Can 700 watts of LED strips grow trees???

So I am limited to 6 plants in order to stay on the misdemeanor side of felony where I live and have built some 2' x 4' LED strip light setups. Currently my grow area is 4' x 4' but can easily be expanded to 4' x 6'. Right now I have my 6 plants vegging in a 2' x 4' section and have 1 2x4 led over it at around 210 watts. Each of these light fixtures can produce 360 watts after the power supply, or around 420 watts at the wall each. As of right now, I have 2 lights built with everything to build 2 more on hand, so 720 (840 at the wall) watts ready to go and 1420 (1680 at the wall) potentially available.

My goal here is a huge, quality yield growing 6 plants under my LEDs. So my question is how do I maximize my yield with what I have on hand? My plants are 3 platinum blue dreams and 3 animal cookies. The plants are being heavily trained into manifold/mainlines now with 8-12 colas each. Should I veg longer and double the number of colas? Sorry, I don't have any pics yet to show what's going on. I am just looking for direction on how to proceed. I am not in a huge rush and can veg a while but quicker is always better (that's what I tell my wife!).

Any advice is greatly appreciated!!!!

More information about the grow:
Plants are in 5 gallon pots and will be transplanted into 7 gallon smart pots when they arrive Friday.
This is a soil grow in Happy Frog soil mixed 2:1 with perlite.
Using Fox Farms liquid trio and dry trio. Last grow the Cha Ching totally annihilated my Animal Cookie plant, as in a total loss on that plant.
Being watered with RO water ph'd as needed to around 6.5.

More info about your lights. What kind of LED strips are you using and/or do you have links to data sheets?

The strips are Samsung 22" strips from Acuity light fixtures. Each strip has 56 LEDS, are ~24 volts, 4000K color, and can do 1-ish amp each. I expect the strips to be around 150 lumens/watt or more. Each of my 2x4 lights have 15 strips. They are each being driven off a 24v 15 amp power supply thats around 86% efficient capable of 18 amps for short periods of time. I have a volt/amp/watt display wired in so I can monitor actual output and a kill-a-watt to monitor wall watts.

My light is very similar to this,
https://www.rollitup.org/t/new-diy-led-light.943103/

just my strips are on the 2' runs instead of the 4' runs like he has, and I have 15 strips and while he has 10.

Hi BGT!
If you've plans to grow taller plants using LED strips have a closer look to this thread:

https://www.rollitup.org/t/sun-cloak-multi-strain.929661/

The SunCloak is also made from strips/mid-power LED's but put the light out in both directions, vertically and horizontally.
The vertical blades are made to hung between the plants and the whole unit to create a light-dome above the whole plant. And like you can see in the mentioned thread @Hybridway's plants seems to like it a lot.
At first sight it does not look very flexible, but in fact it is one of the best systems currently on the market

Here's 600w of strips. Since this thread they have been modified & upgraded w/ a new design.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/my-amare-hydroponics-hut-suncloak-grow.916789/
Currently running this system @ about 1500w.
Strips can grow.

Thanks, Hybrid. I have been reading your grow threads and you are producing some great bud! Honestly, I am now trying to determine if side lighting is a gimmick or not. After all, you do have 1500 watts, so I would think you would be producing a big yield with that many watts whether they are side lit or all overhead lighting, if you understand what I'm getting at. Does the side lighting add more than just adding those extra lights to the overhead? I do have a lot of strips I can use for side lighting if that would be better than overhead.

Im all for sidelighting myself. Love the concept on strips hanging. Even if you used the flex strip LEDs that can basicly touch the plants.

Im really stuck between TCI strips, or cobs right now.

I use 3 100w chilledgrowlights for bloom and 200w GrowGreen lights for veg and I grow past the lights, 6' max in tent. both have Samsung LM5661C diodes run at optimum levels of 150-165mA with a drive current of 1050mA per board.

VegasWinner said:

I use 3 100w chilledgrowlights for bloom and 200w GrowGreen lights for veg and I grow past the lights, 6' max in tent. both have Samsung LM5661C diodes run at optimum levels of 150-165mA with a drive current of 1050mA per board.

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How much did you yield per plant? How much yield with your 300 watt flowering light?

My strips are around 800 mA when I'm pushing 300 watts in each 2x4 area so I am hopeful they are producing in excess of 150 lumen/watt.

Big Green Thumb said:

Thanks, Hybrid. I have been reading your grow threads and you are producing some great bud!

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a large portion of that is certainly how clean everything is and the time he puts into training. inspiring for sure

You guys talked me into trying some side lighting. I just ordered 45 LED strips that are 46" long and will run them horizontally around the perimeter of my 4' x 4' grow area. I am thinking 4 per side (running horizontally) about 4-6" apart and then possibly some running through the middle of the grow area splitting it up into 2- 2' x 4' areas. There will be 3 plants in 7 gallon smart pots in each of the 2' x 4' areas. Hopefully that makes sense to you guys. Wish me luck. If I am thinking correctly, I will be using 24 of the 46" strips plus 30 of the 2' strips overhead. The 3 power supplies I have are capable of around 360 watts each continuously, but if I upgrade them or buy more of them I think I could possibly double the amount of watts to 2k or more total. Zoiks! The grow area isn't sealed well as of now, but it probably needs to be so I can run CO2 in there too with this much light. Even 1000 watts of LED seems like over kill in a 4x4. The power supplies are adjustable so I can turn down the juice if I need to.

Please offer any suggestions if you have them.

Big Green Thumb said:

You guys talked me into trying some side lighting. I just ordered 45 LED strips that are 46" long and will run them horizontally around the perimeter of my 4' x 4' grow area. I am thinking 4 per side (running horizontally) about 4-6" apart and then possibly some running through the middle of the grow area splitting it up into 2- 2' x 4' areas. There will be 3 plants in 7 gallon smart pots in each of the 2' x 4' areas. Hopefully that makes sense to you guys. Wish me luck. If I am thinking correctly, I will be using 24 of the 46" strips plus 30 of the 2' strips overhead. The 3 power supplies I have are capable of around 360 watts each continuously, but if I upgrade them or buy more of them I think I could possibly double the amount of watts to 2k or more total. Zoiks! The grow area isn't sealed well as of now, but it probably needs to be so I can run CO2 in there too with this much light. Even 1000 watts of LED seems like over kill in a 4x4. The power supplies are adjustable so I can turn down the juice if I need to.

Please offer any suggestions if you have them.

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Awesome. Maybe start shaping/growing the plants w/ this light layout in mind.

Awesome man, I was thinking of using the TCI strips in this fashion.

cant wait to see it done,

I just scored the 46" strips for $105 shipped (that's the total price for all 45 of them!) . They are out of new damaged light fixtures, just like all the 2' strips I have. These 46" are an unknown brand not Samsung brand like my other strips.

lot of these can be packed in a small area, its the dam volts that need accommodated. I want 20 of the TCI that come with drivers, but that is 960 volts, and you can run 26 cobs for that many volts,

You think of getting lenses for these strips? I seen someone that was doing strips was talking about it, cant remember who. I found them for $2.50 a pc.

InTheValley said:

lot of these can be packed in a small area, its the dam volts that need accommodated. I want 20 of the TCI that come with drivers, but that is 960 volts, and you can run 26 cobs for that many volts,

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Just run the strips in parallel using this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01KZSWNNI/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1502749621&sr=8-8&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=48+volt+power+supply&dpPl=1&dpID=41jHDiHZF+L&ref=plSrch
That's assuming the Tci strips are 48 volts.