Flower in 2 or 3 gal w/ 23 plants in 20sf?

[mikessong]

I have 23 clones in 20sf, 8 feet height. I'd like to grow them untrained and tightly packed, more spaced out than a typical SOG but not bushes, height could get to 4 or 5 feet if they can handle it horizontally. I have mostly sativa dominants, and I'd like to test them out with fairly natural growth so I can see which ones I'd like to continue growing.

Right now the plants are veg'ing in 1 gal coco pots. They're 4-12" and the roots are probably getting pretty thick in there. I'll probably go to 12/12 when they're about 12-18" and I'm trying to figure out if I should flower in 2 or 3 gal. pots? Especially given what I read and am experiencing about coco's growth properties. I have the 3 gallons, along with a few 2's, and they can all fit in there. I don't mind the room being crowded, but will the plants growth get too crowded? Is constraining the roots in 2 gal. pots going to be better? Thanks...

 

[Guest]

20 SQFT!!! FUCK I GROW IN 16 SQFT and your not growing 23 plants....if you are it a really small SOG and "height could get to 4 or 5 feet if they can handle it horizontally"
not going to happend in 20SQFT...lol anyways im just high....im sure some experts will chime in... my point... 20SQFT is too little for 23 plants...



23 x 2 gal containers in a 20 SQ FT AREA?

so each plant has .9 SQFT!!!


I like to get rootbound in a 1 gal in veg and then transplant into 2gal veg another 1 week then set into flwoer... with 2-3 feet tall plants .... 5 gal would be a long veg...

 

[mikessong]

I thought one plant per sq. ft is pretty standard. Not so with coco? I usually see Sog's at like 4 plants per sq. ft. You flower when they're 2-3 ft? I definitely don't want to go that high.

So I guess the other question is how high should I let the plants get for 1 per sq. ft? And to get that height when should I switch to flower?

 

[Guest]

there going to want to spread out...my veg area is 2x3 and 4' tall....when the plants are to big for that area they go into the 4x4 table that has about 4x6 of area around it..they always out grow that tray into the walls...

 

[humble1]

i have a mix of twos and threes and so far (about halfway) the twos are doing just as well as the threes and have a smaller footprint.

i say go for the twos.

 

[mikessong]

humble1, that's interesting. so the 3 gallons aren't stretching out more than the 2's? that kind of makes me want to go with the 3's, since it seems they won't get much more crowded than the 2's. my hope is the 3 gallons will give me bigger buds but not much bigger plants. what do you think?

 

[Guest]

i would put them into the 2 gallon pots and veg them for a week, week and a half then flip them. 23 plants might be pushing it, I would'nt go over 20 personally even with taller sativa dom plants. These were in 2 gallon pots of coco and perlite, veg'd to about 12", finished up at about 35-37", yielded 2.5-3 oz each. I did'nt top them ones and did some very light training just to get my side branches up.



You will get alot of plant from 2 gallons of coco, I would'nt use a 3 gallon pot unless I was making some serious bushes.

 

[humble1]

I'm with supernuck on this one.

seems like i'm always agreeing with canadians... huh

anyway, i run a 3x6 tray with 24 plants and a 3x3 with twelve plants

if i only had two gallon bags in there i could fit an extra row of four to top out at 28 plants.

if you want to max the size out of the three gallons you'll have to do more veg, otherwise it's just wasted medium. it's not much medium but waste not, want not.

plus a little squeeze one the rootmass can increase the density of the rootball itself

 

[Guest]

I'm kinda partial to using the 3 gallon pots if you've got the room for all the plants. Hand watering once a day, the pots provided a larger reservoir for the young plants. For about a third of my grow, I could get runoff by watering with a liter a day. You're using a drip system but I'd think the larger pot size should still help maintain a more stable root environment even with multiple waterings. But even when I get my drip system set up, I'll still water only once a day, until I have to cure a rising ec.

I haven't grown like you're gonna grow though and I've also not grown 23 plants at once so I don't know if the added benefit of potentially larger plants due to a larger root mass would apply to you.

Peace bro

 

[mikessong]

Thanks guys, I guess the consensus is 2. I'll probably go for 2's or a mixture of 2's and 3's for my favorites. My question is why not use all available space for roots? If that would maximize yield, that's more important to me than if the extra medium, water, nutes, etc. aren't used as efficiently. To me, the best reason not to use 3's is if they will encourage the plants to get too big for the space they have and make them unhappy. But I am counting on the plant crowding and available light to limit how wide each plant streches out. Is that how it works? As you can tell this is my first grow.

