2#s per 1k guaranteed?

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Confuten1

Confuten1

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So I had some rare free time a couple days ago:animbong:----> and decided to work out some numbers that i have been kicking around in my head for quite some time now. Its actually the math part of a solution Ive been trying to solve. Im sharing this not because i solved the problem, rather i believe this is the same equation that many of u farmers also seek to solve, and hopefully this can create some dialog reguarding " THE GOLDEN CHALLENGE"

The golden Challenge is (how to maximize yield and quality)

The math i focused on was how many colas, how many nugs, how many buds site per sqft of canopy do I need to hit 2#s per 1k if i am running a SCROG.

First, some basic rules of ingagement in this thread.

1)For this discussion we will exclude the "QUALITY" section and only focus on the mathmatical portion of the YEILD equation.
2)Pictures and links of topic related subjects is appriciated!
3) Please save any drama for other threads, unless its good ol civilized debate of on topic related material.
4) Please only add to subjects by stating facts that are thought/proven out and be prepared to answer questions and back up claims.
5) Most important, lets all learn something!

Now I realize in order to answer this equation, there are many factors that effect the outcome, so for sake of discussion lets all (make an ass out of u n me) i mean, assume that you have a perfect and constant grow enviornment, the strain we are growing yields an avg of .5 gram nugs (final product ), and the node spacing of said strain is 1 inch per bud site.


Some of the other factors we will use is my room diminsions (43 sqft of canopy), wattage (3000), and my plant count (22).ohh, and i round up.

I did alot of math and used alot of different factors and here is what i ended up with; in order to achieve 900 grams per light(or 2#s per 1k) with 22 plants, 43 sqft of canopy space and 3000 watts of light I must have each plant cover 2 sqft, 12 colas per sqft, 11 bud sites per cola, and a final weight of 5.25 grams per cola @ .5 gram nugs(final weight).

Most of my math was focused around how many colas per sqft would be needed to achieve this. I ran numbers from 4 to 16 colas per sqft. I know each strain will change how many colas and such, but with what i am running 12 seemed to be what fit best.


So like usual I have many questions, heres a few:

Has anyone also sat down and worked out the numbers on this for their grow situation to set a base goal for themselves?

Can you use these basic numbers to determine when to flip your plants if you know your plants factors(like, size of nug, nodal spacing, and amount of stretch).

Should i shoot for more or less colas?

For my situation, this would mean I have 12 inch colas above my SCROG at 12 per sqft. With light defoliation at week 2-3 can even light penetrate all the way thru to my screen to ensure all bud sites are optimized?

Thnx fir stoppin by,
Confu...
 
Capulator

Capulator

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I just grow bro....

You are getting too stoney technical. FOLLOW YOUR HEART. Growing is more about being one with the girls, not number crunching (in my most humble of opinions). There is always room for improvement. Set your goal, and keep your eye on the prize.

Work with one strain for a while that you know is a good yielder and has the quality to boot, and I am sure you can hit your mark. Fuck we all even get lucky sometimes, right? My first run on a new system I hit an average of 1.3/600w, running a bunch of different strains. After that I shit the bed thanks to PM twice in a row. LOL.
 
MakinGoo

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Trying 2 figure that out would make my brain hurt.. That's way 2 much math 4 me..
 
P

paulycali

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Are you using Metal Halides for vegging?

One inch is kinda far between nodes imo
 
Confuten1

Confuten1

exploitin strengths - perfectin weaknessess
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I just grow bro....

You are getting too stoney technical. FOLLOW YOUR HEART. Growing is more about being one with the girls, not number crunching (in my most humble of opinions). There is always room for improvement. Set your goal, and keep your eye on the prize.

Work with one strain for a while that you know is a good yielder and has the quality to boot, and I am sure you can hit your mark. Fuck we all even get lucky sometimes, right? My first run on a new system I hit an average of 1.3/600w, running a bunch of different strains. After that I shit the bed thanks to PM twice in a row. LOL.

