Chobble said:

He's right. I used to grow plants a lot like yours, Under a 600w. Honestly, You just need to develop a better training system in veg and into flower to create an even canopy. If your already getting great yields with this system, then its only going to get better by getting your maximum light to 100% of the canopy rather then these main branches (being 25%-15% of the plant) receiving far superior light. You have to remember that after 2 ft your 600w loses a lot of its light output.

Chobble

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I really don't understand where your coming from. Your telling me I need better training & vegging? I am NOT changing the way I grow. I am getting 20 to 40 tops per plant & now averaging between 11 to 13 oz per plant & only getting bigger as I go on. The system I use to veg is my own training techniques based on my own trial & error & research & wanted to show them here.
Chobble your telling me you could get 13 oz's per plant dry in soil? I am pulling nearly an 1 oz per day dry, everyday 365 a year, while only maintaining 4 flowering plants at a time& using 2,400 watts (4 600's)
Isn't this enough tops for (1) plant?

I started this, I'll take the heat for it, lol

When you said you have a ton of budding sites, you're absolutely right! They're everywhere too; up high close to the light, in the middle, buried deep inside the big bush, and down underneath where they're not getting enough light...and that is the problem; those sites are scattered in a pattern that makes a great deal more sense in an outdoor environment than the indoor one you've created for it.

Light from the sun is as strong at the tips as it is at the ground, so any light is good light outside. Your 600W bulb is a drastically different animal; what's almost unbearably strong at one foot is just right at two feet- and far too weak at three. At four feet it's better for illumination than cultivation. For a thouie, add one foot to the above numbers- but the basic premise remains; distance from the bulb is ALL IMPORTANT.

I could launch into a long winded treatise about the various ways a traditional overhead lighting system wastes light- that's for another post. Here, I want to make it clear that your current plateau does not have a thing to do with your cultivation skills; that plant is gorgeous! It isn't nutes, roots, shoots, temps... it wants for nothing and it shows. What's holding the plant back is its shape.

To be more precise, the most efficient shape is not just the one with the most bud sites; it's the one with the most budding sites in the goldilocks zone of ideal distance from the bulb. In the case of your 600, that would be between 18"-24" from a vertical bare bulb or add six inches for an adjust-a-wing.

In horizontal canopies with overhead lighting, you want to trim up the bottom a fair bit to rid the plant of excess larf. This reduces plant matter that's never going to see good light because of plant material above it- so get rid of it before it drains excess nutrients from buds that are in the light!

It's good that you spread the plant out early- as an adult plant, pull it even wider and thinner into a thick pancake shape. Your 600W bulb will penetrate a maximum of 6" into the canopy, so there's no point in letting the plant be thicker than that when measured along the axis that includes the bulb. Instead, make it BROAD- a plant that's four feet across can easily cover over 12ft² of surface area, and produce your pound.

To think about this vertically, just take the same flat trellis, turn it on its edge and roll it up around the bulb in the shape of a giant soda can. If the diameter of this cylinder were the goldilocks zone distance from the bulb in the middle, then the whole cylinder would be ideally placed, not just a few spots on a big flat trellis. For a 600W bulb, a cylinder four feet across would be an excellent choice. One bulb could adequately cover some 50ft² of trellis space, far more than it could over any flat plane.

I'm not suggesting your gardening skills are in any way inadequate; this thread is about you getting bigger yields for your girls, so I'm merely suggesting an option to achieve that.

The veg girls could be trained to climb a vertical trellis, much like pole beans, and spread out once they get taller. I'm training mine into a tall flat shape to better adapt to the trellis they'll be blooming in. A plant the size of yours could not only fill a trellis four feet tall by six feet across, but such a trellis would ensure that every bud it makes is basking in the very best light your bulb has to offer; not too close, not too far, never shaded, getting a breeze...

And that is how to make weight.

Interesting read in here, really is. Im learning a lot from you guys

Your on the right track. My best is 20 zips in a 15 gal and 29 in a 30 gal Smarty. I'm amazed you do so well in happy frog. I found it more like bagged cement. Try some coco mix and you'll be looking for 2 lbs in 15. g. No joke. Take the time to spread each branch out so they all get good light. Some screen some trellis some cut and smash. Also some strains just won't get heavy enough for you. Peace

Sup Reloader...been following along and enjoying you thread and all the effort put in to your grow. Just wanted to throw these girls up real quick. These are RD's OG GTH1 done in all FF (soils and nutes) vegged from clone for about 6 weeks and flowered in 35L with Ocean Forest under 1k'ers and supplemented CO2. I harvested a couple smaller GTH's and got about 12 off em so this one will well surpass a lb. I put a mason jar there for size reference...the buds are big and dense as fuck....damn why she have to be such a hermin bitch?!! Keep pushin for it bro its the only way to get there. MGG

Greengenes, those look beautiful! What is rd's og though?

