best style of grow?? personal choice and opinions encouraged

Hows everybody doing today?! Great?? thats fan-fuckin-tastic.... very glad to hear...

so you read the thread question... what do you think?? i'm very interested in this because i'm about 1/2 way through flowering and am getting close to expanding my garden and am not sure what to do..

heres a little of my personal story... my flowering room will be 7x9... will be using 4 - 1000w hps lamps... the will be exhausted well plus i have an AC in the room with it so heat shouldnt be a big deal... anyways.. i want to make sure the every inch of my plants gets plenty of light... even the outside of the ones on the perimeter.. just no "dark" spots in the room..

ANYWAYS...

im not sure wether to grow 18 or so 4-5 foot tall plants or to grow about 40 or so smaller plants... ill be using an ebb and grow system.. it comes with 2 gallon pots... so cant use smaller pots to fit more in the room.. so id end up with like 40 - 2 foot tall plants... im just not sure which way to go...

id love to hear about your set up/experience/advice/opinion...

i would go fewer but bigger mainly for the reason if you got caught that is slightly more believable as personal use you would end up with around the same as smaller plants obv dont get as much as bigger ones.

i would use the same mixture of training that i am using now. check out my growlog in my sig.

i subscribed to your thread reef.. im interested in following your grow.. i have a few questions about LST/HST trainning...

1) I know LST trainning is prefered over HST trainning, but in the end are there differences in yield between the two styles? has anyone ever done a comparison on the same strain?

2) Does HST trainning (cropping, super cropping, pinching, topping, FIMmming, ect) cause enough stress to kill the plant? out of those techniques which one gets the best results? which has the longest/shortest recoup time?

3) Out of the different types of LST trainning (tieing down, sog, scrog, and the tech. known as LST) which gets the best results? are there any set backs/draw backs to these styles?

different setups will work better for different styles... the LST tech. works better with larger pots due to the fact you have more pot to wrap it around... the 2 gallon pots in my setup wont have a large diameter.. they are definatly taller then wide.. so im not sure if the LST tech would maximize my crop?? i suppose i could have more pots tho...

im definatly a natural growth guy.. i've never played around with any lst/hst techniques... i trim the plant only if the part im cutting off is dead.. im an old fashion believer in getting the best yield by lettin the plant do its thing... but that is slowly starting to become a myth from the sound of it anymroe...

ok this is the format that i usually use with wonderful results, i wait until 4 real 3 leafs open usually about 4 days, then top above and twist and bend below, there is usually about 5 day recop time. yes it take along time but the result will amaze you.

I'd go with the 40 plants option, as it will be quicker to grow and will produce the same or more yield.

do you know approximately how much more you yield this way verse not?? i might just run an experiment next grow.. do like 1/2 and 1/2... see what the results are.... itll be about 4 months before i know the results tho... maybe a little longer... but i think this is going to be an experiment for my next grow...

simpsonsampson420 said:

do you know approximately how much more you yield this way verse not?? i might just run an experiment next grow.. do like 1/2 and 1/2... see what the results are.... itll be about 4 months before i know the results tho... maybe a little longer... but i think this is going to be an experiment for my next grow...

Click to expand...

oh do not do anything while in flower, ONLY in veg.

I started out with one 1000w Hps in a 6.5 x 6.5 room stuffing as many 2-3gal. pots in as possible and the switch was done when they were 12" or less so they would stay small. This worked but the girls ended up being small with some medium nugs and alot of small stuff. I was also using more soil, pots, ect. with this way so cost over time was higher. I recently added a 600w HPS, intake and exhaust fans, and went with longer veg. time so they would be 24" or more when switched. I started thinking bigger with lower numbers and saved myself work, time, supplies, and money. Now most all nugs are nice, fat, juicy, and alot more top colas!! I use FIM, and tie them out and down a little so they get light down below! So, long story to a close, my oppinion is Lower #'s, Bigger Girls = Bigger Better Buds !!!

ive done fim,lst and toping and for me the simple topping wins them all for yeild in my grows,,

what u guys fink?

I've never run a big grow like you are working on-- I limit it to 6-9 plants in flowering-- so your strategy will likely differ quite a bit from mine.

I try to keep the plants as short as possible with the lights as close as possible. My thinking is that since there is something like an exponential decrease in light intensity over the distance the light travels, the best way to maximize light resources is to have a single canopy at the level where the light is as close as possible without burning the plants.

