Sativied
Well-Known Member
Good posts dude. And great looking grow too, that's how you grow cannabis people... Like a crop, not like trees.
Let me put that pic above in a different perspective, 3D.
Flat grow (a misnomer already) in pic above, gives easily 8x8x3' of volume to hold colas, not even including pots or hydro setup.
The volume of the stadium grow above depending on height can be as little as HALF of that. Look at the pic, in the center fold (no not that kind of center fold)... Better go flat and use the entire volume and let the reflector and reflective walls help spread it more uniformly instead of putting plants around the light...
In that circular example above, the max depth around the cylinder is roughly just 1 feet along the center of the edges. That's not enough unless you veg plants up that high and scrog the along the walls, then let them stretch a feet inwards - a major waste of time. That 135% "more space" is very misleading, since a cannabis grow is of course not a flat 2D surface but requires a volume. And to penetrate the light deep enough and to get those long colas to fill the volume maximally and uniformly, you need a good reflector that bundles the power of the light instead of spreading it out over the largest space.
Frankly, if the goal is max yields, or bragging rights..., or just fullfilling greed, unless one can pull 1gpw (with hps) consistently every run, up to 5-6 runs a year, that person should learn how to grow before attempting something other than what pro commercial growers do and have been doing for decades.
There are always exceptions, I like what I see in some vertical setups (@Hot Diggity Sog's 12/12 experiments) but most are just people wasting time playing with plants, not farmers growing a crop efficiently.
