Tired of low yields

Short story long I used to grow about 10 years ago.I would do far less work and get much better results than now. Fast forward to the last few years and I’ve gotten beautiful quality.. but my yield is nowhere near what I used to achieve…I’ve tried to mimic and rework variables in the but nothing seemed to help.

I’ve been having issues with fungus gnats which I never had in the past. And occasionally even seeing springtails. I notice my roots don’t seem nearly as developed and I’m not hitting my drybacks daily. Little bit of salt build up in the coco so I have a feeling the main issue may be somewhere in there.

Right now I’m on day 37 flower with a few new strains and running drippers for the first time and want to maximize the yield with any help I can get from you guys. Thanks in advance.


Lollipopped day 1 defoliated day 21
Trellis added way too late
4x4 tent w flood table
600 w hps
.5 gallon pots
Floraflex coco
Floraflex nutes avg ec 1.5 ph 6.0
Avg temp 76 rh 58%

Night713 said:

I notice my roots don’t seem nearly as developed and I’m not hitting my drybacks daily. Little bit of salt build up in the coco so I have a feeling the main issue may be somewhere in there.

Click to expand...

Could you elaborate on the "drybacks" comment? Are you letting it actually dry out before watering again?

also i think 600w hps is underpowered for that space. i am no hid grower but i think you should go with 1000w if you want to maximize yields.

A 600W HPS is pretty weak for a 4x4, the PAR map below illustrates this, compared to contemporary LED running at 560w it looks even worse.
Unless you need to prioritize heat over light, an LED light would allow for the potential of a much greater yield.

I personally would not cut soo much leaf and i wouldnt let them grow soo tall.lot more of lst and lamp closer then i would have a full room green, with that i guess the numbers would go up.
Look at my diary if you are interested lamp is 50% less powerfull but with 21days veg there is a lot more buds then here

me and my brother would grow 4 plants in a 4x4ft grow tent in fox farms soil with a 1000watt air cooled hps along time ago we would yield around 500-600grams of dry nug.
the one thing i can say by looking at your pictures is your canopy is not "full" like when we would grow, light would not be able too get too the bottom portions of the plant because the canopy was so full with tops! we would train our plants with low stress training and topping them during veg so they would fill in the canopy.

how much yield are you getting currently?

Fangthane said:

Could you elaborate on the "drybacks" comment? Are you letting it actually dry out before watering again?

Click to expand...

i think he should read this article how to water in coco coir dr mj coco coco for cannabis link

crimsonecho said:

also i think 600w hps is underpowered for that space. i am no hid grower but i think you should go with 1000w if you want to maximize yields.

Click to expand...

when we used to grow in hps our target would be 66watts per sq ft so i agree it is underpowered.

Billy the Mountain said:

A 600W HPS is pretty weak for a 4x4, the PAR map below illustrates this, compared to contemporary LED running at 560w it looks even worse.
Unless you need to prioritize heat over light, an LED light would allow for the potential of a much greater yield.

View attachment 5338816View attachment 5338819

Click to expand...

honestly when me and my brother would grow with hps we realized that one of the most important things is having a good reflector the crappy reflectors produce hot spots in the center like the par map u posted so u get boat loads of light in the center and crappy light in the corners. when we upgraded our reflectors to blockbuster gen 3's those puppy's would evenly distribute the light across a 4x4 canopy! so if you used a 600whps with a blockbuster gen 3 over a 4x4 canopy you would guaranteed get way better par map than the one you posted. but still i agree 600w is not enough for a 4x4 space, if you air cool your lights you want around 66watts per sq ft when using HID.

amneziaHaze said:

I personally would not cut soo much leaf and i wouldnt let them grow soo tall.lot more of lst and lamp closer then i would have a full room green, with that i guess the numbers would go up.
Look at my diary if you are interested lamp is 50% less powerfull but with 21days veg there is a lot more buds then here

Click to expand...

yup i 100% agree fill in the canopy and he will get better yields.

Thanks for the replies.

-In the past I ran 600w before but on a smaller table so I figured if anything the plants within the original table sq ft should be what they would’ve been in the past. I did however have it happen one time in the begging and still don’t know what I did right to this strain.
(Pic 1)

-I plan on getting a led soon but just trying to achieve what I did in the past.

-drybacks meaning I feel like I used to have to water daily because the plants would dry the coco out to the point of little moisture in the coco but no drooping in the plant. With lots of roots. I could slide the plant out of the pot like nothing back in the day. Now it’s taking forever to dry and less roots.

-when I achieved great yields in the past I would just do small plants with little veg lollipopped and not defoliated. Just burn and turn style. Feel like they didn’t stretch as much as now. I feel like I’m doing something wrong If I can’t get those same results again and trying to venture into another style.

