Max Yield Equation

this may help answer your question.
this is my buddies set up and an actual 2 runs he did that shows what happens when too many plants are put into the same space.
he runs a rotation. at any given time he has 15 on deck in veg at about 12 inches. he has one 4x8 table with 2 1000w HPS over it and 15 plants in weeks 1-4 of flower.
on the other side of the room he has the same setup with 15plants in the last 4 weeks of flower.
when he runs 15 per side he gets a consistent 4lb. he recently added 3 more plants to one side. now he ended up with more flowering tops, but the light restriction to the bottom levels was increased. this reduced his yield to 3lb.
so there is a point where too many plants in the same space reduces total yield, which reduces g/w.
now I would ask the reverse question. what is the minimum # of plants in a given space that will produce the same yield? would 10 instead of 15 do the same, better of less? fewer plants means more light to each, which means bigger colas on all and more lower development.

Ramon66,

Thanks for the input - that is exactly the kind of thing I'm wondering about. I think plants should touch, but not crowd. I think in the past, people were so concerned with their electric bill that they were constantly looking for ways to cram plants into a given light footprint. If you are legal, I think the thinking ought to change. Now we ought to be looking at saying to hell with the power company and growing with the focus on what we can get from each plant instead of what we can get out of each light.

I suspect that to maximize yield on a per plant basis, we ought to grow fewer larger plants surrounded by lights.

A lot of this is common sense made way to complicated

It truly depends on several factors. Genetics... are you growing short bushy indica or tall lanky sativa or a cross, somewhere inbetween? Then.. are you growing in soil or rockwool or hydroton or dwc or???????? Then c02... what level of c02 and what temperature and humidity. What kind of nutes in veg. How those nutes change throughout the grow period. Then flowering nutes, ripening nutes and again... temperature and humitity and c02. Don't forget that your feeding schedule is key here too. Too much water and the plants stop feeding and growing. To little and ... well... need I say more.

Bottom line you have to develop your own method with your choice of plant strain.

Personaly I grow with less plants in scrog type setup with aprox. 6" sq screen (home made). Plants are approx 2' apart each way. I take cuttings of my plants just before moving over to the flower room. My plants happen to take 8-1/2 weeks to flower. So from cutting thru veg it takes about 9 weeks before moving to flower room(2 - 3 days to cleanup and resetup the room). At the early stages of flowering, after the plants have stretched thru the screen, I supercrop. This allows the plants to spread out and maximize light to all the bud sites at the same (approx) height/distance from the light. Sometimes about halfway thru I have to supercrop again making sure that the higher colas do not get to close to the lights. This is key, because the buds getting less light do not swell and produce the necessary oils and resins to become dense and high quality but the higher buds can get burned if too close to the lights. High Quality + Dense = Weight.

Here's a note on SuperCropping... Visualize a room with say 16 plants... 4 rows of 4. If you just grow them like a bush, there is a ton of space between the plants at the canopy level where the light is simply passing thru to the floor. "Wasted lumens" imho. If you supercrop and spread your plants limbs out into those areas... the previously wasted lumens are now being eaten up by all the buds. Its a beautiful thing. It ends up looking like a flat valley of littly pine trees.

One more thing. Once you get your method dialed in, temps, feeding schedule, nute formulas, etc. ... You are not done. Even tho your room may have the best sealed and controls there are. The seasons of the year still seem to effect the performance of the plants. IOW, in my area, summer time my plants eat more... need feeding more often. Winter time they need less. AC thermostat gets adjusted totally differently as well as the dehumidifier. Everything changes with the different times of the year... as does life.

Roka, that is interesting. So you use the screen to train all the branches exactly as you want them - sounds good. What do you use for screen?

Right now I am working on a hybrid ebb & flow / recirculating DWC using 2 gall buckets with each bucket getting between 4 and 6 sq feet each.

those 360 degree light catchers are for Natural sunshine, when indoors we have only a few vertical feet from the lamp to work with.

Vegging is almost non existent in scrog, as we all know plenty of growing goes on during the stretch phase. This makes other methods almost humorous in how in efficiently we are using our grow space.

