Jeeze, so much good input so quickly! My kinda place. The vast majority of the Ethos are rbx2, and the most stable looks to be an r5. I went into my preferred seed vendor, and found offerings by night owl and Mephisto. The Mephisto lineup certainly caught my eye, so I think I'll be tossing some of those into the mix as well, likely Sour Stomper, mango smile, double grape, and possibly 3 bears og.
I've noticed quite a bit of "leaf tucking" whereas I'm generally a leaf remover. Is defoliation inadvisable where autos are concerned? I often strip plants near bare even in early veg, and certainly right after the stretch is completed. I generally do a combination of topping and lst, where either/or or both is beneficial. Often, I do it right in the solo cup to start things off. Do you guys top your autos, or just let em go, while manipulating leaf? My actually growing space is, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. I've got 51 acres not near anyone, 3 of which are leveled and terraced out for growing (cannabis typically, though I'm integrating actual food production into the mix gradually... That's ultimately where I'm headed for the majority of the space). I'm in the western Maine mountain area, our grow season is kinda on the short side of things. To answer the above question, the greenhouse hoops are 6' wide. I'm doing quick-hoops, which are ½" galv conduit ribbing. Normally, these are put right into the ground, but what I'm doing here is using conduit coupling and inserting 5' conduit lengths into the ground half a foot or so, every 4 feet, and connecting them to the ribs, thus elevating them significantly. I'll be running the same conduit across the top center, and using channel and wiggle wire along the sides. This will yield 6'wide rain coverage, and the rows will likely be 50'long, though I can make them pretty much in any configuration I want. So if your saying 3x3/4x4 is a good area to plan for, that gives me a good idea of the spacing. I think, based upon what I've been told here, I might cut that plant count down to half and run 5 or 7 gallon pots then.