The second picture is how the plants used to look when I was getting results I wanted (pic2)

Night713 said:

-drybacks meaning I feel like I used to have to water daily because the plants would dry the coco out to the point of little moisture in the coco but no drooping in the plant. With lots of roots. I could slide the plant out of the pot like nothing back in the day. Now it’s taking forever to dry and less roots.

Click to expand...

You SHOULD feed/water it daily, possibly multiple times a day, without letting it dryback. Just now gearing up for my first coco run, but that's apparently one of the cardinal sins of coco: Thou shalt not let it dry out. It sounds like you're leaving serious yield on the table by treating coco more like soil. Unless I'm misunderstanding something.

Do you use tap or filtered water?

Night713 said:

Thanks for the replies.

-In the past I ran 600w before but on a smaller table so I figured if anything the plants within the original table sq ft should be what they would’ve been in the past. I did however have it happen one time in the begging and still don’t know what I did right to this strain.
(Pic 1)

-I plan on getting a led soon but just trying to achieve what I did in the past.

-drybacks meaning I feel like I used to have to water daily because the plants would dry the coco out to the point of little moisture in the coco but no drooping in the plant. With lots of roots. I could slide the plant out of the pot like nothing back in the day. Now it’s taking forever to dry and less roots.

-when I achieved great yields in the past I would just do small plants with little veg lollipopped and not defoliated. Just burn and turn style. Feel like they didn’t stretch as much as now. I feel like I’m doing something wrong If I can’t get those same results again and trying to venture into another style.

The second picture is how the plants used to look when I was getting results I wanted (pic2)
View attachment 5338824
View attachment 5338827

Click to expand...

That looks made for sog method. May iask why did you chose coco and not full hydro? Or full soil

- that’s where I feel like I’m struggling. Keeping the coco moist… but not too moist for gnats. I feel like “before” they would dry out daily so gnats weren’t an issue

- I currently use r.o. “Before” I used tap that I’d let sit out. But I tried that also semi recently and didn’t notice anything.

- yes I’ve just been trying to mimic what I did in the past so I’m used to coco sog style and figured 16 plants in a 4x4 would be fine. I’m down to do less count for ease but just want to get my numbers back up before I try growing bigger plans than I ever have

That’s why I’m constantly second guessing myself. I noticed a few gnats. Have tiny bit of algae. Which tells me I’m overwatering. But I’m still underwatering somehow

Use neem oil or yellow steips for gnats.or my new favorite meat eating plants.they smell like shit and gnats die like crazy

Night713 said:

That’s why I’m constantly second guessing myself. I noticed a few gnats. Have tiny bit of algae. Which tells me I’m overwatering. But I’m still underwatering somehow

Click to expand...

Ignore algae, it's completely harmless.
If you have some fungus gnats, limiting watering is not gonna help much and have a negative effect on your plants (more so than the fungus gnats).
BTi bacteria is extremely effective in killing off the gnat larvae and is harmless to plants.
Microbe Lift BMC is a widely available option.

Like I said, I don't know shit since I haven't actually done coco yet. Unless you've got shit for drainage, overwatering coco is supposedly something that takes actual effort to achieve. If you have a gnat problem, I'd look for solutions outside of watering volume/frequency.

Billy the Mountain said:

Ignore algae, it's completely harmless.
If you have some fungus gnats, limiting watering is not gonna help much and have a negative effect on your plants (more so than the fungus gnats).
BTi bacteria is extremely effective in killing off the gnat larvae and is harmless to plants.
Microbe Lift BMC is a widely available option.

Click to expand...

Thanks. Do you just add it to your res or straight water only? I use drippers currently but can hand feed

What genetics are you running ? I find genetics these days are not as high yielding as years gone by .... the quality is better in my opinion but the yields are not there

I autowater mine 5 times during lights on, 1 lights off. You want about 20% runoff for each watering. My plant is big enough now, where it depletes the water pretty quick, though I'm only in a 2 gallon container. I'm actually thinking of switching to waterings every 2 hours during lights on, 1 lights off, but I'm thinking of waiting until after stretch to do that. Mine is almost to week 3 now.

The first photo shows plants that aren't getting enough light. Classic symptoms - very tall, very little inflorescence, very little foliage, and significant internodal space. Some of that is because of the HPS spectrum but the overall plant shape looks like not enough photons being generated.

Get a lux meter so you can see how much PAR your plants are getting ($32 for a Uni-T Bluetooth model) then, within limits of the heat given off by HPS, get more light on your plants.

Just based on pics you seem to be way far from plants with light
Underpowered and trying to compensate isn’t a good combination for large yields