How many plants per table is ideal?

I am setting up a small grow room (12' x 13' and 8' high) that will have four 4' x 4' (inside dimensions) flood and drain trays with a 1000w HPS over each. I want to harvest one tray every 2 weeks (my strains are 8 week flowering). My intention is to put the plants into flowering when they are about 20" to 22" tall. I am snipping off 80% of the tips of the top nodes to encourage more lateral growth (saw that on a High Times grow video). My question mostly pertains to the number of plants that this scenario will best support. I tried this before with 16 plants (4 rows of 4), but I feel like the canopy got so thick that the lower half of the plants got no light at all. Would 9 plants (3 x 3) produce a better yield?

Any advise or suggestions would be appreciated.

Use square pots - not round. Maximize ur space.

Vegging to 20-22" and topping you will only want 4-5 plants per tray. They will double in size if not more during the early stages of bloom.

depends how big you veg em. and the shape of the plant. Fit as many as you can without overcrowding. Things like GDP will bush out without any topping. stains like cookies are fucking awful and need to be trained to get the most out of your light. Depends on your strains, and no one on this forum knows them better than you.

Only you can really answer this question. If a 4x4 was too crowded, then it looks like you want to veg a bit longer and run 3x3s.

Or get creative and run something like this:

X_X_X
_X_X_
X_X_X

All great advise. Thanks!

I am using 9" net pots. I had this setup in another location but only got to harvest one tray before a situation came up and we had to break it all down. Wasted some beautiful plants. Anyway, the one table I harvested started flowering at 14" to 16" tall. They grew to about 3' max and the yield was 1.3 lbs. I thought that was a bit low, but the plants were not as tall as the later groups. I am counting on a regular yield of 2 lbs. per tray. Is that a reasonable number to expect?

I dropped my plant count on a 4x4 from 10 to 6. The buds wound up being bigger and nicer looking. The yeild went down.
The lower half is not ususally where the buds grow.

Are taller plants better? Will 4' high plants produce more than 3' high plants? It sounds like the area of light coverage is the important factor and the hight of the stalk is less relevant. If somebody has specific experience with this question, please discuss it a bit.

Hi guys. I'm a new grower and I have a 4 x 4 grow tent for veg. I'm doing soil, still putting the environment together right now, have a T5 8 bulb light and need to get fans and pots. I'm supposed to be getting Pineapple Express clones and Hawaiian Lights seeds to start off, both are reportedly not very tall strains. How many plants would you say I should attempt to veg in this area (4 x 4)? And I haven't got a flowering area set up yet but I'm still trying to figure out what size I should make that if my veg is 4 x 4 (to get the most yield). The legal limit for me is 12 mature plants. Thanks!