How many to start with?

1 x 400w should grow around 4-6 plants depending on methods . if your grow is sealed you need to vent because its gonna get hot in there. dont have your ballast in the room as this will create unwanted excess heat. have cold intake fan coming on to fill your room with fresh air then stop it and have your high mounted hot air exhaust taking out the warm.

KeemGod said:

I'm considering this to be my first grow! I had 1 started b4, but had to go outta town for a while. Enuff about that. I'm tryna figure out how many plants i should start with. I have 1 400w mH/Hps and a few cfl's. I was reading up on SOG and that's the route i wanna take. I have all fem. seeds on the way as i write. I am currently building a 4'W x 4'L x 8'H grow room and need to know what to start with. Any help/ replies are greatly appreciated, +repped. thanks again.

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Hi, Warning EPIC NOVEL FOLLOWS:
I grow in Da Closet. 4'x2'x 6.5' flower side (20 gal coleman cooler reservoir under flower side drain pan) ; 3'x2'x8' veg side. I grow on rotation so that I harvest several 18" plants every two weeks, yielding aprox 1.25 oz per plant on avg(sometimes more!)... Regardless I have at any one time and in various stages of development 12 to 13 plants in square 1 gallon 'Emily' pots filled w/expanded clay going to flower. This allows space and circulation, no plants are touching.
If I was doing SOG I would allow enough room for a short plant fully flowered like I've described above. So I am suggesting that you not veg them too too long. Maybe start them to flower after you get two sets of well defined branch starts. That way you get 3 to 4 good colas and the plants don't spend too much energy growing tall but rather you can turn the SOG over more often with short plants. AND the vegetation space can be smaller with less veg time. That's the basic idea, short fast turn around of a whole crop in that space.
I would still use part of the space to grow a mother and propagate clones (probably a space you create above the flowering space. Use your CFLs or even better T-5's for this.
Now IF you are going to use the 'MH/HPS bulb for the whole veg to flower journey then I still say 12 or more in 1 gallon square pots but if not hydro but in soil then I'd use 1 or two gallon gro bags. How ever many you can comfotable squeeze in. Totally mylar the walls add major fan circ and fan venting and grow them 18 inches tall, cull any that are enemic and spindly and flower the well leaved/branched ones. They'll finish at 24" or so inches. I often adjust the plants and make sure there is space and circulation. The environment is the hard thing to control indoors. Humidity temp fungus and insects. Over build everything if you can afford to. BIG VENT FAN & carbon filter! Hope this epic answer helps in some way. Happy Gardening! GrowIT!

replying to your private message didn't wiork nor could I attach more pics.

To answer your questions...It'll take a month or better from initial launch before you'll have a well branched enough plant to take 12 clone cuttings off of. Be careful of stripping your mother clean the 1st time though, that'll really stress her.
I'd start your seeds, get them into 2.5 inch rockwool cubes and under a dome tray to keep them humid. Once they have 2 sets of visible branch nodes then I set them to flower. I'd take one though and let it stay veg to become your mother.
I use a 400 watt HPS to flower and 5, 24" T-5's to veg.
If I might suggest a book it would be Jorge Cervantes Indoor Medical Marijuana guide. All my lame questions were answered there. (no lame questions tho eh, we're all beginners sometime eh?)
Your biggest issues won't be growing the plants it'll be keeping the humidity and heat and fungi and insects etc. under control (the book helps tons w/that info)
Here are some pics of my set up. Happy gardening! GrowIT! ps just reply to this thread OK? I subscribed to it. The private message program isn't working for me.

Here are a few more pics. I get a quart jar of buds per harvest every two weeks. GrowIT!

probably something like 2 or 3 oz unless you cram it in there lol i would reccomend 8 well developed plants, maybe even less, im still a newb myself but if theres one thing i learned on my previous grows, its not to try to do to much at once. you can yield more from a few well maintained plants with alot of room to breathe then you could with 30 crammed in a 6 by 6 ft space with branches touching shoulder to shoulder.. if you really want to do a sog. i reccomend this thread. its Al B Fuct's How To Get A Harvest Every 2 Weeks ( He pulls like a pound every 2 weeks lol) its THE guide to sog. you dont have to do it exactly like he does it (hydro) but he makes it easy to grasp the concept in general

https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/6592-get-harvest-every-2-weeks.html

start by choosing you're grow space, and tweaking the conditions in the grow space til it's right for growing.

fire it up for 48 hours and monitor, to make sure temps are right.

be sure to have a way to properly ph you're water before anything goes in any soil/cubes/netpot....

failure to prepare is preparing to fail.....

I agree with redivider, it's a very common mistake that folks don't think the rooms condition through. Set it up just the way that you intend to use it, put a few potted plants in there and see what happens. Pay close attention to the heat and RH. When you start to put gallons of water into 8 sq feet conditions change, all of it is not going into new veg material. If you can start with solid conditions and focus on the plants and not on temps and RD and the plants at the same time your chances of success will increase greatly. Be patient, another common problem is loving them to death. Don't ask me how I know this, it's not a pretty story. Be modest on your first effort, don't see how many plants you can cram in there and don't set your expectations too high. Start with a few 3-4, see how it goes, cut some clones see how that goes. If you loose one or two you are still growing and have some beans left over for next time. Consider this a learning and try and have fun with it. Ben Franklin said that he never set his expectations too high that way he was never very disappointed. Good luck and have fun with your first grow!

KeemGod said:

I'm considering this to be my first grow! I had 1 started b4, but had to go outta town for a while. Enuff about that. I'm tryna figure out how many plants i should start with. I have 1 400w mH/Hps and a few cfl's. I was reading up on SOG and that's the route i wanna take. I have all fem. seeds on the way as i write. I am currently building a 4'W x 4'L x 8'H grow room and need to know what to start with. Any help/ replies are greatly appreciated, +repped. thanks again.

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grow 2 to4 with the 400watt.

Without a vented hood your grow room will warm very fast. Mine stayed 85+ with good venting. Had 73 deg. air intake.

KeemGod said:

How much bud can u get into one of those quart jars?

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I get 3.5 oz's in each without crushing buds once they're cured/dried.
Preserving note: If I'm going to store them a long time I stick the buds in the jar and in a shallow pan ( 2" deep) of pretty warmish to almost hot water (on low heat on the stove) I warm up the jars. Once they are getting really warm I set the lids sitting lightly on the jars rim and rings threaded loosely on, almost like a preserve style sealing job.
The warmth will create expanded warm air in the jar and then when I take the jars out out of the warming bath I push the lids down hard on the jars rim once and wait for the cooling to create vaccuum and suck the lids down even harder. Once the lids are sealed I screw on the rings tight and stick'em in the deep freeze. 5 years later and a little piece of carrot later I have virtually the same sweet tasting buds I grew half a decade earlier. No mold no dryness,no bitter flavors...Cool huh? GrowIT!

this is the diy cooltube.

Got mine there just a few screws and it comes apart. I've been messing with mine a long time and it could be better. But it works for me. good luck.