Quote Originally Posted by tinytoon
what is the average amount of space a plant needs? I almost think I read somewhere about 1.5 sq ft per plant but cant remember.
This is just me but 1.5 sq. ft. equates to only 9" radius for your plants. If my plants are only 18" circumference I don't want more than 1 plant in a space this small, and no more than 3' to 3.5' high at time of harvest. I believe that anything that is worth doing is worth doing right however in the real world money or lack of it determines how "right" one is able to set up a indoor grow room. I have a natural green thumb so maybe I've been lucky. My first two grows were outside and produced slightly over 12' tall plants after having pinched them at aproximately 2' to produce two main terminal buds that were each over 12" long and averaging aproximately 1.5 pounds per plant, all bud. Grown in the south and harvested the first of November prior to the first frost. There was a lot that I didn't know such as the thc actually begins to degrade the longer it grows. (Had it not been for the frost I would have kept growing forever). One thing that I did even in an outdoor grow was to remove what I call the fan leaves, so that the sun, which I recently found out produces around 10,000 lumens per square foot, could reach the lower portion of my plants. This was instinctive for me as I knew nothing of light requirements at the time. My plants the last month prior to harvest looked nothing like weed. They were nothing but buds, almost unreconizeable even to me when I would go to water them. I was moving them constantly every week or so due to unwanted visitors. Plants this large are a lot of work in that they can drink 1 to 2 gallons of water each, per day. (When you're toting water this is a lot) I just recently began growing under lights indoors, so I've had to do a lot of studying to learn necessary skills, yet again I've been lucky in that my plants look like miniature trees from the seedling stage on up. I had to learn about forcing the flowering process which is dependent upon your lighting that you can afford. I initiate flowering at 1 to 2 months tops. This due to the flowering stage doubling the height of my plants. And since money was such an obstacle for me, I was unable to purchase HID lights, so I began under one 48" HO T5 with 8 bulbs. I've not yet purchased a light meter, which is next on my list so at the time I wasn't sure how tall my harvested plants could be therefore the 1 to 2' at time of flowering. This is starting to get long winded so let me just say that control what you can meaning the container for your plants make it as large as possible so that the roots never touch the sides and no possibility of being root bound exists. Healthy roots equate to healthy vegetative growth. I cannot emphasize the need for nutrients enough, which includes your water as well as the quality of light used. Get the best you can and grow to the capabilities of your lighting system. The rest you will pick up as you go. By the way my initial cost for this system was around $800.00 this to me was a huge amount of money of which $300 went to organic nutrients. My light system was Aprox. $350.00 miscellaneous tools and necessities were another $150. I don't believe that it can be done for much less than this, but one could certainly invest a great deal more, thus money determining the size of your grow room.