Yield per Square Foot? Indoor Grow

[Dislexus]

Hmmm... I did not know that

But what indoor grow leaves its flower room empty for 2 weeks? Not mine perpetual bizznazz

 

[milehighmedical]

Last round in FF soil with Botanicare nutes... 1-1.5 per sq ft.

If you try hard enough, I believe the upper ceiling is around 4+ per. It's really more important for the smaller grows. It's really simple, in a tight scrog you just pull all the plants colas tighter together so the same plant is using less square footage. All the space in between colas is useless. This allows you to have more plants in less space, which allows you to lower your light more and sacrifice a part of your lighting footprint in exchange for greater light intensity and ultimately a higher yield.

 

[Red Swan]

Done

 

[SOTF420]

Dislexus,
Save the bleach. In open air, pollen only lives a couple weeks.

And leave it to a Californian to bring Karma into the mix... lol
ET

I did'nt bring Karma into anything, the universe did.

 

[roshizzzz]

Wow... Thanks to everyone for so much info that's useful!! Aiming now at SCROG (I love these terms!) in a 3'x3' space, using Coco and nutes from Cana (I've got a local hydro store that I'm turning to for hand-holding and they recommend this) and as much light as I can deal with.

Question: my plant limit is 6. Is six a good number of plants in a 3x3 SCROG?

Other Question: of course I.m missing lots of things 'cause I'm an indoor newb.. but am I really missing something here?

Again... MUCHO Thanks!

 

[roshizzzz]

Another Other Question:

Seems like SOG - SCROG is a continuum. That is, a SOG becomes a SCROG when the plants are allowed to get larger than normal SOG-size?

True, or am I in a BOG without a COG because I'm such a WOG, if not a HOG?

 

[mikeross]

Another Other Question:

SThat is, a SOG becomes a SCROG when the plants are allowed to get larger than normal SOG-size?

You got it mixed up if you want to look at it that way. I would say the more the scrog fills in it resembles more of a SOG... not the other way around.

 

[VerdantGreen]

But...scrog is a veg intensive method that also ties up bloom room time waiting for the screen to fill. Also labor intensive. Not knocking your grow at all VG...most impressive, but this demonstrates the weakness of yield calculations. A sog won't yield like a scrog but it's faster with as little as zero veg time.
ET

hi ET, most of the strains i use dont get vegged onto the screen at all before flip. they are vegger for maybe 2 weeks from rooting and then potted up and thrown in the flower cab where the stretch easily fills the foot square screen. i have more problems with too much growth than too little.
some strains you will have to veg for longer though

rio - 6 plants would be fine for 3x3. use big pots

V.

 

[whatissixbynine]

.

 

[HyDroid]

This should shed some light on the situ:

http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/yor/yor.htm

I've heard it's pretty good.... It's probably already on this thread, I found it in another thread with a similar title.

 

[roshizzzz]

The great info keeps coming. Thanks!

Question:
VG suggested, "6 plants would be fine for 3x3. use big pots"
1. Does this imply that I could grow 6-in-SCROG in a smaller than 3x3 space (and pack more light onto those puppies)?
2. Why big pots?
3. What size is a big pot?
(first grow will be coco, with Canna supplies)

Thanks again. This thread, with all this SOG/SCROG talk, makes me happy as a FROG in PRAGUE.

 

[Hank Hemp]

No Brag

No Brag

We 're talking 1K HPS, 7 plants, 24sf, got 19 oz. I wasn't happy. The most I have ever got was close to 2 lb, with this setup. Organic nutes, in 5gal pots form clones.

 

[VerdantGreen]

The great info keeps coming. Thanks!

Question:
VG suggested, "6 plants would be fine for 3x3. use big pots"
1. Does this imply that I could grow 6-in-SCROG in a smaller than 3x3 space (and pack more light onto those puppies)?
2. Why big pots?
3. What size is a big pot?
(first grow will be coco, with Canna supplies)

Thanks again. This thread, with all this SOG/SCROG talk, makes me happy as a FROG in PRAGUE.

1. yes, but even though you can pack the buds into a small space there is a limit, so you want to light as large an area as you can at around 60watts per square foot imo. my modular scrogs are about a square foot each.
2. big pot = big plant and big buds. with scrog you can control the height of the plant to a large extent so you want it to be as large as possible. within reason
3. i use as big as i can get in my cab - 4x4 gallon.

cheers

V.