So if I'm using mostly 2 gal's for 23 plants in 20sf, what height should I flower them at? Supernuck I know you said week / and a half but I got these clones at different times from different breeders. I'm not sure if I should start flowering all together or give the smaller ones a bit more veg time so they don't get dwarfed. For example I have a Kali Mist that's shot up to 12", and a White Widow that's around 9" - I hear certain pheno's of the Widow could strech past five feet if I flip now. But I have a few Bubba's that are only around 4", if I flip those now they'll probably be a foot and a half or two, right? I guess if you could tell me general veg heights and flower heights I should be shooting for around 1 plant/ sf, that would be a big help and then I'll research the individual strains and figure out which I need to adjust.

 

[mikessong]

Thanks Mojo, we posted at the same time...FYI I'm hand watering too not drip...I'm thinking of mixing 2's with as many 3's as I can fit (they're actually a little too tight on their own.) So please see above post for my height question, thanks.

 

[Guest]

Nice, man. Hate it when that happens, lol. Bubbas are sure small for flower, I'd think. Don't know what your height restrictions are - ya probably said it in here but I'm kinda floating in and out right now - but I flipped my White Widow at 10 days and 14". She stretched like a bitch and finished at 90+ days, 5'9" from coco to tip of cola. She was a good producer though and she's reveged.

Peace

 

[mikessong]

Yeah, Mojo, it musta been your Widow I was thinking of. That's crazy! I plan to re-veg too with the best of mine, to clone though not flower.

The concept I'm going for here is like the concept of SOG - basically each plant is devoted to the main cola. But I don't have the height restriction of SOG and I have more width to play with, 10.5" squared. This is my first grow so I'm not sure how this would work, how much side branching could fit in there. BTW this plan didn't develop as my method to maximize yield - it was because being a newb, there were so many strains I want to grow and when I hit the clubs the stuff just got better, I couldn't say no. KK's SC and HPK, sure! Dabney Blue?! ECSD? I'll take 2! Now I'm at 23 total! And I'd like to give these girls some decent growth - I'd rather just sacrifice the bubba's or something than grow a mini dabney.

I guess I'll flip each strain at a different time, but I'd like to know what general height that should be for 1 plant/10.5 inch squared? That width is the only restriction - I have 8 feet so no height restriction - except I assume at a certain height they'll need more width. Of course if I got my act together and learned some pruning methods, I'd probably find the best answer - I'd guess I should prune side branches like Supernuck but before they get that big.

 

[Guest]

Just to give you an idea of what happened with my grow, two plants were in a closet (26" deep X 7.5' wide X 8' high). Lighting= 400W HPS/MH over the White Widow and 600W HPS/MH over the Aurora Indica. Flipped at 10 days veg = WW 14" / AI 12". Within a month, the WW had stretched to just short of 5' and her wingspan was at about 2 feet. AI was about a foot shorter and stayed pretty much at that height for the rest of the grow. The WW on the other hand, slowed way down but continued to stretch a little till she ended up at her finished height. I had the 400W propped up on one corner by the top wire shelf in the closet cause the yoyo's I used let the light hang too low and I was all the way up against the stop knot in the yoyo's cord. Would have taken the light down and re-rigged it, but the closet was cramped and I was afraid I'd drop the light on the plant and ruin everything, lol. Fear is a terrible thing, lol.

Wingspan on both plants ended up at 30"-40". Hard to tell cause the limbs were up against the walls and I couldn't move the plants for fear of the limbs snapping on me. As it turned out, even with fairly extensive tying up of limbs, the limbs snapped (actually bent, not snapped) anyway during the last 10 days of the grow. I did some off-the-wall things with my "PK" and part "A" dosing during the last 4 weeks and it payed off so well in bud size, I'll do it every grow till I find a strain that won't tolerate, if that ever happens, lol.

Hope that helps, man. I seem to keep dancing around what you're really asking. Hope I hit it this time, dude.

Anyway, dude. I get what you're trying to do with your grow and I've never done it, so I don't know how much the crowding and 2 gal pot size (rather than the 3 gal I used) might influence the height and breadth of your plants. I had overlap in both the plants and the footprints of the lights. Seriously, the limbs of each plant were staggered together in the middle of the closet. 7.5' wide closet! Overlap, if ya look in my thread at the middle of the plants was about 12"-18".

Peace and luck to ya bro. Holler at me if ya think I might know something useful to your grow. I'm gonna be pulling up a chair for the grow dude, if ya got room for me. Thanks for the thread, man.

 

[mikessong]

I went with the 3 gallon's. I transplanted 20 of the girls into them, and 3 into 1.75 gal's to make them fit. I'll have 3 Sour Diesels in the 1.75's, and 3 in the 3's - it should be interesting to see the yield difference. FYI, the only way I could fit all those 3 gallon's in there was to use flexible plastic pot saucers which will bend and not take up more space than the pots.

