Yield Tradeoff Question

[The Bard]

Hi everyone,

I am still pretty new to this, but all the help on these forums has been amazing!!

Anyhow, I have what might be a really basic question.

Let's say that I can fit four larger plants, or eight smaller plants, in my grow tent. If I do four plants, I could let them veg for a lot longer before flipping to flower (all of this is assuming photoperiod plants). With the longer veg, yield would be higher. Or, if I did eight plants, I would flip to 12/12 earlier. Yield per plant would be less.

But which scenario would yield higher in total? I guess the fairest way to measure would be something like grams yielded per day or week, since the four-plant approach would need a significantly longer veg period to max out the grow space.

Assuming everything else remains constant - growing environment, cultivar, growing medium, etc. More of a theoretical question, but wondering what folks think.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Everything else being equal (which of course it never is) they’ll yield the same at harvest.
No it won’t take that much longer in veg to get the size needed for four larger plants, since growth is an exponential process.
But yes growing eight plants will be slightly faster so should get you your harvest a little sooner, meaning yield will be greater if you extrapolate over years. The extreme version of that is SOG method where plants are only vegged a minimal amount and a zillion of them are flowered in small containers.

The trade off with 8 plants is you have twice as many plants to manage. I find the bigger plants with fewer numbers works out better for me.

 

[The Bard]

Everything else being equal (which of course it never is) they’ll yield the same at harvest.
No it won’t take that much longer in veg to get the size needed for four larger plants, since growth is an exponential process.
But yes growing eight plants will be slightly faster so should get you your harvest a little sooner, meaning yield will be greater if you extrapolate over years. The extreme version of that is SOG method where plants are only vegged a minimal amount and a zillion of them are flowered in small containers.

The trade off with 8 plants is you have twice as many plants to manage. I find the bigger plants with fewer numbers works out better for me.

Thanks for the good reply. Yes, my hunch was that the fast-8 might yield better, over time, than the big-4 approach, but you are definitely right about the extra work involved. Have a good weekend.