soil pots vs raised bed?

Hey guys,

As usual, a big thanks to you guys who take the time to offer your advice or opinions! I appreciate it a lot.

I'm doing two 4'x8'x8" tables indoors. They will be lined with pond liner, and either filled with 1'x1' pots or just a soil bed. Under 2200 watts of HPS each, right next to each other so that light spillage hits each other.

My question is, should I go with the soil bed or try and make things a little more tidy and movable with pots?

If I do make a bed, I plan on putting an inch of some porous rock, like Perlite or perhaps red volcano rock (to help with aeration? I heard that it mimicked nature in a way that was beneficial for the plants), with a coco mat in between the soil and the rock to keep soil from coming through the drain underneath the table.

Pots would be sort of the same story, with rock at the bottom to provide better drainage and aeration for the roots. They could drain on the table lined with Pond Liner, at a slight incline to a drain.

Which would you guys suggest? I'm leaning towards pots so that I can move the bigger plants to the side of the table under the 600w, and put the smaller ones under the 1000w in the middle.

If you're already planning on moving them. I'd go with pots. I've seen MAD grows off of beds. But, you didnb say this was your first time? Sounds like a lot of light for a first time?

I say pots, you can even put them outside if you wish.. Save some of that electricity.

I've got a partner who's done this quite a few times successfully, he'll be helping me along the way. Considering either soil medium should be more forgiving, I could pull off a bed. Tell me about these monster grows

Soil bed plus scrog- http://boards.cannabis.com/cannabis-pictures/108582-soil-bed-harvest.html


Same thing can be done in buckets IMO

I thought about this a lot when I setup my ebb\flow and came up with a way to do both.

I start seedlings\cuttings in little 3" fiber pots, then move to 5" net pots with coco chips/growstones, then move to 8" net pots with coco chips\growstones. All this time the pots are mobile. When I am all done topping, LST, pruning and start flowering, I fill up the ebb\flow trays with growstones\coco chips and setup support nets. After that point the pots become immobile.

Well- if using pots- you can weed-out weak/sick plants easier- but kind of makes the table redundant....??
1' x1' pots-- how deep? It is the # of gallons that matters as opposed to size.....
if doing a SOG and flowering at 8-10"-- a 3 gallon (which is about a 1x1) is plenty....

A raised bed is great for outdoor growing, but indoors you're going to want to move plants around to take advantage of the lights as the girls grow. Much easier to go with the pots. Plus, if you are growing a variety of strains you may need different nutes for each strain you grow.

All the same strain, Girl Scout Cookies. I'm up in NorCal by Frisco.