A plant that you vegged for 6 weeks would be 2-3 weeks from being finished in the scrog method with little no veg time depending lamp size.

The inventor of the method (PH)achieved 2.5 ounces per sq foot with 40 watt fluros.

The number of plants is not an issue, when we have a plant triple in size during the stretch phase. a plant that has a screen a foot above the base of the canopy gets huge.

Learn the method before you cast aside, you will rethink what is possible from your space.

Oh dam sorry ROKA didn t see your post, pardon me for trampling

Slab said:

those 360 degree light catchers are for Natural sunshine, when indoors we have only a few vertical feet from the lamp to work with.

Vegging is almost non existent in scrog, as we all know plenty of growing goes on during the stretch phase. This makes other methods almost humorous in how in efficiently we are using our grow space.

A plant that you vegged for 6 weeks would be 2-3 weeks from being finished in the scrog method with little no veg time depending lamp size.

The inventor of the method (PH)achieved 2.5 ounces per sq foot with 40 watt fluros.

The number of plants is not an issue, when we have a plant triple in size during the stretch phase. a plant that has a screen a foot above the base of the canopy gets huge.

Learn the method before you cast aside, you will rethink what is possible from your space.

Click to expand...

I'm quite familiar with the concept but remember the point is that many of us are restricted in the number of plants we can grow but not necessarily in how much space we have. Clearly if you have a 1000 sq foot basement and can legally grow 12 plants you will want those 12 to take up as much space and give them as much light as you can.

But ya, I agree if you can grow unlimited numbers of plants, short and numerous is the way to go.

RickWhite said:

Roka, that is interesting. So you use the screen to train all the branches exactly as you want them - sounds good. What do you use for screen?

Right now I am working on a hybrid ebb & flow / recirculating DWC using 2 gall buckets with each bucket getting between 4 and 6 sq feet each.

Click to expand...

I basically use braided masonry string. (braided so it doesn't fray) Twisted string will work too. I create a big square rack out of metal conduit then tie the string and weave the string. This way you can still move the string around as needed to help in training and/or supporting key components of the plants.

RickWhite said:

I'm quite familiar with the concept but remember the point is that many of us are restricted in the number of plants we can grow but not necessarily in how much space we have. Clearly if you have a 1000 sq foot basement and can legally grow 12 plants you will want those 12 to take up as much space and give them as much light as you can.

But ya, I agree if you can grow unlimited numbers of plants, short and numerous is the way to go.

Click to expand...

haha, perhaps I also didnt express clearly. that is the exact opposite of my point

one plant with no veg on avg will cover 9 sq ft under a screen. 12 plants would create 108 sq ft. of canopy. 10-13 lbs in 8 -10 weeks.

that would take 10 k watts aprox.

Slab said:

haha, perhaps I also didnt express clearly. that is the exact opposite of my point

one plant with no veg on avg will cover 9 sq ft under a screen. 12 plants would create 108 sq ft. of canopy. 10-13 lbs in 8 -10 weeks.

that would take 10 k watts aprox.

Click to expand...

You are saying that a plant put into flower straight from clone will fill a 3'X3' space and yield over 1lb?

Well I guess that is a winning plan - I'll get right on it.

Rick,
Why are you worried about keeping to your twelve plants and maximizing your yield when Michigan law states you are only allowed to possess two and a half ounces per patient? Twelve plants will produce way more than two and a half ounces per harvest. It also states that you are allowed to have twelve in flowering and twelve more in vegetative.
The setup you describe is the same that a friend of mine is doing and he yields one and a half pounds per light in a 4' x 6' area. His system is about a $6000.00 dollar set up and also utilizes CO2. He uses good genectics and has been doing this for years. I use a stationary 600 watt HPS which covers a 4' x 4' area and get a consistent pound per harvest using the same genetics. So you're basically going to produce four pounds per 600 watt light for a total of 2.98 grams per watt. Is this setup you speak of already producing or is this just conjecture?