Sup Cap, thanks for chiming in( sent u a pm bout the spores) I feel u on followin ur heart and everything u suggested is sound advise. 1.3 w per gram is killin it! For me, everything revolves around numbers and my thinking is how do I set a goal and not know what do I need to do to achive it. In a SCROG, screen management is everythng right? Jus following my heart has got me @1.4 #s per light vertical, but i feel I like i am leaving alot on the table by not being disciplined enough to work out the details( the devil is in the details).

Confu...
 
Confuten1

Confuten1

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Trying 2 figure that out would make my brain hurt.. That's way 2 much math 4 me..

GOO, what up, hahaha, yea I realize alot of math is not fun for most ppl, fir me, its just a part of life we cant escape it like death. EVEERYTHING IS MATH.

Nice wifi frow, I got 2 phenos from last round i kept, one strechy fire dom and one squat white dom, I have 4 new wifi candidates going now, hopeing foe that special one with the best of both worlds. Thanks fir stoppin in.

Confu...
 
Confuten1

Confuten1

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Are you using Metal Halides for vegging?

One inch is kinda far between nodes imo

Yo Pauly, nahh man no MH veg under t5s for a bit, then in the flower room under HPS.

The strain im running is WIFI fire leaning, and a bit strechy.
question, would running mh in veg reduce the node space during flower strech(flowering under hps)?

I dont think i got to congats u on ur hightime photo, kudos, u always take kill photos!! ohh and nice1 on the horti grow. She looks bomb.

Confu...
 
MakinGoo

MakinGoo

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GOO, what up, hahaha, yea I realize alot of math is not fun for most ppl, fir me, its just a part of life we cant escape it like death. EVEERYTHING IS MATH.

Nice wifi frow, I got 2 phenos from last round i kept, one strechy fire dom and one squat white dom, I have 4 new wifi candidates going now, hopeing foe that special one with the best of both worlds. Thanks fir stoppin in.

Confu...


Yea I guess ur rite about math..
White Fire OG is top notch mega dank I sure hope u find that pheno ur looking 4.. There all killer tho.. Good luck
 
F

FromGROtoFLO

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wtf is right, back off on the meds bro and grow marijuana.
Because their are sooooo many factors involved, numbers mean shit.
 
dankworth

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Twelve colas/ft2 is too many. They will be overcrowded and stretch. 4/ft2 is great for a cultivar that grows chunkier colas. Then you could shoot for 1/2 ounce colas. Then you would get two oz/ft2. Light up a 4x4 space with a 1000watt lamp, getting 32 oz per 1000watt light.
Unless you work with a cultivar maybe like the whitefires I see on the interwebs. I believe that cultivar would benefit from more than 4 colas/ft2.
The easiest thing for me to do has been to go to Home Depot, get the 4'x7' sheets of concrete mesh (6" grid) or a 50' roll of the same 6" grid (but then you would have to try to unroll it and get it to stay flat). You should try to have the top of the container 8" from the scrog screen. Otherwise you will waste time and growth. Check out everybody else's scrogs on the net.
You will have to install a second horticultural trellis 6-12"(ideally made of plastic) above the metal screen. You can bend the metal screen to make "wings" that project up 6-12" to affix the horti trellis to. If the colas get tall and floppy they will have the horti trellis to lean against. That will help with weight and quality if the colas do not fall down.
That's what I've been into lately.
 
P

paulycali

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Yo Pauly, nahh man no MH veg under t5s for a bit, then in the flower room under HPS.

The strain im running is WIFI fire leaning, and a bit strechy.
question, would running mh in veg reduce the node space during flower strech(flowering under hps)?

I dont think i got to congats u on ur hightime photo, kudos, u always take kill photos!! ohh and nice1 on the horti grow. She looks bomb.

Confu...

