I bought a 250 watt HPS light and ballast a month or so ago. Now I am thinking of buying a 400 watt one instead with HPS/MH conversion ballast built in. I want to grow 5 or 6 plants at a time. I keep reading 100 watts per plant OR 10,000 lumens per plant but no less than 5k lumens per plant. The bulbs for the 400 Watt are 58,000 lumens so I should be able to grow 6 plants right? Thanks.
6 plants is what i was planning on doing with my 430HPS bulb 58,000/6 is damn close to 10,000 lumens per plant it should be fine, just dont space them too far apart
Well, I did it. I ordered a 400 watt HPS System that also supports MH bulbs. The only weird thing is that the HPS bulb puts out 58,000 lumens while the MH Bulb only puts out 36,000 lumens. Why is that and will it hurt how much I grow if I use MH during my veg phase??? If it will hurt how many I can grow, Ill probably just use the HPS bulb throughout the whole process. Im sure it doesnt make too much of a difference anyways. PS - What is sog??
SOG is Sea Of Green. its a system where you harvest perpetually. you have a few mother plants that you take clones from, a vegging chamber for clones, and then a flowering chamber where you put the clones when they are big enough. you can set it up so you a harvest every week until you stop taking clones from the mother. if you're worried about the MH bulb not being enough, you could put a T5 flourescent tubes in with your grow. 4 of them could boost your lumens by 28000 if you get the very high output(7000lumens per bulb) although most of the tubes are anywhere from 2-5 thousand
if you really want to optimize your returns, do a scrog. you can yield as much as 1.5 lbs. in a 3x3 screen with 400 watts. any other method will net you considerably less. a perpetual is no easy task to master. it takes a lot of room, a lot of equipment and a lot of experience to pull off. also, you can do a sog w/o it being a perpetual.