Grow upward or outward...?

[PJGreen]

Here is a question that has been bugging me for a while, hopefully someone can tell me what to do.

The method I am using is a hydro grow box with about a nine gallon main resovoir,
and it has 14 net pots, each one being 4 inches wide. The grow box is about 3 feet wide, 2 feet deep and has about 4 feet of height clearance. There is a smaller one gallon resovoir on the back and a untrasonic fogger feeding the roots, there is also a air stone in the water.

The first time growing with this box I planted 14 seeds and 12 of them popped up and grew into nice plants. It was my first time so I was not sure how many plants would be appropriate for my grow box. After they were 12 -15 inches tall I flowered them and then added some vertical height inhibitor, so I ended up with a bunch of small plants with some fairly good buds on there. They barely grew up at all after that but there was allot of bud production. It was probably a good idea to flower them so small because of the ammount of plants growing in there.
I wonder what would have happened if I did not add any vertical height inhibitor... How tall would my plants have grown?

This is the second time growing with this box, and only had 4 seeds pop up, now there are three plants left after seeing a male and cutting it out of there after 9 days into flowering. Right now my plants are about 2 feet tall and allmost 2 weeks into flowering. It looks like I should have only one plant growing because it seems to be crowded and allot of the buds are not getting any light.
Is that what you are supposed to do, just grow a whole bunch of plants together...

Is it possible that I can get as much good bud from one big plant rather than a bunch of small ones... because it seems like it would be allot easier to control.

Can somebody tell me how many plants I should be growing in my little grow box.

Paul,

[BotanicAL]

PJ,

If you hadn't had the height inhibitor they very may have stretched enough to get burt by the light.

Regarding your crowding issues....Are there any open areas under the light? If so, you can train the plants to grow into these areas. Some twine and some bamboo stakes will work well. If you go with stakes, twine will work in your small situation, but should you ever have a bigger garden, using childrens hairclips to clip the branch to the stake will save tons of time and headache.

As to how many plants you should have in your box, that could be one or two larger ones, trained out horizontally to fill the entire area, or it could be 15 or 12 sog type plants as in your previous grow. Let the indicator be what clones/or seedlings you have going and how much herb you want.

If you haven't trimmed up the bottoms of the plants, make sure that you clean up small sucker branches that are not getting any light, or they will steal energy away from your colas.

For the most part you get about the same yield whether you have one or two trained plants of 16 small sog plants. You want to maximize your horizontal canopy for max efficiency.

Be safe
AL
________
Body science

[Pistol Pete]

I'm A Bender Myself

[PJGreen]

It looks like you don't have any big fan leaves, have you been removing them... Don't you shock the plant when you remove leaves?

There are a few big fan leaves on my plants and I have been just trying to
push them down under the buds. Should I be cutting off my big fan leaves and
some smaller leaves under the main plant just so there are only the buds with
the leaves around them...?

Paul,

[ShamanSmoke]

Hey Pete, like PJ, regarding those pics of yours, I was also wondering if you clip your fan leaves, and at what point do you?

[Pistol Pete]

I Remove No More Than 30% Of The fan leaves ( Also Called Sun leaves And Rain leaves)
Since I Bend My Plants They Have Their Uppermost Fan leaf Removed Whilst The Lower Fan leaf Stays
I Do This In The Flowering Stage
Indoors or Out
Pete

[ShamanSmoke]

Those top buds are most impressive. What strains? What nutes, etc do you use, and I've been using FoxFarms's Ocean Mix for soil. Do u recomend Promix?