Bud rot can be from a lack of air circulation, lack of exhaust speed leading to high humidity, large fluctuations in temperature from day to night, or could just be down to genetics. Two strains had bud rot, those won't be grown again. I very very rarely get bud rot indoors. I don't usually worry about humidity much. The cost to run a dehumidifier is too high for the difference it makes. It doesn't look like 100-200 plants in that 4'x4' tray to me. It looks about 8 or 9 x 8 or 9 plants, so between 64 - 81 plants I'd say. Where did your original 500 plants idea come from?
The original idea came from a friend who grows in wash. He did 300 solo cups on a table and got about 14g on avg. I wanted to remove the cups and the solo to maximize space. 2in rock wool cubes is the best I could find in that aspect.
With that many plants in such a small area I was hoping they'd choke each other a little bit reducing their overall size due to space available. Might just be wishful thinking, but I'll give one tray a go and record my results.
You smoke too much lol if you try to "choke" your plants out all you will get is struggling, unhealthy plants that will yield shitty, airy bud. So far you have listed things you want for your grow that you should be absolutely avoiding. I suggest you start reading into beginner forums on this subject. I think you need to clear some concepts up.
The method I'm talking about was shown to me. The difference in what I seen and what I'm trying to do is, I don't have a few hundred solo cups to lock the roots down to prevent growth, I have a flood table.
Unless you've tried to purposely stunt a plants growth IDK how you can make a judgement call like that, you've already admitted to not knowing about SOG due to no exp, this is no different, a method you've personally not used. But I can see your concern with sickly plants, with a high density I would lose a entire tray in theory if any sicknesses arose.
not trying to sound rude or shoot down your ideas bud. Im only here to help. But it doesnt require experience in SOG to point these things out to you. It takes common growing knowledge. Not saying you dont have knowledge, its just common sense that when you cluster too many plants together it usually always creates problems. There are many ways to stunt plant growth. Lst is a favorite of mine, easily makes short bushes. Using a small container will stunt growth too but i dont think in a good way if you know what i mean.
I know exactly what u mean, I'm only trying to look for alts to LST because of the numbers. But it's starting to look like I'm going to have to go that way. That's just alot of labor hours to pay people for.
Way way Less plants trained right will be less work and yeild way more then hundreds of overcrowded baby buds. Man that's going to be a ton of work. Lst isn't that labor intensive. Couple minutes a week per plant and not even every week only a couple weeks in veg usually. Since you would be handling a realistic #, unless youre completly lazy it won't be that hard. Training is such a misleading word.
SOG generally won't need LST, or any training. You may get the odd one or two plants stretching above the rest if it's over crowded, but most of the time when using all the same clones you will get an even canopy. If it's over crowded then they will compete for light and they stretch up tall. 1-4 plants per square-foot will usually result in no or little stretching. But if you pack in more than that, like your idea of 16 plants per square-foot foot they will stretch for the light like crazy giving you an uneven canopy and most of the plants will fall behind and die. Honestly mate, you are creating your own problems here
I used smaller pots and ''shared" 3 7 ltr pots between 9 plants, they showed no signs of def at all, in fact the shared pots actually needed much less vegging, 2 weeks at most after sprouting from soil. They also produced MORE than my other 2 big girls that had been vegged for 6 weeks. No problems at all. The best smoke too. Overall I was chuufed to bits with how These plants were able to make up the time difference and bridge a four week gap between the veg times. Pot size can help. Multiple plants per pot can help. Use Whatever methods you want mate. Think it all through. Risk only what you can stand to lose. Personally I would have at least 2 larger plants with more veg so you can compare. Show these naysayers haha Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk