indoor plant spacing indoors

This is my first attempt at growing and I think I got a little too ambitious with the number of plants for my grow space.  I have 35 plants in a 10x12 room and was wondering what were the odds of me being able to keep all of them until spring. They are all flowering and some have pods. Do they have to be directly underneath the t5ho lights or can I raise the lights real high and spread them out across the entire room I have a 16 bulb fixture and a 12 bulb fixture both 4ft.  This is all the room I have for plants and cant talk any of my friends into adopting. Just would hate to have to get rid of some of them. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  Seeds started 3rd week of july and at the rate they are growing i wont be able to keep them all directly under the lights.
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you know what they call that in another popular ag industry? sea of green baby....lookin good man! :P plants will grow if there light so it is worth a shot, it's the fruiting that may be difficult under less than ideal lighting.
 
I keep mine pruned and thinned out for max penetration of the T5HOs, plus it provides better airflow through the plants when they get that packed in.

Sometimes you gotta sacrifice pods for plant health.
They look fantastic by the way :-).
 
Haha awesome problem to have brother.  It's hard to say goodbye, but I started off with 20+ and realized I was going to have a lot of pods even with less plants so I went down to 10 and I've been happy and busy enough with them.
 
You can always take a cutting off the plants in case you decide to "off" a few for the sake of the herd.
 
M
 
CAPCOM said:
What is the total wattage and kelvin rating of your lights?
28 bulbs x 54watts= 1512 watts all bulbs are 6500k
sevenstrings said:
I keep mine pruned and thinned out for max penetration of the T5HOs, plus it provides better airflow through the plants when they get that packed in.

Sometimes you gotta sacrifice pods for plant health.
They look fantastic by the way :-).
not quite sure I understand what you mean by pruned and thinned out. like topping them or taking some off the side or a leaf here a leaf there kinda thing?   
FROG DOG said:
you know what they call that in another popular ag industry? sea of green baby....lookin good man! :P plants will grow if there light so it is worth a shot, it's the fruiting that may be difficult under less than ideal lighting.
ok i can deal with not alot of peppers right now can wait on those got plenty but to be honest I love watching them grow like house plants and would hate to strip them bare or worst kill them but ultimately will do what needs to be done endgame is planting outside next spring.
mlittle74 said:
Haha awesome problem to have brother.  It's hard to say goodbye, but I started off with 20+ and realized I was going to have a lot of pods even with less plants so I went down to 10 and I've been happy and busy enough with them.
 
You can always take a cutting off the plants in case you decide to "off" a few for the sake of the herd.
 
M
Never thought of that is it hard to grow the cuttings total newbie here. 
 
I kind of got the same problem, hurts to have to decide what plants to sacrifice.
On another thread it was discussed the Craft of Bonchi, reducing the size of the branches, thats the way Im going for overwintering them.
 
the higher you put the lights the less pods you will get.. on a T5HO you want the lights no more than 10 inches.
for that many plants you need about 2 1000W HID.. you can put the light much higher and the light spectrum will penetrate better and not fall off as fast as florescent does as distance increases.. a 1000 HID can be 3 to maybe 4 feet above the plants which will give you good coverage..
 
Almost all fluorescents have to be right over the tops of plants to grow. The plants will do fine in lowering the lights and just be sure to have good air exchange and direct fan circulation with the density of the canopy. Exchange should be room volume every 5-10 mins.
 
Don't go too close, though.  With T12s you could have the lamp in direct contact with the leaves with no ill effect.  But T8s and T5s, especially the HO versions, run considerably warmer. 
 
DMF said:
Don't go too close, though.  With T12s you could have the lamp in direct contact with the leaves with no ill effect.  But T8s and T5s, especially the HO versions, run considerably warmer.
T5HO will burn the crap out of the leaves if too close (don't ask how I know lol), plus the heat can cause flower drop if too close. My bulbs can get up to 125-130 degrees.
 
keyown1 said:
28 bulbs x 54watts= 1512 watts all bulbs are 6500k

not quite sure I understand what you mean by pruned and thinned out. like topping them or taking some off the side or a leaf here a leaf there kinda thing?   

ok i can deal with not alot of peppers right now can wait on those got plenty but to be honest I love watching them grow like house plants and would hate to strip them bare or worst kill them but ultimately will do what needs to be done endgame is planting outside next spring.

Never thought of that is it hard to grow the cuttings total newbie here. 
 
I'm a noob too, first year grower, but I've seen a lot of posts and it seems pretty easy and successful.  Just take a trimming (search for cloning on here or youtube on exactly where / how you cut) and put it in the dirt.  Good luck bud and keep us posted.
 
M
 
Spacing them close together outside can provide addt'l wind resistance, but when you put them so close inside what happens is they compete for light and put more energy into growing taller, and thus less energy into pod production.

Ultimately you would probably be better off thinning the herd a bit, which means removing a few of them (entire plant) especially if you are overwintering with hopes of putting them back outside next spring at which point it would be better to have a shorter and thicker primary and secondary stem forks to support the addt'l weight of a 2nd+ season of growth.

Given typical inside airflow conditions and close plant spacing, you're going to want a fair amount of fan forced airflow which will mostly eliminate the issues of leaves being too close to the lamp bulbs so long as they aren't touching.

You can increase your light density by putting mirrored panels around the area they are in. The cheap way to do that is take large cardboard box panels, or foam insulation sheets, whatever is handy or the foam sheets are cheap at a hardware store, and covering them with a double layer of metalized emergency blanket material. You can get a multi-pack of those for under $1 a pack on Amazon and probably eBay. Another option is hang a curtain rod and make them into curtains but IMO that doesn't work as well over time as attaching to rigid panels. They can also be attached to walls with painter's (low residue upon removal type) masking tape, or with just about any tape if you don't mind cleaning and repainting the walls later.
 
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