I said I would post a write up of the style I grew in. Here it is. Please ask questions if you want to know more.
2 plants on the grow. 1 Casey Jones (pictured) 1 Sour Grape. They were vegged 8 weeks under 400w MH. They were treated horribly during veg... (didn't check ph... let both catch PM... let the grow space go to shit) otherwise I think it would have taken 6 weeks to acheive the same size.
Flowered under 400w HPS + 250w MH.
Sour Grape gave me 122 grams. Casey Jones 278 grams. Still working on the hash from the trim.
They were both around 3.5 feet tall. Never topped. Trained vigorously during veg. Trimmed a TON.
So... upsides of the grow/ style: It was fun and looked really cool.
Downsides: Too long veg time, very labor intensive, way too much trimmig involed (i think there was as much plant cut off as left growing), the only thing left in the 'middle' of the plant was tiny popcorn buds, meaning tons of trimming.
What I would do (and am going to do someday) is to grow shorter plants in levels. So instead of two tall ass plants... grow 4 plants half the height and have one 'on top' of the other. Cuts veg time in half and you don't have to cut away lots of plant to keep it off the light.
Now... how you could make this style truly successful I think would work but would take an EXTREME amount of effort on the growers part. What I beleive would work great is to not cut any branches at all, but to 'supercrop' them (break them a couple times) and tuck them back.
Here's what I mean... the giant buds I had going all around the outside of the plant were great. They all wighed in the neighborhood of 5-10 grams. Some more. (top cola of CJ was 15.5 grams and I even took out stem weight) Now all those tiny tiny buds in the middle weighed like 0.2 - 0.3 grams... and there were hundreds of them. Most people throw the popcorn in their trim... but this was probably half my wieght here. Also... becuase they were given full light they were all the most killer popcorn buds you've ever seen. It's funny they are all purpleish looking but tiny tiny.
So what I am gettng at is to take the secodary branches that would have been growing strait towards the light. Break them near the main branch they are growing off and send them backwards to the dark... then break them halfway and put the tip of the branch in the light. At the same time strip everything off the secondary branch that is 'below' the tip in the light. Sort of like lollipopping each secondary branch. I beleive doing this would have gotten me the big buds filling the screen. But like I said this seems extremely work intensive.
Now the comparison. I've really only done 1 real horizontal grow to compare to this vertical grow. In my flat grow same lights, DWC as well, same nutes, DIFFERENT strains however.
FLAT: yeilded 11.2 oz - veg time: 4 weeks - flower time : 11 weeks.
VERT: yeilded 14 oz - veg time: 8 weeks - flower time: 12 weeks.
Not very impressive. However if I would have had two Casey Jones plants I could have gotten more like 19-20 oz.
So there it is. I had a shit load of fun. Grew about the same amount I would have from going flat.
Two positves about vert. It seemed much easier to keep the lights cool. Also it was nice not having to reach across a canopy (if that makes sense).
I think this answers your questions. Please feel free to ask me more as well. I'm not trying to hide anything with this vert screen attempt.