What Is Your Grow Shape?

[Jimster]

I recently finished my last latest grow but looking back, I think I do it much differently than most and get a great yield because of it. My room is roughly 12' X 7' with a 7'cieling. I have two 1000w HID bulbs hanging vertical, about 4 ft apart. The walls are painted bright white and the shades only cover the top few inches, allowing a lot of light to go out horizontally. Instead of putting the plants directly under the lights, I move them around the periphery of the room. As the plants grow taller, they get a lot of side lighting which really increases the yield. The bright white reflects a lot of light and the side of the plant facing the wall grows tall. The side facing the bulbs are laid out horizontally...as much as possible. When everything is done, I get large spear colas from the branches that grew tall and tons of lateral buds from the center of the room, where the branches are laid out under the light. This works great and the side lighting really adds to the yield. Does anyone else do this side lighting thing, or only from directly above?

 

[Thecalikid]

Above
Ive wanted to put some side lighting as well but never have

 

[Jimster]

Above
Ive wanted to put some side lighting as well but never have

I have bought a bunch of 50 watt COB lights that hook up straight to 120v and don't require any drivers. I'm going to try to cobble something together for filling in one end of the room, where the reflected light is lower than the other areas. I have also bought a couple cheap Chinese units, so I'm going to experiment a little in filling up the darker areas. One advantage to having the lights in the middle is that the plants can get a lot taller, since they don't bump into the bulbs in the center, and I get a lot of side growth. The biggest issue is access to the water, which is at the opposite end of the room, requiring a hike thru the jungle to provide water...the center of the room gets pretty thick and it is actually necessary to crawl under them to get to the hose/spigot.

 

[Thecalikid]

Any way i see a pic? That sounds like a pain to have to crawl though... Mine can be a pain to water and this round has been especially hard cause i have a broken leg

 

[Jimster]

Any way i see a pic? That sounds like a pain to have to crawl though... Mine can be a pain to water and this round has been especially hard cause i have a broken leg

Sorry...I don't have any pictures, but imagine a room that is roughly 12 X 8, with a 7 ft ceiling. I start with 6x 5 gallon buckets, each with 1 sprout in it. The two bulbs are mounted in the middle of the room, about 3-4 ft apart. I start with the buckets directly below one bulb as the sprouts grow. As they grow, I spread them out to keep from crowding. When they get too big, I turn on bulb #2 and re-arrange the buckets to keep them under the two bulbs as much as possible. I keep moving the plants away from each other as they grow (I also split the main branches once or twice and train the branches to grow as horizontal as possible. Eventually, the plants keep getting pushed apart and towards the walls (which are painted bright white) and end up being two buckets on each side and one bucket at each end, surrounding the lights. I let half of the main branches grow more or less straight up unless they get too tall, while the other half of the branches are semi horizontal and spread out under the lights. It IS a MAJOR pain in the ass to water them, but it gets like a jungle in there with huge colas and a nice supply of smaller buds from the side lighting...otherwise the bottom branches produce very little because the light doesn't reach down thru the canopy. If I had the spigot on the opposite wall, I wouldn't have anything to complain about! The only issue I have is at one end of the room, where it is slightly less illuminated because of the way it is set up...a small cheap LED panel should take care of the problem.

 

[Thecalikid]

So you have six plants and two 1k watt lights right? What do you yield and how long are you vegging if the plants are hitting 6 ft tall

 

[UncleRomulus]

I’ve always dreamt of a octagonal growspace with parabolic reflector lol

 

[Jimster]

So you have six plants and two 1k watt lights right? What do you yield and how long are you vegging if the plants are hitting 6 ft tall

Things are drying and curing, so I'm not sure of the yield yet, but there was a big difference between the yield on some plants VS others. The Grandaddy Purple had pistils on it from the start and had big, spongy buds, the Black Diesel was shorter and very leafy/bushy and had an average yield so far, although I think the GDP was a bigger yield. Trainwreck was a decent yield but had fluffier buds. The three old school Sativa's that I ran all had good yields with nice buds, but not in nugget form. The biggest problem with the Sativa is that they grow so tall even with a lot of training. Mine actually grew above the horizontal level of the lights but, since they were surrounding the lights, I still got a lot of light to the tops and got some nice 12" or so colas from them.
I first noticed years back that the plants that grew in the corners of the room grew best and had bigger yields than the plants directly under the lights. This is the 1st year I tried using 6 females, usually I have 4 or 5, but had an extra this year. This is what caused me to spread the plants out to surround the lights and is by far my biggest yield. By letting some of the plants go until the fan leaves shriveled and dried up...sort of like field corn late in the season, I easily bulked the buds up by 2X compared to what I normally saw by following the standard % of trichome method that is used for determining when things are ready. It is a lot stickier and bulkier with a lot more aroma than the buds taken down 2 weeks earlier, following the sage advice of 30% cloudiness.
I let them veg from seed pop roughly 8 weeks. The Sativa's should have probably been turned to 12/12 a week earlier, but they grow lanky and tall, so they are a bitch to keep under control...I couldn't imagine trying to grow one in a tent. The others were given to me as clones and were about 8" tall when I started. They all grew up together, but the Sativas (started from seeds) were a little behind the clones but caught up and then some by week 6. Regarding my choice of lights...I use a MS1000 and a Eye Blue Hortilux for growing, and a MS1000 and a 1000w HPS conversion bulb for flowering. The HPS DOES make a difference in the final product, but they did pretty good under the MS1000 as well. FWIW, the MS1000 usually has a little more red in it's spectrum compared to regular M1000 bulbs, which are mostly blue in color. Again...this is my opinion and your results may vary.