Thanks Confuten1! Yes i believe so. Thats whats MH's are great for and from what i noticed it definetaly keeps the nodes closer even during flowering. I have seen a little stretch after inducing flowering but not nearly as much as if i used hps the whole time. Switching out bulbs from MH-HPS is the way to go. T-5's are great but i believe if you would have just added some MH lighting prior to flowering your node spacing would be much closer. I germ under cfl's "better heat source" then to T-5's then to the veg room under MH and then off to the HPS flowering room. Nice tight spacing between nodes. Nodes everywhere LOL! Try it if you can. I just made the switch recently and you can really see the results. Way more bud sites for sure :)
 
dankworth

dankworth

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In the interest of convenience, I started using a 1k MH for my veg and cloning light. I just keep the clones far enough away on the floor to not overlight them. My mom keeps mom-ing, clones root just as fast(7-10 days) as under fluorescents, vegging plants kick ass with tight internodes.
Not a convenient or viable solution to some in their position. But my plants, with the big MH sun in their sky, seem to be far less prone to any shock and stalling compared to any other way I have done things.
Making that change in my veg room has made one of the biggest impacts on the ease of my garden. I could never go back.
 
Confuten1

Confuten1

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Twelve colas/ft2 is too many. They will be overcrowded and stretch. 4/ft2 is great for a cultivar that grows chunkier colas. Then you could shoot for 1/2 ounce colas. Then you would get two oz/ft2. Light up a 4x4 space with a 1000watt lamp, getting 32 oz per 1000watt light.
Unless you work with a cultivar maybe like the whitefires I see on the interwebs. I believe that cultivar would benefit from more than 4 colas/ft2.
The easiest thing for me to do has been to go to Home Depot, get the 4'x7' sheets of concrete mesh (6" grid) or a 50' roll of the same 6" grid (but then you would have to try to unroll it and get it to stay flat). You should try to have the top of the container 8" from the scrog screen. Otherwise you will waste time and growth. Check out everybody else's scrogs on the net.
You will have to install a second horticultural trellis 6-12"(ideally made of plastic) above the metal screen. You can bend the metal screen to make "wings" that project up 6-12" to affix the horti trellis to. If the colas get tall and floppy they will have the horti trellis to lean against. That will help with weight and quality if the colas do not fall down.
That's what I've been into lately.

What up Dank. yea man I thought 12 might be to tight per sqft but realistically what the wifi puts out, im not sure i can get her to hit those numbers with less colas. Im shooting for 8-12 colas to see what happens. thnx fir stoppin in. I got some sssdh x cheese going that might be better suiter for less colas if it putts out like the jack herer i had(only sat dom ive grown.) long and fat donkeys.

Confu...
 
Confuten1

Confuten1

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Thanks Confuten1! Yes i believe so. Thats whats MH's are great for and from what i noticed it definetaly keeps the nodes closer even during flowering. I have seen a little stretch after inducing flowering but not nearly as much as if i used hps the whole time. Switching out bulbs from MH-HPS is the way to go. T-5's are great but i believe if you would have just added some MH lighting prior to flowering your node spacing would be much closer. I germ under cfl's "better heat source" then to T-5's then to the veg room under MH and then off to the HPS flowering room. Nice tight spacing between nodes. Nodes everywhere LOL! Try it if you can. I just made the switch recently and you can really see the results. Way more bud sites for sure :)

WORD, Pauly, Ill be starting my veg cycle here shortly, Ima runn them under MH and give it a go. Thnx mang. I always jus assumed that it would only effect the plant structure in veg only. If it carries over to flower then ill b super stoked!

Confu...
 
Confuten1

Confuten1

exploitin strengths - perfectin weaknessess
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wtf is right, back off on the meds bro and grow marijuana.
Because their are sooooo many factors involved, numbers mean shit.

numbers mean shit, but thats what we are all after, numbers, final numbers...
 
ttystikk

ttystikk

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wtf is right, back off on the meds bro and grow marijuana.
Because their are sooooo many factors involved, numbers mean shit.

