A few questions about growing...

[vox2]

My friend has a couple questions about growing that he needs answered. He is new and inexperienced and this will be his first time grow.

1) He said he has approx. 20x10 foot room, how many plants would this be able to hold if he plans on growing them around 4-5 feet tall?

2) He doesn't know when to Top of Fim the plants, around how tall should he do this if he still plans on growing 4-5 foot plants?

3) How many 1000Watt HPS & MH lights would he need to make this an effective grow based on how many he can fit in that room?

4) Would starting them all from clones, and then changing all the bulbs out in the room when its time to flower be a good idea? He wants to maximize the amount of initial yield instead of having half the room veg and half the room flower.

Thank you for any helpful replies, it is very much appreciated.

[Mor3BL7]

2 1000 watt HPS would be suffice

[zombo.com]

he might be able to get by with 2, using a light mover, but it wouldn't be optimal.

Might be better to look at several 600 watts. 4 of those= only 2400 watts, with greater coverage.

with no light mover he'd want at least 3 1kw lamps. how many he can fit is going to come down to practice. Tell him to start with one lamp. experiment from there. sativas need a big pot, 5 gallon bucket or so usually, and will require more room. Sativas can do with less, and won't normally spread out as much, but because they're denser you can have mold issues from humidity, unless you've taken that into account. Down the road he might also put in a trellis at canopy height to train them to, which will increase yield while maximizing space usage. There's a lot of options basically, depending on how he ends up doing things. (which may have nothing in common with how he starts doing things. I know i've rebuilt 4 or 5 times as i learned more, or expanded, or decided to try something new.)

I had a nice sticky, "things to ask yourself before your first grow" that was just awesome, let me see if i can find where i archived it.

edit, ok it's restuck. but basically tell him to first just try and grow pot that lives, then grow pot that's Healthy...then worry about refinements like "how many can i stuff into one space"

[vox2]

Unfortunately he doesn't have the option of only growing a few plants his first time. He needs to maximize the yield off his first grow to make up for what it costs to start it all up.

He plans on starting with all Indica because of their ability to adapt to indoor conditions better.

If practicing on a few plants was an option he would take it but he needs to start all of them at once.

He actually got the room measured today and its actually 15x10. About how many plants could you grow from veg to flower within a space of that size? Remember he can grow them up to 4-5 feet tall and he plans on Fiming/Topping the plants.

[zombo.com]

there's still some problems. Is the whole area a flower chamber? if so where is he going to veg these plants before they go in there? does he need space/lights for a mother, or is he only going to do this once and never again? (if he plans on more than one round, then he needs room for mother/clones/vegging.) (luckily that doesnt take much room, a 3 or 4 foot square spots enough to veg quite a few babys in dixie cups. )

indicas should take up a little less space, say a square foot each, but he still has to be able to get into and around all the plants. Plus how many lights and how he hangs them is going to be important too.

I think you said hes doing soil, has he decided what he's putting them in?

Examples: if he's flowering clones as soon as they're rooted he can get away with smaller pots and more plants. If he wants to grow some 5 foot sativas, he's pretty much locked into big 3-5 gallon buckets.

see what i'm saying? print out that "questions to ask yourself before your first grow" checklist for him...it's not homework. everything in there is shit he needs to know before putting plants in the ground if he needs this op to be right from the get go.

Not to mention the big question, Does he have enough plants AVAILABLE to fill the space? does he have a mother to clone off of? does he have clones vegging already? can he make enough cuttings to fill the space?
if he's buying seeds has he planned for the males?

i could just tell you 5 pounds a cycle, but i'd just be talking out my ass without some ground work in ya know?

[vox2]

He actually plans on going Hydro for his first grow. He isn't using soil, he really wants to maximize the yields he receives off his first harvest and I had him read over the check list.

He actually has the perfect spot for keeping a mother and clones, so it is possible to have them. He just wanted to utilize the huge space purely for bringing as many plants as possible through veg and then into and through the flowering stage.

He told me he had access to clones so he could start his grow, so I don't believe he will be using seeds.

[zombo.com]

does he have any experience with growing? hydro's ambitious for your first time.

He's got options there as well, with the space he could put in two 4x8 flood tables, with 2 thousand watt lights over each. that's a good modular setup, takes advantage of the space and leaves him a couple feet of clearance to move around in.

From there he could do a number of things, ebb and flow system using grow bags filled with some kind of medium, rockwool slabs that fill up the whole thing, and big as cubes to start them in. He could do a drip system, or eb and flow.
Or he could go with an NFT system, the ones that look like big pvc pipes joined together, with holes for each plant.

Or 5 gallon buckets, fed off of a barrel with a gravity pump on it....those are actually pretty damned nifty, you daisy chain the buckets together, and a 55 gallon res feeds like 18 of them. It's nicely modular and expandable.Much more expensive to set up then just doing ebb and flow on the flood tables.

Whats the budget on this project? Oh..one thing that should go on the shopping list first thing, is a good 240v light controller.

it wires in to a 240v circuit, and will allow you to run 3 or 4 HID lamps on a single circuit...that can be dicey on a 120 circuit. also it's more efficient power wise. they come in a variety 4-8 socket, and they aren't real cheap. But their damned worth it if you're using 3 or 4 lights.

[lotek]

u guys have never actually used a 1kw have u?

they will only grow killer bud in a 3x3 area.. ud need like 10 of them.

u and him will fail if u strart out that big. get a 2x4 and a 4x4 tent, a 400w mh and a 1kw hps.use the 4x4 for flower. u have much to learn.

marijuanapassion.org go there, u need more help than this site will be able to give.

[lotek]

but dont let them know u are doing it for profit like it sounds or they will ban you

[ArmsMerchant]

I'd recommend against hydro--too much stuff to go wrong. We used five-gallon buckets, in a good-sized room, with two 1000-watt halides. Most all the growers up here use Pro-Mix as their growing medium.

[zombo.com]

he'd never be able to heat dump that many lotek. Not to mention the challenges of running 10 kilowatts on a residential circuit.

2 per 4x8 has done well by me, although i really wish i'd gone with 3 or 4 600 watts instead.

[lotek]

a 10x20- is just too big. for any residential grow. dont do that big of a hydro yr first time u will fail. divide it into 4 rooms. something. i had a 1kw in a 7x7 and it was WEAK. i could use a 4x4 spot in the center but the outside got almost no light. so much wasted light. a white 6x6x8room with a 1kw hangin in the center vert stlye will give u waaay better weed than any way u could ever work that 10z20 with 2 1kw lights. i had problems thru 6 or 7 crops cause of using 1 light in a hood. wall off the room into a workshop, 2 flower rooms with a vert light, and veg in the workshop.

[zombo.com]

a 10x20- is just too big. for any residential grow. dont do that big of a hydro yr first time u will fail. divide it into 4 rooms. something.

hmm, there you go, 4 5x5 plots, each with a 4x4 flood table and a single thousand watt light.


math fail...8 5x5 plots...yeah dude, seriously that's pretty ambitious for a first try.

[lotek]

the 10x1kw thing was a joke about the size of the room lol. if it were a legit grow that big it would be something like that. but with 600s since 1kw kinda suck.