Another question: will 6 inch pots be enough to flower in? i heard 1 plant per sq ft, but im not sure if that applies to SOG. Any advice greatly appreciated
Hey all,
I'll join your discussion here. I'm growing in a much larger room but the footprint of the grow area is 5x5 which is tucked away in to an alcove within the room. This is lit with (2) 400's and can be expanded to 5x8 footprint with a standby 600w HPS fixture if necessary. I also have a small Mom closet (3x2) with (1) 400 MH elsewhere inside the room. I use a 6" 450cfm vortex fan pulling air in to the room (rather than exhausting it) and rely on leakage to exhaust it. It works great. The major reason is that my furnace is in the same room and I can't create a negative pressure in an area where I want the flue gasses to go up the chimney. Anyway, the outlet of the fan is tee'd and has 1 damper in each branch. One of the branch ducts goes in to the Mom cabinet and is connected directly to the fixture (with the exhaust also ducted out the other side of the closet), and the other branch feeds the flowering area. Right now it's not connected to the fixtures.....just dumping cool air over the plants. I also have an oscillating fan on the floor blowing across (2) 20 gallon DIY Tupperware aeroponic tubs. This seems to be enough to keep the nutes cool without a chiller. Each tub has (2)12" airstones and each tub has (6) 3" net pots for a total of 12 plants under 800w in a 5x5 area. Due to some unfortunate circumstances I had to start from seed rather than clones. I ended up with 5 females.
A lot of questions have been focused around how many plants to grow in that area. Hopefully I'll be able to help with that with pictures shortly. My most recent grow became uncontrollable because I started from seed. Even though I used a indica strain the plants got way too big for the area and started causing all sorts of problems. I wanted to take sexually mature clones (and I wanted to minimize stretch) so I waited until I saw preflowers before I went to 12/12. The plants were about 2' tall at that point. By harvest time they were over 6' tall, and, as with most of us indoor growers, we are limited in ceiling height. Bottom line is that it became a nightmare to control the plants and keep them away from the lights which ended up tight to the ceiling joists. If you're interested in seeing the grow look here
Papaya, Hindu Kush Aerotub Journal. I ended up getting about 1lb.
This time I started with 12 clones from my aerocloner (about 6" tall clones) and went directly to the 12hr aerotubs under the 800w of HPS. I'll have all fems and much shorter plants. I plan some sort of SOG. No males this time and much more manageable plants. I'll post pics soon showing the huge difference in the 2 grows.
Good luck!