You mean numbers like final yields, number of plants, number of dollars spent to achieve a given result? Yeah, I can see how those don't mean anything.

numbers mean shit, but thats what we are all after, numbers, final numbers...

Damn straight, brother- farmers have been using math to help improve their results since long before we ever showed up, and rightly so! It's a tool, just like a shovel is, to improve what we get back from our investment. Just because there ARE a lot of factors shouldn't stop anyone from investigating what those factors are, how and how much they affect the final product. Without this kind of investigation, we'd all still be out in the fields, scratching at the ground with our fingernails trying to grow enough food to survive...

That said, I believe you may be focused on aspects of the grow that won't directly affect your goal, and may have missed some factors that will:

If your goal is strictly grams per watt, then the size of the room is irrelevant- or worse, it's actually an impediment to achieving your goal. Bigger room size and/or less watts will help boost this figure. Of course, we don't all have unlimited space, so we are forced to work with what space we have as a constraint. This means it must be mathematically treated as a constraint- which means we need to start seriously considering what an ideal watts to square foot ratio might be.

Secondly, we all know that how things are grown makes an enormous difference in final results. How does the math you've proposed take into account the relative differences between RDWC, coco, ebb n flow and/or soil? How about environmental factors like temperature, humidity, nutrients, and watering schedules? There's no way these factors aren't directly related to desired outcomes. You did touch on SCROG vs. other approaches, but I think that's still a deep iceberg hidden under the surface, waiting to be further explored.

Third, no one I've seen has yet attempted to figure up the TOTAL cost in watts for a given yield. Sure, we include the watts for the lights themselves, but it seems incomplete to me to stop there and not account for running the ballast (100W for magnetic on a 1kW bulb, for instance), fans, pumps, timers, and of course AC and water chillers. If we're gonna be serious about the watts used per gram yielded, let's not forget to count all the watts we're using. This means, among other things, that we may suddenly have a serious debate over whether a sealed room with active cooling is actually any more efficient than cooling with outside ventilation.

I've been giving this a lot of thought because I'm working on an alternative lighting system to improve just what you're trying to maximize; grams per watt. The first part of my investigation was a proof of concept; to see if it actually works at all. Having satisfied myself that it does, I've moved on to phase two, which is learning how to grow as well as everyone else here using methods considered 'standard' in our industry. Phase three will begin when I'm getting decent yields from my conventional sealed room and can then make direct real time comparisons with the second generation of my low watts/high yield approach.

This math thing gets to be a real rabbit hole, huh?
 
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paulycali

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WORD, Pauly, Ill be starting my veg cycle here shortly, Ima runn them under MH and give it a go. Thnx mang. I always jus assumed that it would only effect the plant structure in veg only. If it carries over to flower then ill b super stoked!

Confu...


I think you will be more than happy with the change/results. Remember every strain is different but i feel it does help tame the beast once flowering is induced. My next run i will be using MH lighting 2 weeks into flowering and then switching out to HPS lighting. That should really help with the stretch imo. I will let you know what happens with that. Good luck with that and hope it works out for you
 
St3ve

St3ve

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I'm all for number crunching man. Its hard to quantify what effects what if you can't get a firm grasp on the details. I also don't think shooting for 12 colas per sqft is too crowded. I worked hard and my current run is my best example of tight nodes and many budsites/ colas. I haven't actually counted but I can tell you its probably around that number. And from the looks of it, I'm going to have my best run yet.

.. My next run i will be using MH lighting 2 weeks into flowering and then switching out to HPS lighting.

I does help for sure.

For flower I have dimmable ballasts that goes from 600/750/1k. I used to just leave it on 1k all the time and leave the lights up way high so I didn't shock the plants. Now, transitioning from veg (T5) I put in two 600w MH in the flower room until I see the onset of flowers which is around 15-17 days. Then I switch to 750w for a week, then 1k. For me I have noticed a pretty big difference in node spacing during the stretch. (for the better) Not to mention I save some $$ on electricity. Win-Win
 

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