Help for a Newbie trying to improve everything.

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OK....I'm not a newbie...but I have only been doing this for a couple years.
And I have had really good results. I know I'm doing a ton of stuff wrong....or not so much wrong, but I know there is so much more I could be doing right.
I'm sure I'm wasting money in a number of areas. As in....running veg lights 24/7. Using 1000mh. And I think I could be using a lot smaller pots. Prob using too much nutes, but none of my plants show many signs of it.
I am sure my plants are getting too tall and I'm topping too late. Actually from what I've read I'm not topping. I'm timming. I have only topped them when I take cuttings. I had always kept the mother around for more clones. After a year or so I put it in the bud room. Of course it never did all that...it was weak and sparce and only produced 4oz or so.but that was still worth putting it through flowering.
But I have changed things when I started using new starts and needed to make a bunch of clones. After I took clones I let it veg for a couple more weeks and then I put it in bud room. And I now see the huge difference in canopy width. I now have 1 plant per light for the 4 plants I did that with. I have had 3 plants per 1000w hps and just kept rotating then to get more even coverage throughout the grow. With the overlap of 4 lights in the room it seemed to be plenty of coverage.
So I could do 12 per cycle and averaged about 6oz per plant. A runt could get 4....and a good one could end up at about 8. So that's a big difference. I figure to do 8 or better with the way the new ones look. The canopys are just so wide and big.
I know I have rambled on and on here...but I'm hoping to start this thread and just start answering all the important questions that people have to help me improve not only quality of my smoke....(I just recently starting doing a more major flush instead of water for the last 3 feedings) but maybe help cut my costs.
I will post pics if I can figure it out. And in my next post I'm gonna give as many details as I can. In as many areas as I can think of. Hope people will be patient and understand if its all over the place. I have so many questions.
Thanks in advance and I hope atleast a few of you made it this far.
Will try adding photos soon

lol give me a rep if you just skim this thread & go on

ps. few will read that full post lol
time is a valuable thing

Agreed I am more then happy to help but your post is to long. Break down your problems into bullet points so we can address them.

It sounds like the OP may need a hand with training/pruning. Personally, I found this to work very well:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=187887

The methodology can be scaled almost infinitely. The idea is to produce only grade-A product with no popcorn. It really isn't very difficult. FWIW, I use 2gal pots for most plants vegged 3-4 weeks from clone and/or 5 weeks from seed, trained/pruned as above.

Simon

Ok....so I'm gonna prob ramble, but try to get as much info in as I can.
I use Vital Earths organic potting soil...nothing else. But have considered adding perlite to cut down on the huge volume and weight.
I run Roots Organic line of nutes. And pretty much follow their schedule. I water or feed them about every 3 days. Usually I feed two times in a row and then just water with a ph of 6.5 the third time. Never seen signs of burn. I have never foiler sprayed but I know I need to and have bought stuff to spray....but room has gotten full and I just couldn't afford to screw up after I lost my last strain. That's why I'm starting over and actually have done better and have found out I can create a huge canopy. Hoping this will increase yield. But is it gonna make all my buds smaller instead of concentrade into the fewer branches I have now?
I start clones in rockwoll and no solution...my buddy seemed to have problems with cloning solution. But in hindsight he was doing a few things wrong with his clones. Never have fed the babies in rockwool. Just ph water at 5.7 or so. They take about 2 weeks to get enough roots to repot into quart size containers or so. I then start to lightly feed them.
They run under 1000w mh for 24/7 probabally a little too far from the lights.....but I don't want to burn them when they are so small. They go 2.5 weeks or so before I repot into 1 to 1.5 gallon pot. I usually have plenty of roots down the bottom and around the sides of the container.
They go about 2 to 2.5 weeks in those pots and then I transfer for the last time into 20 gallon pots. I know this seems like a huge jump...but I'm sure I need this big of a pot to go the last 2mo in flower stage. By the time things are done I have plenty of roots in the bottom of the pots....but not huge roots or anything. I actually don't know how much rooots I should see. I have only seen pictures of roots that pulled from hydro buckets.
I keep them in veg for another 2 weeks or so after last repot. I know this is a lot of veg time. But I always have stuff ready by the time the 2 months of flowering is done. So its still 2 mo. to wait either way.
I keep my plants in veg kinda sparce compared to most I think. I chop all the bottom branches...but I do it kinda in stages. I chop the very bottom few as its growing in the smallest pot. But leave stuff I know I will eventually chop I just don't want it to be totally bare. I know once I do the timming thing I will eventuall see a defined V and I know only a couple maybe 3 branches below that will survive the final chop. I wonder if I should remove the stuff between the V and bottom all at once early on?
I thin the plant a couple times as its growing and do remove big leaves that are shading the rest of the plant. Some say I should never remove the big shade leaves. I am almost sure I want to just before I go into flower....but should I be doing this in veg stage?
I still have a ton of questions and hope there is a few who can help...but can't cover it all in one post.
So maybe a few will respond and I can try and keep up.
Thanks again..

Ok I will start breaking stuff down in smaller bits. I just wanted to kind of give an owerview picture of what I'm doing.
Thanks for reading so far....I hope to make it a lot easier.

Thanks for the link simon. I have not done any LST but I I do trim and thin my plant a lot different than most. It almost looks bare when I do last trim first week of flowering. I like to have as much light to the bud sites and they seem to do just fine. I am gonna go take some pics of what I just trimmed in veg and I have some about 2 weeks into flower. Maybe 3 weeks in.

Ok here is some pics of my plants in 2gal pots and just trimmed.
I also have the one in flower that I took clones from. They have been in for about 2 weeks. It now is about 52 inches in dia.
Ton of bud sites. And about 6ft tall in the pot and the rollers I have it on.
I just topped the 2gal plants for the first time...I plan on doing again so I can get the same results as the new ones I have in flower.

Sometimes I feel like a little kid... I'll only read posts with pics lol...

post #8 is my favorite. Pretty good lookin' ladies you got there...