You could probably do 2 plants. A 250 watt HPS does a 2x2 area, now pretend each plant is in a five gallon bucket, each bucket is one square foot, that is 4 plants.
Wow that is a cool little formula I just made up. Does anyone agree ?
A square foot is probably what you'll need for each plant in a soil grow or DWC grow. Ebb and FLow or NFT you can probably get some different numbers.