 

[milehighmedical]

Yeah, use big pots for sure. I went with three gallons to save on soil and regret it. Never going less than 5 gal again. Although you are using coir from my understanding, so that changes a lot. You can grow some pretty big trees in 3 gallons of coir, it's a lot different than soil. Although if you got the extra bucks, and are committed to the veg time, get the 5 gallon buckets. They always help unless you don't veg long enough and a massive part of your medium is untouched. Then you have other issues anyways.

Have fun. Don't be disappointed if you fail... just keep trying and don't give up.

 

[VerdantGreen]

true, coir does allow for bigger plants in smaller pots if you get the feeding right and everything, but as mhm says, bigger is still better if you can.

V.

 

[Lazyman]

Oh I don't know about that, I've seen my buddy yield 4-6 ounces a plant out of girls 4 feet tall, in one gallon pots of Canna soil. He feeds them a lot and waters daily sometimes, but I didn't believe it either and asked if I could pull one out of her pot to see how rootbound she was. Not one bit! Roots were nice and white, not spun around, and the plant was healthy and vigorous. Just takes the right fertigation schedule and I think you can pull off small pots. I'm doing an experiment with 2 gallon pots and larger plants right now, I think they'll hit 3-4 feet finished but I'm not going to up-pot them.

 

[250wscrogger]

Max yield from a 3x3 with a 600?

16 1.6 gallon pots vegged 2-3 weeks depending on strain. You should get around 1oz per plant with most strains if you prune/feed correctly. Scrog usually ends up yielding less and taking much more time overall...I'm not hatin on scrog by any means just telling you what I have learned from experience

 

[whatissixbynine]

.

 

[250wscrogger]

?

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

From yield-o-rama:

Indoor cannabis production is a highly specialized and intensive form of agriculture. Unlike outdoor field or row crop agriculture, which bases productivity on acres, productivity in greenhouses is calculated on a per square foot basis. But unlike greenhouses, which make use of natural sunlight, the overwhelming majority of indoor cannabis gardens are lit entirely by artificial lighting. This puts indoor cannabis gardens in a class of their own.

Light, Space and Indoor Productivity
Outdoor and greenhouse growers base their productivity on yield per unit of area without much concern over the lighting the area receives. The thinking being that the intensity offered from natural sunlight is equal from grower to grower, and that open fields and sunny locations are sought out and selected by those growers to ensure that. The only changes in lighting they need to contend with are those doled out by Mother Nature, something they have no control over. Indoor cannabis gardens are not so fortunate. Indoor light intensity is not equal from grower to grower, and because indoor production depends so strongly on light intensity, the degree to which the average square foot of indoor growing space is productive will vary considerably depending on the type and intensity of artificial lighting chosen by each grower.

For indoor cannabis growers to enjoy the same benefits as conventional outdoor or greenhouse growers, whereby they can discuss and project yields on equal grounds based on past performance, they must account for not only space in their productivity language and calculations but artificial lighting as well. The YOR accounts for these variables by using square feet of canopy space and the average lumens available to that space in its productivity histories and projections. The inseparable interplay between space and available light is crucial to indoor growers, both will ultimately determine the production.

In the same way outdoor and greenhouse growers carefully select a location for their operation, indoor growers carefully select a canopy space within their location (closet, basement, spare bedroom, etc) on which they'll focus their light. The lamp too must be carefully chosen if a target production from that space is to be met.

Targeting Production - Finding and Synchronizing Production with Consumption
One goal of personal-use indoor growers is to divorce themselves from the black market. To be completely self-sustaining a grower needs to produce enough in one harvest to last him to the next. The alternatives - doing without or revisiting the black market - are not acceptable to most. To avoid that a grower must size his indoor garden to at least meet his own personal production needs. Most growers can estimate their needs by finding their weekly cannabis consumption and multiplying it by the number of weeks it takes to grow one full crop. This synchronizes the supply (production) with the demand (consumption).

