waiting (joke) also I been smoking shwag trash weed all my life and still am and I cant wait to switch to smoking these guilded hairy white gurls.

Sure why not? The better equiped you are both knowledge and equipment wise the more likelihood you'll be successful in your first grow.

0g per watt is for people who manage to kill their plants! Anything much under 0.5g per watt is for anyone who underperformed in any part of their grow or made several big mistakes on the way. 0.5g a watt should be obtainable by anyone who doesn't fuck up big time in any part of the grow and doesn't do anything stupid. 0.5g and up is for people who really know what theyre doing and make no or very few minor mistakes in their grow. 1g per watt is for seriously good growers who know their shit bigtime. Of course there's plenty of things that can skew those figures up or down and that's basically the variety and yield of the plant and the sheer size and lighting of the grow area. There may be pretty experienced growers who are limited in budget space and resources who get less than those yields and inexperienced growers who don't make any major mistakes but basically get a very high yielding plant because it just happens to be a high yielding variety grown in high light conditions. These are just based on my own opinion and I'm sure others will have theirs.

Well I can agree on that - the wait for your first crop to harvest is excrutiatingly slow, specially if you haven't had any weed for pretty much the whole grow! Very painful wait indeed. And yeah, there's the quality aspect as well - home grown shit is very likely to be far far better than the rough handled and processed commercial crap you get off the streets unless you dried and cured it badly or it's some of the very best commercial stuff. As soon as you get into flowering and know which are female and which aren't and the buds start to show it does speed up somewhat as each day you see more and more bud sites develop and more and more pistils popping up. Then the pistils start browning the buds start fattening up and you're then only weeks away! And boy is the wait worth it.

Don't know... I change my system quite a lot. growing in a dwc setup at the moment and even on the next crop I'm going to be improving it by putting them in individual buckets and larger pots.

In soil I usually averaged about an oz per plant (although this is a special soil mix with perlite, worm castings etc). Also these were always in 2 gallon buckets.

I've recently moved into hydro which I didn't like and moved straight into DWC. I kept the hydro's going in a corner, with virtually no light, feeding from the top about once a week. hardly anything to these. Maybe 4 or 5 g's a plant lol. Harvesting them tomorrow.

The DWC's are a different story, I've taken care of these and they will give me at least 2oz per plant despite the very small pot size. I have 2x 3 plants sharing 18litres of water. My system is such that soon I will be harvesting a crop every 4-5 weeks.

yea this is true. Just a few weeks ago I was just happy to see that all my seeds germed. now im all up in thier grill tellin'em to give me 0.5 grams per watt lol

also I had 4 out of 6 be female so that wasnt bad. also I took clones at 2 weeks of flower. Not sure how thats gonna go. didnt use any rooting gel. also I heard Big Bud Strain is harder to clone. and i took them at flower.

so far they dont look like the clones are dieing and its been maybe 3 - 5 days. I guess we will see

I have 4 plants and took clones from the 2 that were the largest. Is this a good policy. Bigger = better? when choosing a plant to clone?

When choosing a plant to clone look for the shortest, widest healthiest female. A good mother plant will stand out above the rest. You'll only need to look at her and you shouldn't be mistaken. Where the other plants may have suffered a little over nuting and she is untouched... she will stand out.

if you get a gram per watt you are doin damn fine!

My first harvest I got between .15 and .2 grams/watt. It is between those two numbers because i started flowering with 400 watts and then added 400 more halfway through flowering.

I used the twisted energy saver lights in a small stereo box. Two of them at 32 or 33 watts each. I obtained about 42 grams of pretty potent bud however it was quite airy.
I used a wick setup with equal parts vermeculite, perlite, and potting soil. I used a small fan to exhaust the heat generated in the small area.
I know its not huge rewards but for 66 watts an hour plus the fan "which i did not calculate the electrical use" but not a bad reward for 13 weeks of time. However the first 3 or four weeks i just gathered clones. I put my lights on 24/0 for a week to get my clones healthy. Starting with roughly 4 inch clones the one week only gave me an additional inch or two.
I then went to flowering which took about 9 weeks to reach perfection. Covered in crystals and smelled very skunky. Plants finished at between 12 and 18 inches tall.
This method doesnt deliver huge quantity or even close to 1 gram per watt but its not to bad and requires very little maintenance. Had some algae issues with the nutrient container but was taken care of quickly when covered so it stayed dark.
Only had to flush soil once every 3 weeks or so. Then right back to nutes. I used peters 20-20-20 for veg and peters super bloom 10-50-20 or something close to that. i dont have the nute container with me but you get the idea.
Went straight water for the last 5 days and i didnt taste much chemical at all.
I suggest this as a way for a first time grower. Its a cheap set up and delivers results. I can only imagine what i would have been able to accomplish if I'd had hps lights. This allows you a little bit of leeway and should deliver good results.