too many plants for 5 sq ft under 400w?

hey y'all whats gong on?

got my grow under way here (link in my sig) and i'm just considering the setup i have going and some second thoughts i wanted to ask you guys what you thought...

my tent is 20x36x62 inches. if you do that math it comes out to 4.98 sq ft. i have 5 plants going now, all female. 3 are ryders, the other regular photoperiod.

with a 400w light that comes out to 80 watts/sq ft. i have read that at least 50w/sq ft is optimal, anything above will only help the girls. using this logic, 5 plants should be okay and provide good yields with that figure in mind, HOWEVER, i am concerned that crowding may become an issue. even if the riders finish in 2 months, giving the big girls another full month to finish and branch out, is this grow too ambitious? the girls are already all sprouted so i'm going to go full speed ahead until i run into issues but it would be helpful and nice to hear legit feed back on this from some experienced growers out there.

+rep as always with me. thanks in advance. stay burning.

I use a 400w in a 5 ft tall 2 ft deep 4 ft wide tent and at most I can put 4 3-5 gallon plants in there, and that is crowded...
I can keep the plants smaller and fit more in there...but I like to LST and top my plants a lot...
Without topping I can fit 6 3-5 gallon plants in there, but I yield less doing that then if I only flower 4 that have been trained...
So it depends...you can make it crowded, or make it not crowded depending on how or if you train the plants in any way...

thank you for the input, +rep. time is somewhat of an issue for me so i won't be topping them. they are only going to veg for 3 weeks, tops. i am considering doing some light training w/ LST on them so i at least have some semblance of control over them rather than hoping they stay within their grow space. this is a tough call now... i had a feeling your response would be the one i was going to hear. hmm.

choop said:

hey y'all whats gong on?

got my grow under way here (link in my sig) and i'm just considering the setup i have going and some second thoughts i wanted to ask you guys what you thought...

my tent is 20x36x62 inches. if you do that math it comes out to 4.98 sq ft. i have 5 plants going now, all female. 3 are ryders, the other regular photoperiod.

with a 400w light that comes out to 80 watts/sq ft. i have read that at least 50w/sq ft is optimal, anything above will only help the girls. using this logic, 5 plants should be okay and provide good yields with that figure in mind, HOWEVER, i am concerned that crowding may become an issue. even if the riders finish in 2 months, giving the big girls another full month to finish and branch out, is this grow too ambitious? the girls are already all sprouted so i'm going to go full speed ahead until i run into issues but it would be helpful and nice to hear legit feed back on this from some experienced growers out there.

+rep as always with me. thanks in advance. stay burning.

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You don't say at all what your photos are. In that small a space though and ryders being 3, you are going to have to raise them if the photos start wailing or the little ones get grown over and starved for light. Light only covers the canopy if hung from above. In really small confines like tents its easiest to stick to plants with similar characteristic and grow times.

hotrodharley said:

You don't say at all what your photos are. In that small a space though and ryders being 3, you are going to have to raise them if the photos start wailing or the little ones get grown over and starved for light. In really small confines like tents its easiest to stick to plants with similar characteristic and grow times.

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apologies. the photoperiod are c-99 hybrid and liberty haze. the ryders are afghan kush ryder

edit- i am going for max yield w/ this space

Hmm...
I didn't take into account the autos because I always just leave those in veg to flower in there...
But you would possibly need to either train the photo plants shorter, or raise the autos up to the light...but really you just want all the tops as even as possible.
The issue that I run into is that untopped and untrained plants with a single cola if I let them get tall enough to yield me anything then they get too tall when flowering for my space, so I end up having to super crop and all my buds end up all weird and shaped like Ls...but if I train the plants the way I like to keep them shorter, then they are wider than they are tall, so they take up more room outwards..but like I said I can yield more off of 4 trained manicured bushes, than 6 straight up and tall single cola plants.

But I guess I did point out on thing just now...if the plants get too tall you can always super crop..once the plants are flowering it doesn't redistribute anything, but it does keep your main colas from getting fried by your lights one day after you are gone for a couple of hours...In flowering is when all the big awesome growth happens...you really get to see the bang and the wow...

choop said:

apologies. the photoperiod are c-99 hybrid and liberty haze. the ryders are afghan kush ryder

edit- i am going for max yield w/ this space

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Have you also considered SCROG? That really does work well.

missnu said:

Hmm...
I didn't take into account the autos because I always just leave those in veg to flower in there...
But you would possibly need to either train the photo plants shorter, or raise the autos up to the light...but really you just want all the tops as even as possible.

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i was expecting this to be an issue. was thinking i'd put something under em to keep the canopy even. how long do you veg for with that space and that amount of plants? both 4 and if you were to do 6, respectively?

and hey...we even have the same size tent...the cheapest on amazon...lol. Alright *high five* we are both cheap/and or broke.

hotrodharley said:

Have you also considered SCROG? That really does work well.

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can't do scrog because due to my circumstances theres a chance i may have to move my plants on short notice for a day or two at some point during the grow. don't wanna get detailed on here, maybe I'm just paranoid.. but thats the situation so i have pretty much ruled out scrog..

missnu said:

and hey...we even have the same size tent...the cheapest on amazon...lol. Alright *high five* we are both cheap/and or broke.

