Indoor How to maximize yield in limited space

[Surfer Joe]

I have noticed a problem with my grows and am looking for advice from you more experienced growers.
I have a 1 x 1 x 2m tent and I can't go further for the time being.
On one grow, I had 8 plants in there in 11L pots and they crowded each other too much. On another grow, I had only one hydro plant in there and it was massively bushy, but that was probably more due to being in hydro than soil.
My current grow has 7 plants, and again, they are crowded and the side branches that I did lst earlier on are being denied their place in the light.

I was thinking of going one of two routes for the next grow, which will be in soil.

Should I plant about 16+ seeds in 6L pots and trim them so they are basically the main cola and pack them tight (SOG), or plant only 3 or 4 max in 20 L pots and do lst on them to make them bushy with lots of colas?

Even with my crowding, I can count almost 50 colas on the 7 current plants I have, plus there's a lot of lower stuff that doesn't stick up like the rest.
Would a SOG basically only give me one cola per plant?
Would fewer plants with lst tend to give a better yield?
Or is my sloppy way of crowding the tent and ending up with a thicket of varying colas and buds typical?
This is what the tent looks like now.

 

[Grey Bear]

You have your canopy looking nice in that little space.
I think it depends on your preference, you could put 3 small to med sized strains in there or one very nice sized strain.

 

[70sdiver]

I do about 4 in that size tent,all under t-5's. That grows looking good.if you cram them in id strip all the lower sites and get more energy in the tops.next grow try 4-5 plants and fill the net.what strain are you growing?

 

[ThatKracker]

Looks great man. I'd say you've used you space nicely.

 

[Surfer Joe]

Thanks. At this late stage, I decided to leave all the lower popcorn buds alone and use them as part of the shake for making butter. I did trim the lower stuff a lot during the grow, but it just kept coming and I gave up.
I have 3 think different and then a white widow, a northern lights, a royal ak and a super skunk, all autos this time, grown under 20/4 with a 600 w dual spectrum hid. I only wanted the 3 think different and the white widow, but I planted a few extras in case they didn't all sprout, but they did, and I couldn't bear to throw them out.

 

[ThatKracker]

How'd this turn out?

 

[Surfer Joe]

There were a lot of smaller stems with small buds crammed in between the larger colas and this kept them from developing more fully. Next time, I will trim off the smaller branches and focus on giving the larger branches more light. I had already done lst on them while smaller and they did have a nice even canopy with all the larger colas rising to the same height as the main colas, but I had too many plants in a small space and had to cram them together while flowering, which was counter-productive.
Fewer plants and lst should give me more big colas and fewer popcorn buds, I hope.

 

[medlowbear]

looks good leave it

 

[ThatKracker]

Yea I tend to always pick through the bottom 1/4 of the plants. It seems to push that energy up top.