Vertical lighting in udwc lighting question

I have a veg and a flower room. I grow the plants in the veg room and move them to the flower room in their 5" net pots. I have more veg sites then flower sites. I have 9 flower sites and I have the plants in the veg room in individual bubble buckets. I am going to make a UDWC system with 5 gallon buckets and 2" pvc connecting them. In my flower room I purchased 16 600 watt lights and set them up to have 4 lights on every plant. I want the plants in veg to bush out sideways but I would like to have the light give equal exposure to all sides of the plants. I currently have 1 1000 HID in the middle of my 10 plants in veg and I turn them to make the growth even. Is there a good way to set the lighting up so I don't have to turn the plants?

I believe the consensus is that rotating your plants is not good for production.

I only rotate in Veg. Is this also bad for production? And back to the real question, what is the most efficient way to maintain even growth? In my flower room I have 9 plants and 16 lights. Each plant has 4 lights on it

;X X X X
; O O O
;X X X X
; O O O
;X X X X
; O O O
;X X X X

X = Lights
O= Plant

I dont nee to rotate these as they all have plenty of light on all sides. I am trying to design a UDWC 5 gallon system for smaller veg plants so I don't have to rotate them everyday (or at all). The flower room obviously hit this head on in pretty much the most expensive way possible and I would like to avoid that in the veg room if possible. Is there a way to do this or do I need to get another 16" lights for the veg room? I am looking for horizontal bushing out and massive root production, not vertical growth of the plant. They will most likely be in veg for 8+ weeks each.

Turning plants is a great way to ensure even light coverage over the entire plant....and plants love light ....lol

I grow in and outdoors and rotate all my plants daily,....and never do they complain as the more light the more they grow the bigger they get the more light hits there canopy the more they grow ....ad infinitum

computergroove said:

I only rotate in Veg. Is this also bad for production? And back to the real question, what is the most efficient way to maintain even growth? In my flower room I have 9 plants and 16 lights. Each plant has 4 lights on it


I dont nee to rotate these as they all have plenty of light on all sides. I am trying to design a UDWC 5 gallon system for smaller veg plants so I don't have to rotate them everyday (or at all). The flower room obviously hit this head on in pretty much the most expensive way possible and I would like to avoid that in the veg room if possible. Is there a way to do this or do I need to get another 16" lights for the veg room? I am looking for horizontal bushing out and massive root production, not vertical growth of the plant. They will most likely be in veg for 8+ weeks each.

Click to expand...

You can rotate in veg. But to be honest it would be a less pain in the ass if you just put the light over the top of them. For tight nodes on my plants i use a t5 for vegging. So first im sorta curious why your wanting this uniformity so badly. I personally think you have gone way over board on the number of lights. Plants grow to the light. So if you have a semetrical plant going into flower it will eventually look like a half circle. The back half of the plant will grow torward the light. Every time you rotate your plant the plant as to then use a bunch of energy re orientating itself to grow back to the light. There was a huge argument over on the vertical forum about this with a couple of side by sides. Test shows that rotating your plants reduce yield.

Am I reading this correctly? 16 lights for 9 plants? 9600w bare bulb is going to require some serious cooling. Like a 5 ton ac unit. None of this makes any sense. If you were growing monsters maybe but you are using T5's in veg which says to me they can't be that big. I'm lost.

I never said I was using T5's in veg. I am using 2 - 1000 watt bulbs currently turned down to 600 watts ea because of the heat. In my flower room I only have 8 600 watt lights on at a time for 6 hours then they switch. The plants in flower are surrounded by light on all sides but not on top. I am trying to do something Heath Robinson mentioned in one of his tree grows. I want uniform growth on all the sides of the plants so when I transplant them into my flower room I will get maximum yield. The plants are currently around 3 months old and nothing has been flipped to flower yet - just about to though.

i still think you are shooting yourself in the foot but give it a try and find out. i'm all for experimentation.

dialing the wattage down on a bulb effectively changes the spectrum of the light. you are supposed to change the bulb when you dial the ballast down. it also reduces the effective life of the bulb. hortilux has a study about it on their website i think.