Still trying to figure out the heights - my Kali Mist and OG's are around 13-14", and I'm thinking I'd like to keep the final heights to 4 - 4.5 feet max, so I'm thinking of flipping those now. However, there are a lot that are 6-10" that I'd like to give a few more days. This leads to my current question:

Can I have veg'ing and flowering plants in the same room? I'm thinking of taking the few tall girls out of the 20/4 veg room after 12 hours and putting them in a sealed cabinet to give them 12/12. Any problems with putting them back in the same room with plants that are veg'ing? FYI these are all females (clones).

 

[Guest]

Had a reply all typed out and hit the wrong key and it just fuckin disappeared, lol.

Oh well, I'll try to remember it. Having a short term memory prob though, hehe.

I wouldn't put the girls back into veg mode at this point. Stress at this point ya really ought to try to avoid.

Glad to see ya went with the 3 gal where you could. I went straight from solo seedling cups to the 3 gals. They stress every time their transplanted so I decided to just do it once. Watered just around where the seedling's root would be instead of the whole pot for a couple of days or so. I figured it would make the roots really stetch out in all directions and it did. Further out they got, the less water they found and the further out they went, etc. By the third day, the plants had regained their turgor and never looked back. Minimal water required for a 20% runoff and no more transplanting.

20/4 is the veg schedule I use too and always will. Really seems to pull the most from the plant while giving it just enough darkness for it to regroup and catch it's breath.

I'd flip the ones that are at 14" pretty quickly, if I were you. My thoughts on my grow were that tripling the height would give me a 4-1/2 foot plant. WRONG! Almost ran out of room...

With the number of plants you're talking about, I'd flip the rest pretty soon too. The Widow's are gonna stretch like a son of a bitch and those nice tight little internodes are about to be a thing of the past, lol. Not to worry, ya should start seeing growth tips poppin out everywhere on it when it really kicks in. I thought mine was gonna poke a hole in the ceiling and then it just stopped... lol. Last two or three weeks it only grew taller by a couple of inches. Go easy on the Widow's food. I ever only got up to 6mL/gal with mine during the whole grow. I used just over a liter each of A+B my whole grow. Over a pound of good "recipe" and the nutes cost probably $100. That's one of the really nice things about the White Widow - it's very efficient at making the most out of what it takes in. That and it's pretty fuckn nice weed, hehe. Really nice high/stone combo thing. Just about the time I start to think it's not strong enough, it kicks my ass, hehehe.

Peace bro

 

[mikessong]

They're all still in veg, I'd never switch back and forth! The Widow's at 10" and so tight, I guess that's about ready to flip so goodbye to that! My Kali Mist and 2 OG Kush Abusives are at 13-14" and so streched, maybe half a dozen branches on each! I'm going to flip them either today or tomorrow - I'm researching the Abusives, and some people say they flipped at 12" and ended at 23", some say they triple or quadruple. Hard to know what accounts for the differences.

So if I do flip those few tallest ones now, will it be a problem if they do their twelve hours of light with other 6" plants that are still in veg? Like any stress/sex problems (they're all female clones)?

 

[Guest]

If you're talking about them just sharing the same light with the others, no prob if you then move them back to darkness for 12. Is that what you're asking?

Yeah with the way you're going to grow these out, I'd make the switch soon. First grow for ya like this, ya may not be able to get all the shit worked out perfectly, but any mistakes ya make, ya learn from, hehe. If ya find out ya flipped em a little late this time and you've got to poke a hole in the roof, next time ya don't make that mistake, lol.

Peace

 

[mikessong]

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about and now doing. The 14 inchers Kali Mist and Abusive OG's are now under 12/12. My White Widow and Ghost OG's are at 11" so they're next. If I flip the Widow at 12" I'd hope she'll stay under 4 or 4.5'! Mojo, when you had that Widow grow, how close was the light during veg and early flower? I haven't read about a stretch as big as yours, but I do think I'm in for a big stretch because my Widow sounds similar to yours. It's very sativa with very narrow leaves and is the lightest feeder of any of my 15 or so strains. I've read about a lot of Widows that are more Indica and only double or so.

Anyway, I hope I haven't waited too long with these - if they do get to 5' that's doable. And hey if they do go crazy I guess I could cut a hole into my upstairs neighbor's floor space! I already cut a big hole in my rented wall to exhaust.

 

[mikessong]

I flowered the Widow at 12", so 4 plants have been flowering for a few days. While the lights are still on in my grow room 20/4 for the other 19 plants, I've been storing the flowering girls in a cabinet for 12 hours. I seal it up to prevent light leaks, but this also means no fresh air. I haven't noticed any problems for the first few days other than high humidity when they come out but thankfully no mold. Is this something I can get away with, or do I need to figure out another solution asap?

I could put them in my bathroom which has a fan, although I don't know if it will do any good once I seal it for light. At least it's bigger than the cabinet they're in now, but it would suck not to have a bathroom for 12 hours!