I don't think there is any single best way to achieve this. It depends on the plants. Some plants grow bushy, with lots of branching and side growth. As a general rule, these plants get topped or fimmed multiple times (which I think is one type of "supercropping"). Some plants grow long and viney. These plants get tied down to limit their vertical size and expose side growth to maximum light (which I guess is LST). Also, some plants respond well to topping, whereas others take a week or so to recover before new growth starts back up again-- which might or might not matter depending on how much veg. room you have or how much time you want to veg. You have to get to know the strain(s) you are working with and discover the best solution for your purposes.

I have never done SOG or SCROG.

yo SS420, ive been thinking the same question as you but on a smaller scale.... many small vs few large, for me few large won out but then i started thinking about maximising the few small instead of xmas tree style plants, try giving them a bit of supercropping to spread em out and rock several colas no lower middies. might be a bit labour intensive with your size grow but if youve got the time the results speak for themselves!!

check out this guys journal he knows his shit just look at the colas!

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/181208-mammaths-stealth-cabinet-grow-journals.html

oh i know not to do anything during the flower cycle bro... i was talking about 4 months by the time this batch gets done flowering and my next batch can veg and flower... right now i only run one room for veg/flower with a seperate clone/mother room... ill be adding my lights for the flower side so i can have a rotating harvest... i have it figured to where ill get a harvest every 60 days... my biggest concern is just maximizing the yield each time, hence the thread...

ive always thought that larger plants mean larger yields... obviously you can get quicker results with SOG style grows... but knowing ill harvest every 60 days, or at least having already assumed thats the quickest harvest ill get, i wonder if topping and tieing down would be the best for my situation... i want the 4 - 1000 hps's for penetration... so i can grow my girls out larger... or at least that was the original plan... so lets say i grew 15 plants that were 4 or 5 feet tall, the 1000's make sense... but would i yield more if i grew, lets say 20 2.3-3 ft plants and used 600's per harvest?? i know the 1000's would produce bigger buds, but do you think the few extra plants in the room would add more overall weight to the grow?? or do you think it would be about even in the end??

also as i stated before my room is 7x9.. its 7 feet high tho... i'd say that i could safely have a canopy top around 5 feet tall (when all growing is done.. so going into flowering the plants would be around 2.5 ft tall)... how many girls would you put in a room that size if you were going to grow fewer but bigger plants?? how tall would you veg and how many would you grow if you were gonna grow smaller but more?? remember the 7x9 room is just for flowering.. i have a sperate 5x7 veg room...

i think strain is going to play a big part in this, id go with less and supercrop them, spread em out and tbh 600's or 1000s is up to you n how much juice you want to pay for!

i agree with you CPAC in that true maximizing of growth can only be obtained with great knowledge of the strain and plants you yourself grow... i am sorta asking this also because im gonna order some seeds to start when i switch to hydro... so im trying to decide wether or not i was a prodominatly indica or sativa strain.... or just a good mix of the two... which also brings on some other questions

whats your favorite strain and do you prefer indica/sativa dominance??

electricity is cheap around where i live.. about 4 cents kw/hr... so depending on what i get from here and decide to go with the power consumption isnt a big play into it at all...

oh and the lights will be VERY VERY VERY well exhausted so heat shouldnt be an issue.. i should be able to keep them about 1 foot from the canopy... i hope at least.. with AC, fans, and each light individually being exhausted out of the room i should be able to reach that mark...

sorry.. i know my posts are all over the place... just responding to stuff as i read it or remember i read it... lol

simpsonsampson420 said:

also as i stated before my room is 7x9.. its 7 feet high tho... i'd say that i could safely have a canopy top around 5 feet tall (when all growing is done.. so going into flowering the plants would be around 2.5 ft tall)... how many girls would you put in a room that size if you were going to grow fewer but bigger plants?? how tall would you veg and how many would you grow if you were gonna grow smaller but more?? remember the 7x9 room is just for flowering.. i have a sperate 5x7 veg room...

Click to expand...

7 x 9 is roughly 2m by 2m in my tent i have 4 and thats half that size id say no more than 10

its actually 2.3x3m.. but your saying your tent is 1x1m right DON GIN?? assuming that is 1mx1m, its 9 sqft right?? 1x1m = approx. 3ftx3ft = approx 9 sq.ft. in the end... so you have 4 plants in your space which means each plant gets 2.25 sq.ft. of growing space... i have 63 sq.ft. total... which is 7x the sq.ft as yours.. 7x the space times 4 plants (your setup) = 28 plants.. which would still be the same square footage of grow area per plant as your tent has... if i grew 10 plants with 63 sq.ft. thats 6.3 sq.ft. of growing space per plant or almost a 1mx1m space for each plant... ok... so now that i have the math figured out.. may i ask how large your plants get?? and what strain you grow??

im wanting to try to estimate the final overall size of plants if they are given that much space to grow...