Vegetative & Turnaround Times
The duration of a full crop depends largely on the maturity (flowering) time of the cannabis strain being grown, and to a lesser extent on the preparatory (vegetative) time preceding it. And though there are growing techniques for shortening or eliminating vegetative time, adding about three weeks of vegetative time to the strain's maturity time is usually a good estimate for the number of weeks it takes to grow one full crop (also known as crop cycle time or turnaround time). Generally speaking, crop turnaround time is about 12 weeks, thus a grower can produce about four crops per year, and each crop would ideally produce what the grower consumes during that 12 weeks.

Safety Margin
Once consumption for the crop turnaround time is known, a crop production target can be established. Experienced growers see production rise and fall from crop to crop even though their garden is in a controlled indoor environment, as the hills and valleys in the graphic at the top of this page indicate. To make up for dips in production, a surplus of about 15% is added to the target as a rainy day safety margin. Some growers like to grow twice as much as they consume, or more, as a safety margin and as a way of planning an extended vacation between crops. Consider your own preferences, then adjust your production target accordingly.

Now that the production target in grams or ounces is known, a decision is made as to how much space and light are needed to meet that target. Space, light, and yield are so integrally tied to one another that you can't change one without affecting the others (see the Lighting Resources for more on space and light). In a perfect world you'd have more light and more space than you could ever want. In the real world, however, indoor real estate is at a premium, and security and cost concerns can nag at a grower to keep space and energy consumption down. This is where priorities are discovered.

One Priority - A Rock or a Hard Place
Is there more space available than could ever possibly be used, or is there limited space that might be too small to meet the production target? If space is limited, one can opt to give the space priority by using more light per square foot of canopy space. Space priority uses more light with less space, but produces the best yield for the available space. If space is unlimited, one can opt to give the light priority by using less light per square foot of canopy space. Light priority uses more space with less light, but produces the best yield for the available lamp.

Most growers want to get all the yield possible from both their lamp and their space. But as you'll see in the Production Table shown on the next page, the interplay occurring between space, lumens, and yield forces a grower to choose which is more important to him.

The Haunting
Because the construction of many grow spaces usually involves hammer meeting nail, the semi-permanent nature of the space can become a nightmare if a grower overestimated its production potential. Tearing down and rebuilding a grow space because it doesn't live up to expectations is something every grower wants to avoid, but most have probably done. Likewise, purchasing new lighting because old lighting proved inadequate is an extra expense that can be avoided with good planning.

Poor planning is usually the result of not having a realistic production target, or guessing at the space and light combination needed to meet it. Armed with a realistic self-sustaining yield target, the predictive resources shown below can help a new indoor grower take the guesswork out of planning, and thus avoid the dreaded re-work and second expenses that come back to haunt so many growers. However, if you don't know your target production, two of the yield calculators contain a self-sufficiency planner to assist you in that regard.

And...

About the Projected Yields
Yields were calculated using coefficients from Moon Doggie's Analyses for Lumens, 100% HPS Lumens, Hydroponic Media, and for a grower with average gardening experience (5 on a scale from 1 to 10) using a 63-day strain. Thus the yields shown on this page reflect those of the average hydro grower who uses HPS light exclusively.

Given the variable nature of weighing cannabis yields, of normal crop-to-crop production fluctuations, and differences due to acquired productivity skills, your actual yield will vary from those shown. However, if care is taken to avoid extremes, and if you planned for that rainy day surplus, with some normal growing experience you should have no trouble attaining these yields and will most likely exceed them after one or two crops. As mentioned above, these yields were computed for a grower with average gardening experience, not the Albert Einsteins or Michael Jordans or gurus of the growing world.

Using the Table
The table can be used several ways depending on what you know and what you want to find. Here's a few suggestions.

For space priority - Scan horizontally across the table.
For light priority - Scan vertically up and down the table.

If you know your space limitations and target production, but don't know what lighting to use. Find your canopy space in the left column then read across the line until you find a colored cell within the shaded area that meets your target production. The color coding suggests which lamp will supply the lumens for that yield.

If you have your HPS lamp and know your target production, but don't know what space to use. Find the color code for your lamp in the HPS Lamp Color Key, then in the shaded area look for your target production in cells having that color, there may be several. Consider the tradeoffs you'll be making between light and space, then choose the one that best fits your priorities.