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@Olde School Player first Thanks for taking the time to have a read I Don't know much about the subject but will give you my opinion of just my experience
1. As @Free Flow stated mars 300 are 124 true watts, and the cobs are 55 watts
2. as for light heights I'm still learning I just watch the plants A lot come down to Temps, strains etc
3. what is 2 much stretch for autos? This is the question I want to learn as well
4. I do believe that the light intensity in the cobs are far greater than the mars 300 as they all started under cobs, if you look at my first journal it was just the mars secondary growth was slow compared to the cobs if you look at the middle plant I haven't done any LST, with comparison's just look at the first 3 they all have the same structure to them( that last one is sativa dom and secondary growth is weak but most of my Flash seeds have done that and in the next month secondary growth will be as strong as the main stem )
5. footprint i think cobs are 1x1foot and mars 300 are 1x1/12 but again the cobs have better side growth, spread than the mars
6. I just ordered 7 more cobs i will be running 2 cobs per plant in the last month but this will be trial and error this will cover for me a 50cm x 80cm per plant and the mars i was just covering 40cm x 40cms
7. I'm new to all the strains but I'm impressed with them and can see so many medical benefits to each strain
I hope this helps a little and someone with the knowledge @912GreenSkell @Dudeski and @A-Train will help out. I learn't most of my stuff just by reading these guys journals
cheers red
RJ, your experiences with your grows are valued and exactly what I need for this project!!! I can figure this out partially and slowly over the next couple of years on my own, or leverage the experience of others like yourself and get it done ten times as fast!!! I'll plot your wattages and footprints into my data & it will absolutely help. So do me a huge favor and include light heights in your future posts, along with plant height / stretch measurements.
"what is 2 much stretch for autos? This is the question I want to learn as well " - that deserves elaboration as this is the objective of my study, with a twofold answer. The simplest is, for growers with limited headroom, they can use what I am slowly defining to their advantage by preventing stretch. There are truckloads of growers who would simply LOVE to grow a plant that yielded 4-8 oz and stayed at 10" height. But what if you could take a 30" tall plant, train it down to 15", and yield 12oz? That's a better mousetrap.
The more complex answer to the same question - A
s @912GreenSkell points out (yes, he'[s an exceptionally talented grower and we have already connected on a # of topics), when it comes to total yield you can't beat plant quantity. But I
am a medical grower in a state where medical growing is not yet recognized, and severity of penalties is gauged by the number of plants. So I have slowly transitioned from multi-plant photoperiod grows (including mother plant / clone / SOG grows) under 400W and 600W HID lighting to single plant autoflower grows under 250W HID, moving to 325W LED lighting. To maximize yield I
LST my plant. And in order for LST to be most effective, you need plant stretch to increase the horizontal grow areas of the main trunk, and to allow all secondary branches to catch up with the main trunk. When you take a plant from one dominant top cola to 15, 20, 25+, your yields increase by orders of magnitude. With autoflowers, the plant's natural stretch cycle is all you have to determine overall node points to grow buds. If you viewed through my light intensity thread, you saw 250W HID grows that all stretched beautifully - every one of them. To my best extreme the Kalashnikova auto that completely filled my 2X2 tent. This is best illustrated in the LST how-to which @Nosias was so kind as to allow me to post on his grow thread - https://www.autoflower.org/threads/fast-buds-and-sweet-seeds.64526/page-10 starting on post # 98 shows the full effect that stretch (and LST) can have on yield.
Fast forward to my LED grows, no stretch. And from good genetics like Dutch Passion's Blue Auto Mazar that struggled to reach 4.3 oz, one of the lowest yielding auto's I've ever grown. So that brings me to today and trying to answer the question of WHY????
But back to your question,
what is too much stretch? Approximately, take the width of your tent plus 33-50%. Place a plant in a corner and let it grow as tall as it will, while training it over to a 90 degree horizontal angle that reduces overall height by 50 - 66% but retains the overall length in a horizontal position. I run small tents (2X2 and 2'3" X 2'3") so I train my single plants diagonally to increase overall plant length. And I wish, just once, I could get an LED grow to NEED diagonal training to fit. So far none have even needed the 2'3" width. Simply put, I HAVE TO get back to plants that stretch to improve my single plant yields. I could go back to multi-plant grows like I did in my Outlaw days but shit, I'm too old to waste any time in jail 
So here I am chasing this light intensity thing, and COB's are becoming the dominant technology. I get it, but are COB's really more "intense" than a multi-LED "system" light like our Mars lights? Well, a COB is STILL a multi- LED, and its performance can still be influenced by lens angles and color spectrums, but at the end of the day, my suspicion is total power consumption over a square footage area will equate roughly to the ppfd rating that hits the plant. Some vendors will do better than others at efficiency, but at the end of the day the main two ways to affect "intensity" will be to increase ppfd / power, or raise the light to a further distance from the plant. More directly stated, your COB's are 55watts, and you have one COB per plant today. You are seeing more stretch from the COB plants than the MARS 300's at 125watts which is about 225% more light for the same footprint. I think the BigSm0's COB's are more efficient at generating ppfd than Mars, otherwise the difference in stretch would be even greater under the COB's.
Thanks for letting me shout from my soapbox on your thread & I'll be watching your grow with much interest. If you can please keep your light height and plant growth spec's posted as you progress, it will absolutely help.
So here I am chasing this light intensity thing, and COB's are becoming the dominant technology. I get it, but are COB's really more "intense" than a multi-LED "system" light like our Mars lights? Well, a COB is STILL a multi- LED, and its performance can still be influenced by lens angles and color spectrums, but at the end of the day, my suspicion is total power consumption over a square footage area will equate roughly to the ppfd rating that hits the plant. Some vendors will do better than others at efficiency, but at the end of the day the main two ways to affect "intensity" will be to increase ppfd / power, or raise the light to a further distance from the plant. More directly stated, your COB's are 55watts, and you have one COB per plant today. You are seeing more stretch from the COB plants than the MARS 300's at 125watts which is about 225% more light for the same footprint. I think the BigSm0's COB's are more efficient at generating ppfd than Mars, otherwise the difference in stretch would be even greater under the COB's.
There is another factor to this as @organic stated in another post.
I do absolutely believe color spectrums have an effect on plant growth, but to a much lesser extent than overall light power. But there are so many factors in the LED lighting marketplace with no industry standard measures, so as to never be able to sort it all out in my thread. I look back to HID lighting days when everyone veg-ed around 5500K and bloomed around 2900K. That understandable technology has now been clouded by everyone rating their LED's in nanometers, then claiming dual-spectrum red and blue, then others claiming white / full spectrum is better, then some claiming infrared spectrums are the keys to increased yields. There's probably a fair bit of truth in all of these claims, and a large bit of marketing bullshit. But my bets are on intensity as the single most influencing factor, and I hope someone else will chase the other parameters and their overall influence. If any volunteers I'll play, but I can't deviate from my main topic.Thanks for letting me shout from my soapbox on your thread & I'll be watching your grow with much interest. If you can please keep your light height and plant growth spec's posted as you progress, it will absolutely help.
