I think I got it all just fine jack. Not enough income then decides to grow cannabis with a half assed setup and then thinks he's in a position to help anyone because it produced smokeable bud. Absurd.
I've seen countless of first time growers with low budgets do a much better job simply for listening to or mimicking more seasoned growers. Getting such low yields (250gr from a 600w) is fine too... till you start giving others advice on how to increase yields (the premise all the defoliators share but word differently) cause you are clearly not in a position to do so.
Doubling the running and setup costs from 100 to 200 gbp to get 250grams more seems like a good deal. You are barking up the wrong tree regardless, I run a very simple, minimalistic and cheap setup and my running costs are as low as they get with hps. And low budget soil and nutes are generally better than the expensive crap anyway.
You have no valid points and are obviously making poor excuses. What did you achieve by doing so besides throwing reason aside... the very thing that could help you succeed at growing and life. You're not helping yourself become a capable grower and most certainly not any other members. Even when selling the harvest from one crappy run you can afford to finish your setup so your excuses work only once and is no way a valid argument for defoliation or the lack of results you get. Besides that, why even bother giving advice or disagreeing if you don't have a decent setup and never completed a decent run... Instead of arguing for defoliation, you should clearly focus on the basics, like watering..., pot size, humidity levels and temps, ventilation, air circulation, plant count and bud site spacing, etc etc
It's how thousands of small growers started in NL, with a cheap T5/250/400w setup and a bugdet similar to yours, then buy more grow gear from the harvest. By the end of the year they run a 600/1000watter pulling 1gpw, able to do that 5x per year.... Totalling 3-5 kilo per year, earning rougly $14-22K making budget a non issue. And that's just the folks running a single bulb closet or tent (Usually in humid sheds, basements and attics...). It doesn't take a genius to do that, just a willingness to learn and listen to those who've done that numerous times.
Prohibition put it in the hands of those growers, who based on the fact they do grow a good amount of money per year think they are good growers, many of them are, but don't really understand what they are doing. They often merely repeat a learned trick and generally confuse perception and intiution with reality and science, leading to a lot of misinformation, nutrient scams and forum myths. From that crap new crap was crapped: people who haven't even learned the basic trick yet pretend to be able to help others, increase yields, and argue with people who not only learned the basic trick but have a clue as well, or at the very least try to understand. It has held back the cannabis industry so much and so long, so many idiots concerned with growing money and epeen, that I personally can't wait to see professional farmers take over the industry.
Starting with a low budget is only more reason to not act stupid. Yeah I said "act". Surely if you would get passed your main obstacle, yourself, you can achieve great results too. Till then, what's the point in trying to pretend you can help others learn to run while you barely learned how to crawl yourself... Besides trolling...
"even turned the hps down to 400w for
the first 3 weeks"
I used 400w hps for the first 10 days in flower and then started using 600w hps
Why do you do that? Lie to yourself, be intellectually dishonest. Things are what they are, bullshitting isn't helping you. I run 400w for a week or two as well as I already pointed out, and then you choose to remain ignorant by lying to yourself and pretending you still have a valid argument. No wonder you can't afford a proper setup, as I pointed out earlier, being so blatantly ignorant like you and the other defoliators are would get you fired on the spot in a professional setting.
It's so ironic you are all so concerned about who knows best. It's obstructing yourself. You are not less of a person or less intelligent if you don't understand (knowing is overrated, try to understand) what some others do. Some times when people take the time and effort to show you are wrong it doesn't mean he wants to be right and you to be wrong, he wants you to understand so you can make the best decision.