Is vertical all it's cracked up to be?

I'm setting up another room with a buddy and he really has a boner for running vertical bulbs. I have only flowered a couple plants using vertical and they were fine but I do have some serious reservations. If anyone with some serious experience could chime in that would be great.

1. Bulbs don't give off shit for light on the ends, so the "band" of powerfull light coming off the bulb seems to be about 2' tall when your 18-24" from the bulb.

2. The middle of the plants done get much light. Light meter readings from inside the plant show that only the outside of the plant is really getting light, the internal part is heavily shaded.

3. The apical buds are not getting the most light. (for the above reason)

4. You can grow super large plants..but again my light meter shows that the actual light is not that tall.

5. It just seems like a scrog having a nice even canopy blasted by light would be best?


I could be wrong, like I said I don't have much experience with very. Maybe the top buds don't need all that direct light?

Thoughts?

Try a vertical scrog i have mine on 4x4 fence wire tie all the branches so they lay aginst the fence that will help with the inside buds. Are you running single bulbs or staked bulbs. I run stacked 1000 watters avg is 8 zips 0r more per plant on my fourth run now.

The reason the light isn't as strong hung vertically is in a horizontal system the light is concentrated via a reflector. So you are getting about twice the lumens ( minus the loss from the reflector absorbtion ) focused on a smaller area. If the angle of the reflector is a 120degree arc it is even more.

They will show you pictures of larger area covered. That is misleading because as you discovered they don't tell you the lux difference.

It is more efficient due to the inverse square law but you have a hard time filling up that light coverage area vertically to make it more productive. Getting an efficient canopy horizontally is much easier even with the sacrifice to light efficiency due to distance from the light.

Whiteboy420 said:

Try a vertical scrog i have mine on 4x4 fence wire tie all the branches so they lay aginst the fence that will help with the inside buds. Are you running single bulbs or staked bulbs. I run stacked 1000 watters avg is 8 zips 0r more per plant on my fourth run now.

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You average 8 zips per plant but how many plants? or better yet what is the GPW?

Thanks for the tips. We are running 18k watts so I would like to avoid all that training to screens but for sure that seems the best way to run things.

An just for the record, anyone who has been growing weed awhile knows that Heath Robertson's "record grows" we're complete bullshit.

i have six in the flower room at a time. I have one come out every 14 to 20 days. Havent done the GPW thing i just grow for me and my family and some to pay the exp.

For the record I get 6-8 per plant that are vegged for about 6-7 weeks in a scrog. That room has 6 600's over 8 plants. It should be noted that I only weigh marketable buds not popcorn and other trash buds.

Anyone with vertical tree experience?

SOMEBEECH said:

Care to elaborate..........


Beech

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About Heath.I ask a simple question and you wanna flame me...Like you say for the record ive been growing 25yrs and said tht for you to draw your own conclusion.

Plz dont come at ppl the way you did me on the forums.If you have a problem just PM me and dont clutter post.

Beech

legallyflying said:

Thanks for the tips. We are running 18k watts so I would like to avoid all that training to screens but for sure that seems the best way to run things.

An just for the record, anyone who has been growing weed awhile knows that Heath Robertson's "record grows" we're complete bullshit.

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I've only been in the business for a year or two and I have witnessed 3 units per 1k in a SOIL SOG, personally. If that is achievable then Heath Robinson's grows are more then doable.

I didn't flame you I simply didn't acknowledge your post as no, I really don't care to elaborate.

And in terms of adding values to the thread...you didn't say shit other than "check out Heath's grow"

legallyflying said:

An just for the record, anyone who has been growing weed awhile knows that Heath Robertson's "record grows" we're complete bullshit.

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Far from it. You can pull better just growing SOG style. That's not even going vertical which will further increase your GPW.

I'd love for you to explain why Heath's grows are BS. Folks 100000x more credible than you give Heath a lot of credit (Shantibaba for example).

legallyflying said:

I didn't flame you I simply didn't acknowledge your post as no, I really don't care to elaborate.

And in terms of adding values to the thread...you didn't say shit other than "check out Heath's grow"

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You say.. 'only X sq ft'

You will only get good useable light in 16 sq ft using a hood and reflector horizontally. You will get 25 (approximately) sq ft going vertically (using your 2 ft limit, I'd say it's a little bigger than that, but not much).

Someone else comments on light intensity being less... not true. You can stick your plants closer to compensate.

You didn't say much beyond 'Heath is full of shit'.

GR33NL3AF said:

I've only been in the business for a year or two and I have witnessed 3 units per 1k in a SOIL SOG, personally. If that is achievable then Heath Robinson's grows are more then doable.

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Yep....

You can go way higher. The more plants you have the higher your yield will be.

Heath was claiming 2g/watt with his vertical setup - and with almost no veg. I don't know if anyone can *prove* it was bullshit, but I don't see anyone else reporting even close to that.

As to whether or not it's worth it, you kind of need to consider the drawbacks:

- It's hard to cool
- Systems are generally 'fixed', which is the say, the distance between the plants and the light can't be changed horizontally.
- Hard to prune, plants tend to grow into the light
- Requires a ton of plants for most systems. Kind of hard to get 300-400 clones going at once, and in the US it violates federal law and triggers minimum sentencing
- Is hell on bulbs, even some of the ones that say there made for it
- Even it's efficient in terms of light usage, it's not really efficient in terms of plant numbers, space and money. The cash that goes into a vertical system could probably have been better spent on a traditional system that's simply larger and has more lights.
- Tons of small plants generally means more trimming and 'popcorn' bud.

Granted, a well-designed system can overcome some of these issues, but it's more work.

You need to consider most of the doubters have never done anything close to what he did, never hung a bulb vertically once in their lives and are, in general, absolutely completely talking out of their asshole.

Ive gotten 9 ps off of 6kw it was a modified octogon. Soil grown 1 month veg. 2gpw is def doable!!