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hahaha yea you hit the nail on the head... didn't wanna spend $200 on a tent... got it for like 60 bucks or something.. whole setup was like $500

Well I have a pretty chaotic system...I have a lot of strains I really like that the only way to have the strain available to flower sometimes is to keep alive in clones..., or like mother plants...but I don't have space for mother plants...
So I take a clone and flower the large plant...in about a month I have to clone that clone I took a month ago and toss the plant I cloned, but I keep the clone...it takes the clone a week to root and then in 3 weeks the first of the flowering plants will be done...so I veg each clone for 3 weeks before I have a space to put it in flower...I got some new seeds to try though, and let a strain go so I had extra room for a couple of weeks so for one run instead of taking a clone and tossing the donor plant I took a clone and flowered the one I cloned...because the starting of the seeds messed up the times for everything else...anyway somehow I decided and was able to flower the larger clones instead of tossing them...I could fit more in the tent, but because I hadn't been training them, because well I usually throw them out...anyway they hadn't been LSt'd or anything like i usually do...and it was awful they got too tall and I had to bend the main cola on each plant off to the left side...so then the tent looked like i had somehow tilted it's top half sideways, and I yielded less than I normally do with fewer plants...I make great use of my veg space..because only in veg can you have pots stacked on top of pots, and small pots and large pots, and it is just crazy in there...but in flower each plant needs it's own space and room to do it's thing...and in veg I can always start a smaller version of the plant by taking a clone...so regardless of veg time I never flower a plant that is more than 18 in high to start...

i'm thinking that LST may be necessary...

1- to keep a more even canopy
2- if they are 15" after 3 weeks (idk if they will be, just estimating) and already a foot off the floor cause of the pots that is 2 feet high not even accounting for the tripling of size in flower. the tent is 5 feet tall and the light has to fit in there somewhere along with duct work...

missnu said:

regardless of veg time I never flower a plant that is more than 18 in high to start...

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okay, that is the kind of guideline i was looking for. i can't imagine them getting 18 inches high from a three week veg, one week of which is under an 80w fluoro. the other will be under 400w MH. thank you

But I find I yield an oz for every week of veg, topping and training the way I do.
Which as soon as a seed plant is 3 nodes high I top it back to the first true set of leaves, then I start pulling those 2 main branches out to opposite sides of the pot,
With clones it is much the same...but with clones...so once it gets 2 or 3 nodes of new growth, I top it back to the tiny clone leaves and then start pulling them down and out, anyway
after you top you will start to get a lot of side branches growing as well, and bend all those down and then hook them there...so pretty much I pull every branch out to it's closest pot edge...once I get 4 or 5 good sized "main branches" then I cut off all the smaller side growth I am getting right at the main, so it won't grow back, and I continue to just keep tying down those main branches...then I flower around 3 weeks...and I get 4-5 main colas, equaling 3 oz per plant...off of 4 plants.. The one time I ran the 6 untrained plants I only 2 of them got 2 oz per...the others were all less than 2... So for 6 plants I would need to get 2 oz per plant to equal what I get with 4 plants..and it just didn't happen...
Besides..I have no use for huge colas...I have to cut them up into smaller pieces anyway...So I like having 5 medium colas...

choop said:

okay, that is the kind of guideline i was looking for. i can't imagine them getting 18 inches high from a three week veg, one week of which is under an 80w fluoro. the other will be under 400w MH. thank you

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I clone and start my seeds and everything under a 400w...so that makes a difference I guess...I also use a cloner...and they get a week in the cloner, and then 3 weeks in 1/2 gallon pots...then I put them in their larger pots and flower the clones...
Seeds of course take longer sometimes...but I don't give them longer unless I can...
I have a pretty much let's put in flower what will fit in flower hunt and peck when a spot opens...but every month I cut up and throw out at least 6 nice looking small Mj plants, just because they have already gotten too large to flower for me, but I want to keep the strain going ya know...
It sux...but there is no other way I have managed to figure out...other than the clone and toss method...I mean get a third tent and start a mother plant room would be the only way...And one day that will be the case...but right now I do what I do, and it works just how I need it to...
What I really need is a grower friend that has more space...and I have that during the summer...I have a friend that grows outdoors, and he took my clones this year so I didn't have to just kill plant after plant.

choop said:

okay, that is the kind of guideline i was looking for. i can't imagine them getting 18 inches high from a three week veg, one week of which is under an 80w fluoro. the other will be under 400w MH. thank you

Click to expand...

Well if I let them get taller than that then they grow into the lights...and my filter sits right above my light in flower, so I lose even more flowering space...
I usually flower at around 10-12 in...but that ends in a 2 ft plant when all is said and done in the flowering tent...and if you can't imagine cannabis growing 18 inches in 3 weeks then you haven't grown cannabis using HiD lights...lol.

missnu said:

But I find I yield an oz for every week of veg, topping and training the way I do.

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yeah i don't plan on topping due to time restraints but some light LST might be in order. i wish i could top though, i know the yield would be better... idk how effective LST will even be though if i don't top... choices, choices... this growing business can really frustrate you simply due to the variety of techniques and choices you have to pick from...

missnu said:

if you can't imagine cannabis growing 18 inches in 3 weeks then you haven't grown cannabis using HiD lights...lol.

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i havent. this is my first HID grow which is why I'm somewhat unsure of what to expect.... i sincerely appreciate your help though