The best results.

Iam gowing to be growing 4 or 5 w-widows from seed in about a weeks time after i finnish kitting out my grow room,(First time growing).What i want to acheive is the very best bud i can,time is no constraint.So how long should i veg for,and how long to flower,for optimum streangth of buds.
I will be vegging under 400w MH and flowering under 400w HPS,height is not restricted.It is an indoor grow though.
Also...will my seedlings be alright under that 400w mh as long as i keep the light far enough away ?
Great site by the way.

If your looking for top quality IMHO a 600w HPS might have been a better choice. It would penetrate deeper and is just a better light overall, but your working with a 400 so..

Plants have five basic needs. Each one amounts 20 percent of a plants ability to grow to its maximum potential. When all of these needs are met at the maximum, the result is maximum growth (20% x 5= 100%)! If one of the needs arrives at only 15 percent, all growth is impaired equally (15% x 5= 75%). If two or more of the basic need are not met, growth slows quickly. Even with the best hydroponic system money can buy, in a garden where relative-air humidity is 80 percent when it should be about 50 percent, growth will be limited. The dollars and high hopes invested in a hydroponic system can easily be 'dashed' in a cloud of hot, humid air.

Air 20%
- Temperature
- Humidity
- CO2 and O2 content

Light 20%
- Spectrum
- Intensity
- Photoperiod

Water 20%
- Temperature
- pH
- EC
- Oxygen content

Nutrients 20%
- Composition
- Purity

Growing Medium 20%
- Air content
- Moisture content

Thanks for the reply,ive read-up alot on air,light,water and so on and iam going to try and meet all there needs as i go along,it gets confusing as to know whats the best thing to do though, sometimes,what with all the contradictory information,so i will try and get as close to those 20% margins as possible.
Does the length of time vegging make a lot of differance to the quantity and quality of the buds though ?

length of veg determines the overall size of the plant which in turn means more veg more buD!

As i understand it,the flowering plant will be double the size of the vegged plant,possibly more,but then there would be a problem with the light not being able to reach the lower parts of the foliage.Would the plant then benefit from more lights directed at the lower branches?or should i just put the vegging plant into flower earlier to avoid the problem.
How big would a white widow get in,say,ten weeks of vegging???

bigbudeddie said:

length of veg determines the overall size of the plant which in turn means more veg more buD!

Click to expand...

Not exactly true, I understand your thinking, but if grown under normal conditions more height doesnt equal more bud, it just means the budding area has a taller stand.

The light will only penetrate so far into the plant so say that is the top foot or 2 foot of the plant, if you grow it to 7 foot you got 5 foot of a stand and 2 foot of bud, if you grow it to 5 foot you got 2 foot of bud and 3 foot of stand.

So there is an optimum vegging size then? =Veg to one foot Flowering upto two foot or so = full light coverage =optimum light usage.Right?

yep sounds about right

So would i get bud all the way down the plant? or only the top half and then just branches and foliage at the bottom.Iam thinking if i veg for,maybe 1 and a half feet then the top two feet receiving all the light will have the bud = a bigger crop without much light wastage.

peterpops said:

So would i get bud all the way down the plant? or only the top half and then just branches and foliage at the bottom.Iam thinking if i veg for,maybe 1 and a half feet then the top two feet receiving all the light will have the bud = a bigger crop without much light wastage.

Click to expand...

and nutrient and time wastage too, if you veg it for longer its gonna cost you more in nutes and growing time too. Unless you can penetrate deeper by giving additional sigelighting

Would more sidelighting give me more bud or just better quality bud??

it would give you more bud as the lower bud sites would get light and then grow into buds

Brilliant,so in THEORY i could flower a six foot plant with bud all the way down if i provided it with lights all the way down the plant?

Yeah i grew a massive plant and it became too big and was bending round the ceiling have gone right past the light, so i turned the plant horizontal and finished up with a pound of dried weight bud, because the whole of the plant was recieving light.

https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/4614-horizontal-plant.html

Wow,now thats what iam talking about.How long did you veg that beast for?

I veg'd it to around 12" and it was seriously sativa dominant, it had around 10 nodes at least, i grew it in hydro and it just grew and grew, then i decided it was time to lay it down to give it the most light

I cant stop looking at that plant,thinking about printing it out and pinning it on my grow room wall for inspiration.It must have been bigger than 12" when you flowered it,coz that monster looks like it tripled in size.
Did you grow that laying it flat and using one 600w bulb.Fkin amazing.

i grew it to 12" then switched to 12/12

it kept growing upwards till it was about 6 foot, then i decided to lay it down

did it carry on growing past the 6 foot mark after you lay it down?..or did it stop growing then?

...and was the bud gud.