Square footage / plant quantity question

Hello community. I have an issue that I'm hoping you can help me resolve. Here are the specs of my setup:

I'm using a 4x4 ebb and flow system. Currently I have 16 plants in this 4x4 tray. I'm growing White Rhino from Nirvana seeds. So I am giving 1 square foot per plant. More specs on the plants in a moment. I am using a 1000 watt Super Blue Eye Hortilux bulb on the 4x4 space. The space is in such a fashion that I can use next to no Mylar and have no side lighting. I am using an air cooled hood with adequate ventilation, so heat is no issue in this grow space. The air temperature is currently around 70 degrees.

A bit on the plants. They are vegging for a total of 4 weeks including time in the cloner. When I put them into flower, they are about 12 inches tall. I use the General Hydroponics nutrient line. I'm using their three part Gro, Micro, Bloom. I add (at the appropriate time of course) carbohydrates, Gen Hydro Kool Bloom (liquid and solid at appropriate times), Silica, Gen Hydro Floralicious, Cal Mag, Zeus Juice (this is a kelp and Humic acid extract). I change nutes every two weeks. I don't harvest until they are ready. That means the first trichomes are turning amber. This is usually at the 9 week mark. Sometimes a day or two earlier.

Here's my issue / question. These plants at harvest are a hair over 4 ft tall. My yield is averaging about 19 ounces. From my understanding, that's a bit low given what I'm doing here. I should be getting a bare minimum of 2 ounces per plant, upwards of 4 ounces per plant. I've determined that the issue is obviously lack of light penetration through the canopy. Side lighting is not an option in my space. So I'm faced with two options:

1) Keep the plants the same height, but put less of them in the tray.
2) Same number of plants at a shorter height.

So first off, do you all think my analysis is correct? That the issue is light penetration and I am faced with the above two options?

If that is indeed the case, how would you go about option 2? Shorter veg time or topping?

If I'm way off on this, please let me know as well. Any help you as the community can offer is greatly appreciated.

Option 2: Same number of plants at a shorter height, and more topping, it may well be light penetration, pics please, but you really need to do 3-4 or more grows with this strain so you can dial in the details really well, years ago I was doing a SCROG grow with plants in a 6"x6" pots was too small and un natural too and since then I'm very happy with my plants in a 3 gallon pot, get to know your strains first ...lol

What vostok said and less veg time. Aim for 2 weeks

Here is a side profile of the grow. I'm actually doing two trays so that I crop out every month. Notice the extreme shade on the lower branches. I'm getting ready to cut clones so I'll go three weeks this time and top if need be. What would you all recommend as an optimal height in this situation? And do you have any idea what type of yield would be considered average with what I'm doing? Thanks so much for the help!

Any other feed back from the above post?

Hi,

I would think more plants that are smaller. 2 week veg is likely a lot.
I always threw my plants into flower when they got to about 8 inches. They would finish at between 2-3 feet.
1000 watters will penetrate 4 feet of foliage with a new bulb, so you always have light hitting the plants.

Also when you flip them, strip off the lower branches (about 1/3 of the plant) you will eliminate the popcorn bud, and the colas from the main stem will get bigger because they aren't distributing growth hormones to smaller branches.
This is called "lollipoping" if you want to research it a little more.

Average grow estimate - I'd say between 1/2 lb to 3/4 lbs dried.

You'll find once you've grown a while that your yield is almost directly related to your lights. The only way I could up my grow weights any further after a few years was to go vertical. I was getting about 2 lbs off of 2000 watts. Got up to almost 3lbs per harvest going vertical with smaller plants.

Other than that, they look healthy. A little lanky perhaps - likely due to one of the following : light was too far away from the plant. - high temps in the grow area.

Hope that helps - looks like you are doing well though.

Yeah, not that I see them, they look stretched as fuck. Moving the light closer will reduce that stretchiness. But they look healthy otherwise!

1. Super Blue Dual Arc? You're giving up 30,000+ lumens that you could be getting with an HPS. Not gonna argue spectrum; commercial growers use HPS because it out-yields everything else. Don't need Hortilux either, GE, Sylvania, etc work great. Light should probably be a minimum of 24" off the top of the plants. Maybe more. I use a 600, not a 1000, so can only guess at the distance based on my findings with a 600.

2. Veg time too long for the 1^2' footprint.

3. Throw out them pebbles and start using rockwool, either croutons or 100% absorbent flock. I believe that even Botanicare cocogro (for example) would outperform the pebbles.

4. Too many ingredients in your nutrient program. Have you considered Floranova? That has a 3-5% organic component. I've had excellent results with it at about 1.5 EC. I mix the grow and bloom and use no greater than a 25% "bloom" component at any stage of flowering. In fact, I am in process of switching the grow component to Dynagro 9-3-6.

5. A bit of selective pruning to get better light penetration into the canopy can increase yield, I don't care what the detractors say. Pruning works best in crowded conditions.