Mycoman777 said:

Rick,
Why are you worried about keeping to your twelve plants and maximizing your yield when Michigan law states you are only allowed to possess two and a half ounces per patient? Twelve plants will produce way more than two and a half ounces per harvest. It also states that you are allowed to have twelve in flowering and twelve more in vegetative.
The setup you describe is the same that a friend of mine is doing and he yields one and a half pounds per light in a 4' x 6' area. His system is about a $6000.00 dollar set up and also utilizes CO2. He uses good genectics and has been doing this for years. I use a stationary 600 watt HPS which covers a 4' x 4' area and get a consistent pound per harvest using the same genetics. So you're basically going to produce four pounds per 600 watt light for a total of 2.98 grams per watt. Is this setup you speak of already producing or is this just conjecture?

Click to expand...

MI law says nothing about plants in vegetative or flower. It say one can possess 12 plants and 2.5oz per card holder with a max of 5 cards per caregiver. If the caregiver is also a patient that is 72 plants & 15oz. I am not concerned with having too much finished product.

As far as production, I think you are confusing me with another poster. I never made any statements about the yield of an specific setup.

I am however, interested in knowing how you are getting 1lb from a 4'X4' area.

Mycoman777 said:

Rick,
The setup you describe is the same that a friend of mine is doing and he yields one and a half pounds per light in a 4' x 6' area. His system is about a $6000.00 dollar set up and also utilizes CO2. He uses good genectics and has been doing this for years. I use a stationary 600 watt HPS which covers a 4' x 4' area and get a consistent pound per harvest using the same genetics.

Click to expand...

I will 100% back you on this statement. 1lb per 600 watt is very realistic, just as is 1-1/2 lbs per 4'x6' area (1000 watts) is real too and sometimes a little bit more. And I am talking with limited plants... not SOG.

So you're basically going to produce four pounds per 600 watt light for a total of 2.98 grams per watt. Is this setup you speak of already producing or is this just conjecture?

Click to expand...

This, however, is unrealistic. I have never seen, done or verified anyone producing 4 lbs from one 600 watt light. Would be interesting to see. Sheesh.

RickWhite said:

OK, it seems like I'm not doing a great job of getting my point across.

I don't care how many g/W I'm getting and I don't care how many lights I run. This thread isn't about that.

The only question that we are concerned with here is how to get max yield from a given number of plants. My answer to this question is to grow the plants as wide as possible and use as much space as possible.

My reasoning is that bigger plants give larger yields and that the most productive phase is vegetation. See, if one is illegally growing, that person wants to keep electrical use low and maximize yield by Watt and/or by growing area. To do that you grow many small plants.

If one is doing a legal grow and needs to stay with say 24 plants, the game changes. What I am considering is a 2'X2' area per plant - so 12 plants would take up a 4'X12' area. The plants would be topped so they don't get too tall and they would be illuminated by 2 X 600W HPS on light rails. I love the light rails because if you turn the reflector perpendicular to the rail you get massive canopy penetration from the infinitely changing angle of the light.

Anyway, this method will give a 48 sq ft canopy as opposed to say a 12 sq ft canopy for small plants. That is 4 times the yield from the same number of plants. In exchange, this will cost about 3 X the electrical (given the larger veg light). And we will not lengthen our growing time either, because when on plant restrictions one must wait to take clones.

So, in the end, you get 4 times the yield, burn 3 times as much electricity, and you get rid of 3 weeks of down time. The only thing you need is a very large growing area and the ability to burn through a decent amount of electricity.

Click to expand...

You're right Rick, I was mistaken about the twelve veg/twelve flowering plants. I work at a grow shop and the majority of the medical customers are assuming you can have twelve flowering and twelve in vegetative. I looked at the law and you are correct. There is a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of grey areas in our law at this time.

In the quote above you say "four times" the yield as opposed to keeping the twelve plants in a smaller area. Since I'm running twelve plants in a small area utilizing 600 watt HPS I assumed you were claiming that you'd get four times the amount that I can produce with the same amount of plants. Maybe I misunderstood your statement.

