Bulb and plant placement help needed

[mymed]

Thanks for looking, below is a little history/setup or skip to the bold text for the question.

I've done flat top gardens for sometime and decided to build a new room, new system, and try vertical lighting. I'll be using 3gl flood and drain buckets, plan on a 6-8 week veg possibly using cages around each pot. 600w vertical cooltube in the veg room and 2 600w tubes (possibly stacked) w/ co2 for flower. I only plan to run three at time more sativa dominate.

Flower Room:
6x5 (8'h) 2x 600w vertical

So should I stack the bulbs for flower or try lighting from multiple sides of the plant?

 

[spadedNfaded]

Hey! Looks like you're on your way to a successful garden!
With the space and lighting you mentioned you can turn this into a serious producer!

The beauty of vertical lighting is the 360deg footprint. Meaning the lights going to have the same intensity at any given distance all the way around the bulb. If you have 2 lights and 6 plants i would recommend huddling the plants around the bulb in an equilateral triangle. That'll use up most of your footprint. When you move to 6 plants in flower you can do the triangle with 3 plants around each bulb. If you're only using 6 plants then you can place them anywhere in that room, but in the middle would be the most efficient.


If you could rotate the plants in place i would rotate them 120 degrees every day or two.

- SubN

 

[mymed]

Hey! Looks like you're on your way to a successful garden!
With the space and lighting you mentioned you can turn this into a serious producer!
- SubN

I hope so.
Thanks for the reply, already have a couple strains that I think will work well for this but since I've never done vertical lighting I'm not too sure.

In the veg room I plan on hanging the tube directly in the middle and just surrounding it the best I can unless anyone has a better idea. The flower room with just 3 plants and two lights is were I get lost, seems like I'll be wasting light no matter what.

I should also note when I do go up to 6 per room I can expand the flower room by 1.5 feet in length (5'x7.5') if needed and the same in the veg going to 5x5 max but will have one corner at an angle to still access res #1.

 

[spadedNfaded]

Well, by your plant count it seems you're going to be growing big bushes. At least something that will require the 600w.

Like i said before the beauty of vertical is the coverage, i would use the one 600w for 3 plants for now, and when you go bigger you'll already have the knowledge of how 3 around 1 works, so it'll be easier to figure out.

If you have six plants, i would place them in two rows, 3x2 pattern. Place 1 600w in the middle of both sides.

So you have:

Plant Plant Plant
_ Light_ Light
Plant Plant Plant

- SubN

 

[mymed]

Thanks again, sounds like good advice. With six that's how I envisioned it so hopefully I'm on the right track. At the moment with 3 I'm tossing around the idea of two lights stacked on top of each other and maybe dimming them down to 400w a each if heat becomes an issue.

I have three @ roughly 40" tall & 28" across that I flipped about 4 days ago in a horizontal setup, the canopy is kinda like a sog just starting to completely fill in. I'm itching to get these in the new room and get some quality light to the lower branches and see what kind if any difference it will make in the final outcome. The next set will be done vertically all the way, on that one I'm really hoping to see the difference.

 

[VeticalGrowBot]

hey, do you post on www.verticalgreen.org

 

[mymed]

Yeah I just found that site last night and asked the same question over there. Actually I think I read a post you made here that led me to that site, lol..