Thanks sensi....Rare Dankness OG Ghost Train Haze #1 is the strain. MGG

Nice pics Mr. green, those are some fat ass colas!!!
Here is a few pics of some big gals I got going!

@reloader nothing against you man, much love and respect. But I have to agree with Ty, if you can open up the bush a little and ensure an even spread across the canopy you'll easily gain #'s. I've played around with a couple different methods trying to maximize my 5x5 area and scrogging for me has drastically improved my efficiency. Instead of getting 8-10 huge colas, I get a ton of 8-12" ones instead now, with no larf or popcorn...

My last run was just 2 plants under a 1K HPS and they're drying now. It's looking like it'll come in a little over 2.25 potatoes or 1 gpw this run, my best to date - with both girls hitting over the 1# mark. Caps benes also helped me keep the best health that I've ever had thru the whole run.








Here's a better pic of the area I'm working with. I've got 7 girls going in now, but they only had a very short veg period (clones) compared to the 90 days (from seed) the girls above got. I moved them from my clone area under T5 lighting into the bloom room, and I'll veg for 7-10 more days under a 600W MH prior to flipping.
After the stretch, I'll swap bulbs out for an HPS and dial my Lumatek digital ballast up to 1K. I don't normally like vegging in the bloom room, but circumstances warranted it this time. I normally start training in the clone area using smaller airpots - they work very well for me because I cut up hangers to use as long 'S' hooks that will hold down a branch at one end and clip into the holes of the sides of the pot - but I got lazy this time and didn't start training these until I moved into the room. That's another reason I needed to veg for 1-2 weeks longer - to open them up and start the branches heading where I want them to go.

Each one of these was a full potato. 12 gallon plastic container.

Latest gal. still trimming!

Some Christmas harvest.

looks like your having a merry Christmas bro,nice work.peace

yo reloader...just thought I'd chime in here.

If you're looking for a 1 lb plant, here are my tips:

1) nix the stakes. I personally hate them, never saw a reason to repeatedly stab my roots with a 1/4 in. thick piece of wood that could potentially be harboring pathogens inside them, especially 10-15 times. Plus I personally know three people who do this for a living who have almost lost eyes walking through their grow stoned...one guy's nickname is redeye because the blood never drained out. A trellis is a decent option but not if you want to be moving your plants. I would recommend tomato cages as you can train plants to them and literally make a perfect bush.

2) choose genetics wisely. I only see two varieties or so that look like they could do it with next to no work in your pics - pineapple is def one of them. You're looking for plants that have decent stretch but also have the nodal development to match it. You want colas, not branches. Anything that shows stem between the top 6-8 nodes will be alot more challenging to get a # from indoors.

3) soiless smartpots. Like someone said earlier your garden looks awesome for happy frog, I really think you're pushing the limits of that medium. I'll bet you could take your current methods to coco in a smartpot and be cruisin pound plants all day. Anything works, but the more often you can get water to your plant the higher your yield will be. I like to be irrigating twice a day in late flower, they just respond way too well...it's one of the more noticeable changes I've made to my practices. As far as mediums the most reliable ones are blends, either coco/compost, peat/coco, or coco/soil, all containing between 25 and 40% perlite or hydroton or growstones...I aerate my media based on how much I think is evaporating from the pot, if your plants are drying really fast from the top down it's over-aerated...it's hard to say how much aeration is needed it all depends on environment/how much light is hitting the pot. Roots 707 seems to really kick some ass I'm contemplating a run in it...


like I said you're really workin the shit out of that happy frog, but there's no reason you shouldn't be working to maintain a pound-per-plant average instead of trying for a pound a plant.

Cool, I will get a dry weight on this last one in a few days, but I may have eclipsed the pd mark this time.
All good advice, thanks! .

Nope 14.5 on last plant, but those colas pictured (+ 2 more ) were about an ounce each dry.

almost!!!

Capulator said:

almost!!!

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Yep, I will get there soon (in Happy frog soil) because now I have more room to veg, so I can have more gals going at a time, which will allow me to veg them longer. These 20 gal pots take up a lot of space, so lots of room is a must.

Hell yeah man...lovin the goal oriented dedication. You can do it man...MGG

Thought I would show my powerbox on this thread to. It took a lot of work to run wire this big through insulation, but I'm hooked up now. I can start bumping up to 1000's now. Check out the realtime ammeter, shows actual amp draw, so no guessing..