Plants Per Light MH and HPS

Hello everyone, I'm a new grower and have a few plants growing fairly well using fluorescent and CFL's. But I would like to make them bushier. I have 5 plants under 1 48" flourescent light with 2 bulbs in it and 2 CFL's which I just recently put in to make them a little bushier and they are starting to bush a little now. I know about topping and bending the plants but I think that I have too many plants to bend them all under the 48" lamp. Also I think it a little too late to start bending them they are a couple months old already and have thick firm stems. I know that I could lay the pots down but there isnt enough room.

So I was thinking on getting a MH light for my vegetative room and a HPS light for my Flowering room because I don't want to buy a whole bunch of fluorescent lights and have them hanging all over the place.

So my question is this does anyone know how many plants I can fit under 175w, 250w, 400w, 600w, and 1000w MH and HPS bulbs and still have them grow bushy? I would only like to have 1 MH and 1 HPS lamp and I'm having a hard time deciding which watt lamp to buy. I've been thinking on starting to grow more plants but I would like to know how many I can grow per bulb before I do. Thanks for your replies.

Or what would be a reasonable amount of plants per bulb I should say?

It doesnt take much light to veg them. You can veg them strong on just tube flos. I have 18 plants (+ 5 seedlings, so 23 total) under this 4 foot, 4 tube fixture, which is 2ft x 4ft. Have 2 more 4 foot tubes on each long side, so 8 tubes total (40 watts each, 3k lumens each). So no need to switch to MH for veg 8 flo tubes isnt alot, for like 3-4 foot plants I'd say stick 10 under those, I am just too lazy to make another area, and they arent starving for light soooo .

Well say you have 1 plant per 1.5 square feet:

175: 4-6 Plants (6-9 sq ft)
250: 6-10 plants (9-15 sq ft)
400: 9-14 Plants (13.5-21 sq ft)
600: 18-27 Plants (27-40.5 sq ft)
1000: 26-40 Plants (39-60 sq ft)

Thats just out of ass calcing. Really need multiple bulbs for anything larger than like 15 sq foot. But it really depends on what kind of growing you are doing, if its sea of green, your not going to be needing tons of penetration, so can have more plants per bulbs compared to normal grow. But basically you need to say how many plants you wanna grow and how much space you have to figure out your lighting needs.


600 Watt HPS seem to have more bang for their buck though.

It also entirely depends on style of growing... Sog, Scrog, LST'ed, High Density SOG, ect

Let me know which one you intend to do, and I'll gladly post my reccomendation.

Wow, thanks xKaminAx you gave me the answer I was looking for lol. I really like that set up on the pic there. I think I'm going to try that instead because I don't like dealing with the heating issue that the MH and HPS bulbs have.

I'm definitely going to try that Sog method ganjagoddess, I really like that a lot. I will probably do the Scrog method later on when I want to get more from each plant after I weed out the males and have all females.

Thanks for all your help!

Can I use that setup for my flowering room also?

for normal sog, with 1 plant per sq foot. I would say KaminAx is right on....

it's not really how many plants but how large is the canopyis. For my 400 watt HPS I have a 3x3 canopy.

Yeah, but it does give you a general idea. I was just basing it off of a minimum of 3000-3500 Lumen per square foot, more is better ofc