Colas: How much room, on average, does each need?

Newb grower here who's been lurking (and consuming EVERYTHING here!) but I'm looking for the answer to a question...

I'm setting up an indoor grow in a 4x4x7 tent and I don't see any guidance on how much space each cola will need. My intent is four plants, mainlined into 8 colas on each plant but I don't know how much room each one will need. Obviously sickly or poorly developed blooms will take less space, got that. Just in general, how much room should I give each one?

as you can see, they dont need much room around eachother

Silly question. Colas come in many sizes... Make sure there is room for light to get to the majority of each cola and you will be good.

I budget 4 colas per plant, after fimming once on the 3rd lateral,

colas range depending on strain, my indica colas measure roughly from wrist to elbow,

and sativa colas, measure rougly from my big finger tip to elbow on average

but there are many variables

Nomo^^^ is correct, there are better questions to ask

and far better methods to go by

SativaSumo said:

Newb grower here who's been lurking (and consuming EVERYTHING here!) but I'm looking for the answer to a question...

I'm setting up an indoor grow in a 4x4x7 tent and I don't see any guidance on how much space each cola will need. My intent is four plants, mainlined into 8 colas on each plant but I don't know how much room each one will need. Obviously sickly or poorly developed blooms will take less space, got that. Just in general, how much room should I give each one?

Click to expand...

A better way to judge how many plants to run is to go by wattage. A simple rule of thumb - from an old Ed Rosenthal book I believe- is to have 1 plant per 100 watts of hid lamps. So to run 4 plants in a 4' square tent a 400w light would be sufficient to get even light to them all. You could mainline 8 colas or however many but it's the wattage that determines how large they become given they all get the same amount of light & canopy is trained out evenly. I gotta be honest I've never seen a poorly developed bloom- all the buds are pretty to me- but I have had poorly developed plants that yielded squat. Concentrate on keeping them healthy & happy...the colas will take care of themselves.

Good advice and thanks Richard. The reason I asked the question is that I always read grow journals and posts about the blooms being in close contact during flower and the authors are worried about them molding before they've even been harvested. Is this something that needs to be worried about?

Only if you've got very high humidity and/or low airflow through the canopy. Be sure to lollipop your plants before you flip em & keep a fan blowing air around & they should be fine. Oscillating is best IMO; always keep them dancing as somebody here told me years ago

OK, I already had plans for the oscillating fan so that's good news. Again, much thanks.