Ultimate Yielding Setup?

So there can be no doubt that using a Colosseum type grow can yield the most... But i've considered taking grows beyond that. Has anyone ever considered having two layers of grows?

The objective is basically having "Speared" plants with a SOG underneath to catch the light leaks between the colas. Very similar to how plants would grow normally (with one main cola and popcorn buds underneath) only with more vigorous and abundant growth by using more plants with more root area and auxins being delivered to the lower branches.

Consider this with buckets: Having a bottom layer of buckets with plants "Speared" with another layer of buckets on top sog/style. The buckets on top are placed directly at the corners of 4 buckets on the bottom (for instance 5x5 buckets on the bottom with 4x4 buckets on top). The bottom plants can be speared through the cracks and along the outside of the top buckets so that they stick poke through the SOG. This should be a SOG with decent yield being blocked only in a few spots by light hitting plants that are speared. This enables lots of root room for both the SOG plants and the Speared plants because there are nearly 2x as many buckets. The top plants focus auxins on growing lots of buds in the SOG and the bottom plants focus auxins on their one main "Speared" cola. Personally, I feel this would yield substantially more because you get the yield of a SOG with some speared plants growing in between.

Also for a Colosseum:

You can do the standard Wall Of Green... but on the other side of the buckets farther from the lights, have a plant speared to stick through the Wall Of Green towards the light (for instance if a wall is 3 plants across and 3 plants tall, there would be 6 speared plants sticking out in between those 9... 3 plants per level close to the light and 2 behind "Speared" poking through). This is the same concept as the one above but using a Colosseum setup rather than simply double layering the garden. It would also be a lot easier to access the speared plants because they would be on the outside edges of the Colosseum rather than underneath a SOG."

I feel at the very least this method could easily boost yield by providing more root-mass, and more plant "tops" that are receiving auxins. The only downside is a small portion of the SOG is being blocked by the "Speared" colas. However, I do believe that the speared plants would yield more than enough to compensate for the decreased yield from the SOG plants.

Has anyone attempted this or considered this? I may do test it out in one of my future grows.

i'd love to see this. ive though much about the two layer grow, and i think if the bottome sog layer has some supplemental cfl this idea would be awesome.

Thats the problem. Top layer has to be SOG with the bottom layer speared. This way the bottom plants are narrow enough to fit between the buckets of the top layer. If you tried putting speared plants on top, you'd have to let the SOG plants stretch out AFTER they fit through the cracks between the speared plant's buckets. Speared plants stretch faster anyway so it's more logical to have them as the bottom layer.

Unless, you meant the bottom SOG layer of plants rather than the bottom layer of buckets. In that case yes... the bottom layer is SOG and the top layer are some speared plants. The problem with supplemental CFL is that the lights would stand in the way of the light being cast by the HPS.

I've considered growing rows of speared colas (or plants trimmed into a line rather than a bush) with a T5 between each row of colas. For instance if you had a small long grow box lined with mylar with a fan on each end for air circulation and two rows of holes along the bottom for the plant colas to stick through with dimensions of about 4ft long and 8x8 inches. Then if there were 16 colas on each side of a 4ft T5 bulb (or two if you wished)... each cola would be able to get 3 inches wide and you could probably get 3 grams per cola. That's 64 grams using only 48 watts of lighting (1 bulb) for a total of 1.33grams/watt.

That all of course depends on how efficient your growing methods are. I honestly think it's very possible to expect more but in general the idea is that the plants consist of nothing but colas tightly packed together into rows. Similar to pillars running along each side of a T5 bulb. You dont have any fanleaves blocking light and the light goes directly to the bud sites all along the colas.

actually you can do the wall of green with netting around so that u can train them to grow on the ground and on the top surrounding the lights as long as you run an air cooled or water cooled hood for your lights. kind of a vertical scrog set up running on an airoponic system, the only draw back would be vegging them properly to have perpetual harvest and no down time.

Two problems with that... firstly, if you have plants on the ground and on the top... where do you have the ducting? lol

Also, there is no light that forms behind the base of the light... the light is in the way so if the light is facing up or facing down, there will be some side that won't receive lighting. Basically, the direction the light is pointing receives almost no light, because there is no light coming from the tip of a HPS. A HPS isn't a floating orb... it only gives light in 4 of 6 directions. It doesn't give light into the socket or in the opposite direction. It's best to just line the floor and roof with mylar to reflect stray photons that're bouncing around randomly off the mylar lined walls because there won't be enough intensity for growing on either. CFL's give light in 5 directions (though the top receives not as much... still a greater % than a HPS).

Also, any plants being trained along the net would need to be growing longer, which is quite a hassle.

It's always good to consider growing plants in all 6 directions, unfortunately lights are incapable of doing such a thing.

For these reasons, it's always easiest to simply use a cool-tubed HPS that is facing upward, with air being brought in from just below it and the intake fan above it drawing the hot air through ducting along the ceiling. Then have a Colosseum grow surrounding it on 4 sides. (with DWC or any other sort of buckets, it's easy to have one of the sides on a rolling bakers rack/shelf so that you can get in the middle you have to.)

The disadvantage with that design is the corners are always a decent distance from the HPS, it's always even better to make 8 walls in a hexagonal shape (even better light being balanced among the plants). You can then always just use 7 of 8 sides so that there is still a way in.

With a 1000watt hps, you would only need just under a 9x9 ft area, if the shelves are 1ft wide and 3ft long... shelves only 3ft tall provide you with a total of 63 square feet to grow with, the distance is never more than 4ft from the light to the base of the plants' stems)"

Using the double-layered grow, it would take up 12x12 ft ... but considering the advantages I think a double grow would yield, It'd definitely be worth it.