plant spacing

Hi All, I'm a newbie setting up my first grow room. I'm using an outdoor shed and have designed a 6x4 foot veg room and 8x8 foot flower room, all with 8 foot cielings. I think I'm going to start with the ebb and grow hydro system and start with 12 plants and two 1000w hps vented lights. As I'm picking out my electronics, I'd like to know what the maximim number of plants I can reasonably get into this 64 square foot flowering room. This will come into play when I select my lighting controller, etc., so I don't have to upgrade later. I'm thinking 6 plants per 1000w light. Does anyone have a good rule of thumb on how many plants I can max out at in this 8x8x8 foot room? Thanks!!

It will depend on how large you want them to get. 12 plants (what you suggested for your 2 1kw lights) would easily fit in an 8x8 room. As far as maxing things out, it would take smaller plants in a SOG style setup. The minimum recommended space for that is 1sq ft per plant but there would likely be some trimming involved. The other issue would be your lighting situation. For primary growing 1kw hps lights have about a 4x4 ft footprint before they aren't going to be doing so well for primary light sources. If you have the 2 next to eachother you could probably have a 9-10x4 area covered by them.

Thanks for your reply. That makes sense. So I think I'm on track. I'm planning on getting a light controller/timer for the flowering room that will power 4 lights. If a 1000 watter covers a 4x4 area well, 4 would be enough for pretty much anything I'd want to do in the 8x8 area.

I would say yes. There wouldn't likely be any issue with lighting then; the only thing I could think of is if you were to grow some really tall monsters (like 5 feet or more @ end of flowering but most people don't do that) Then there could be some issues with insufficient light at lower bud sites. But that would be a minor concern at most. Then you just have to worry about air flow and ventilation (fairly easy things to take care of).

meetzu said:

It will depend on how large you want them to get. 12 plants (what you suggested for your 2 1kw lights) would easily fit in an 8x8 room. As far as maxing things out, it would take smaller plants in a SOG style setup. The minimum recommended space for that is 1sq ft per plant but there would likely be some trimming involved. The other issue would be your lighting situation. For primary growing 1kw hps lights have about a 4x4 ft footprint before they aren't going to be doing so well for primary light sources. If you have the 2 next to eachother you could probably have a 9-10x4 area covered by them.

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Hey Meetzu, I realized that my info in my post was wrong so I wanted to circle back around with you and ask again. I realized that my flower room is actually going to be 12 feet by 8 feet, not the 8x8 that I posted. So, since the 1000 watters cover a 4x4 area nicely, should I assume that I could someday have 6 1000 watters in this space? Or is that crazy for a space of that size? If this is possible, I can get a lighting controller that will control 8 lights, instead of 4, for like $90 bucks more that the one that controls 4. Your thoughts are appreciated. The lighting controller I am looking at is the Titan Controls Helios 7, 240V with built in timer for $290.