As far as yielding one pound in a four by four area. My setup and cultural practices are this: I use a 600 watt metal halide conversion bulb for vegging and for two weeks into flowering then I switch to the 600 watt HPS. The plants are placed into flowering at approximately ten to fourteen inches in height. I am growing Big Bud and Strawberry Kush and I typically have to use Bushmaster by Humbolt products to keep the Kush plants under control since they grow much taller than the Big Bud. I utilize CO2 with a Gen 1 CO2 generator and keep it at 1650 ppm. I use Flora Nova Grow, Liquid Karma and Dark Energy during the veg. phase and then switch to Flora Nova Bloom, Liquid Karma, and Dark Energy for flowering. In the last two weeks of flowering, I run pH corrected water and add Humboldt's Gravity at a half-teaspoon per gallon and water them twice at that rate. This product is amazing in that it adds weight and density during the last two weeks. I'd say between 10% and 15% more weight.

I am using three lights at this time and am considering using light tracks and adding another light. Since my friend is hitting at least four - four and a half pounds off his three lights, I'd like to achieve the same results.

I see, you are growing Big Bud. I have been looking at Critical Mass and LSD from Barny's Farms. I have an awesome Bubble Gum but it isn't a great yielder. Have you used Ionic and if so what do you think?

Back to the point of the thread - what do you suppose your yield would be if you grew the same number of plants but doubled your space and lighting?

Magnetar said:

I don't know which way is the best, but I know my way works best for me.
Genetics is the key, without that you won't yield very much compared to me.
We searched for decades to find the super females and we found them.
We clone the best of the best and keep only the fastest growing and most potent and tastiest clones.
Your strain must finish at 8 weeks of flower so the next crop can rotate through the flower room on time.
Hydroponics grows 3 times as fast as soil and CO2 adds another 30% more to that.
The strain you grow has to be able to take massive doses of nutrients without burning.
Your lighting has to be the right kind and very intense.
Your clones must be able to take the heat without burning.
90% of the plants out there would fry if I tried to do what I do to these plants.

Click to expand...

So which strains would you recommend are a good high yield and VERY sedative? And on top of that which ones are able to withstanding massive amounts of nutes?

And are strains like these complete bullshit?

http://bcseeds.com/p176/Oracle-Bud/product_info.html

http://bcseeds.com/p102/Elephant-Bud/product_info.html

http://bcseeds.com/p57/Euphoria-Unlimited/product_info.html

Seems wierd to me to see 1500 dollars for seeds... then again if what they claim is true then I can see that.

But Ive never heard of weed with 45% THC...I thought hash plants were up there in the mid 20's?

2000tranzam said:

So which strains would you recommend are a good high yield and VERY sedative? And on top of that which ones are able to withstanding massive amounts of nutes?

And are strains like these complete bullshit?

http://bcseeds.com/p176/Oracle-Bud/product_info.html

http://bcseeds.com/p102/Elephant-Bud/product_info.html

http://bcseeds.com/p57/Euphoria-Unlimited/product_info.html

Seems wierd to me to see 1500 dollars for seeds... then again if what they claim is true then I can see that.

But Ive never heard of weed with 45% THC...I thought hash plants were up there in the mid 20's?

Click to expand...

not sure about the bs part but at 1500 they'ed better grow them selves .i say get some proven genetic s and invest in good equipment use sound growing principals ,keep it green all the way through and you have max yeilds

I will post the set up I just finished building for a 2 600w vertical light grow. One is hanging low, one hanging higher above it. 4 plants are very close to the light bulbs, bulbs that have no hood or tube. The plants each turn on a turn table, which I built for $35, using $30 artificial Christmas tree rotaters, and 18 inch round piece of wood, 1 inch thick. I partly took apart the turners, then cut the center piece down to flesh with the base, then gorilla glued the wood on. One has been turning with a 3 foot tall plant on it for over 24 hours. The other 3 are drying right now. Once they are all turning, I will shoot a quick video of it in action. Unfortunately, though, two of the plants are almost finished, so they will not see much benefit from the set up. The other two are still vegging, so they should show the potential of the set up. I haven't seen a set up like it before, so perhaps it is new.