Low Budget CFL Closet Grow (First Time)

H

HighGrowLife

New Member
Hey, I just started getting into growing and i cant seem to stop reading up on it. So i decided to start my own little thing. Just to see if i can acaully grow some buds. I decided to go with CFL bulbs because the electric bill is an issue and i dont like how hot other bulbs get. So i went with what i thought was the most basic. I picked up a 4 pack of 23w, Daylight at 1600 lumens each. And i believe 5000K? Not sure what that is but thats why im here. Picked up little things to get my temporary grow box going at home depot. Just some splitters, jiffy pot things and such. Got the cheapest bag of dirt at the Dollar Store. I read somewhere it inst as important to have good soil until the plants get bigger. So i hope i made the right choice. I mean its just dirt right? But these guys are only 3 days in the dirt, and 4 days germinating in a paper towel. Please share some tips and tricks. Let me know if you think my set up is good enough for now.Gonna be posting through out the grow. Almost forgot to mention there just some really good reggie bag seeds i had saved up.
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Indicia

Indicia

Active Member
The Daylight Bulbs are 6500K, good choice.
More light is needed, I read on here that around 100w will properly grow 1 plant.
I think I counted 12 in you setup.
 
STLbudz

STLbudz

Well-Known Member
your ok with those man there still little and its not measured per plant indoors its per square foot for indicas your minimum wattage should be 50 watt sq ft, and sativa s 70 watts per sq foot. looks to me thats a 4 sq ft space ,so when there big enough or flowering i would add 4 more, if you plan to use that space i wouldnt veg long
 
STLbudz

STLbudz

Well-Known Member
kinddiesel said:
turn 3 of those bulbs off , why murder the electric
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I agree you dont need all 4, personally i would only use 2 , but if you want to leave them on go ahead your going to end up adding them in about a week , so just leave it if youd like
 
Slipon

Slipon

Well-Known Member
add more as the plants grow, for now it look fine, tho lower em a bit, need to be like 2-4" away or you get stretchy seedlings, maybe 4" and let em grow up a bit

and 5000K is a good choice, but you want to add some 2700K to the mix once you begin to flower

and the biggest down side of any fluorescent light is penetration (after 12" I don't even get a reading on my light meter from my 54W T5HO Tube`s)
so you need to decide what grow technic you want to use to keep em short and the light close, a scrog works well and would be what I would do myself, some topping and LST/M-line would also work or maybe 12/12 from seed in a SoG, choices are many, but one thing I can tell you is that you don't want +3ft plants with 23W CFLs only the top 20% of your Bud sites would get strong enough light to become anything really

[video=youtube;GXBpN51Ui6s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXBpN51Ui6s[/video]
 
H

HighGrowLife

New Member
im just gonna keep em going because i feel like the more light the faster they grow. I have a questions about the tin foil though. someone told me to get rid of it because of hot spots? so i did and i hope i did the right thing. But why is my plant growing like this? it was directly under the light DSC00118.jpg
 
Slipon

Slipon

Well-Known Member
look odd, unless then just broke the soil

and yes tinfoil is`t the best to use, maylor is no.1 but flat white works as well
 
z666ne

z666ne

Member
5000k is the temperature of the light on the Kelvin scale.
During veg, higher K temperatures are needed for faster growth BUT what's confusing is, the higher the temperature, the COOLER the light color. So your blues are higher on the scale, but cooler to the eye. Red light is cooler on the scale, for flowering, around 2700K.

We alternate with these 2 values, as well as above and below them, to replicate the long spring/summer days (Blue, high K light) and then the change to shorter days (Red, low K light) when we flip the light cycle to 12/12 to begin flowering.

It's always good to mix in a few different K value bulbs to get a wider spectrum.
View attachment 3018945
As you can see no single value can give the plant the best possible light, so mix em up. Just make sure if you're vegging - majority of the lights are higher K value. And if you're flowering - majority of the lights are lower K value.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your grow.
 
H

HighGrowLife

New Member
yea i got the tin foil out after seeing my plants stems growing all curvy and crazy. i went to target and just picked up some cheap white poster board. i trashed my old box and currently moving it into a plastic tote from walmart. MOVIN ON UP! There growing fast so please stick around to see some pics
 
H

HighGrowLife

New Member
z666ne said:
5000k is the temperature of the light on the Kelvin scale.
During veg, higher K temperatures are needed for faster growth BUT what's confusing is, the higher the temperature, the COOLER the light color. So your blues are higher on the scale, but cooler to the eye. Red light is cooler on the scale, for flowering, around 2700K.

We alternate with these 2 values, as well as above and below them, to replicate the long spring/summer days (Blue, high K light) and then the change to shorter days (Red, low K light) when we flip the light cycle to 12/12 to begin flowering.

It's always good to mix in a few different K value bulbs to get a wider spectrum.
View attachment 3018945
As you can see no single value can give the plant the best possible light, so mix em up. Just make sure if you're vegging - majority of the lights are higher K value. And if you're flowering - majority of the lights are lower K value.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your grow.
Click to expand...
I understand that the 6500 would be best for veg but i only saw the 5000 23w and just went with it. It said day light on the package so i assumed that would be the best for growing. But I dont know anything yet. TEACH ME
 
Slipon

Slipon

Well-Known Member
All 6500K actually don't work that well, I rather go all out 5000K then, but a mix of 6500K and 2700K works well, I see a big different depending on witch tube I fit in my T5HO fixture, yes 6500K keep them short with tight nod`s space, but I see a faster growth when I add some 2700K to the mix, some Ppl. even veg with HPS (my old HPS have a Kelvin color on 2100K) the new Area-51 LEDs is all 3750K warm white

So don't worry, what I would do, is add more light, maybe ditch the weakest plants and just flower the few strongest

A small 250W HPS would work great for flowering if you can handle the heat, if you have the money to spend a LED fixture would be perfect (I love mine) but as a minimum I would add double the amount of CLFs all in 2700K warm white
 
z666ne

z666ne

Member
HighGrowLife said:
I understand that the 6500 would be best for veg but i only saw the 5000 23w and just went with it. It said day light on the package so i assumed that would be the best for growing. But I dont know anything yet. TEACH ME
Click to expand...
I don't know much, but I've been reading threads on here and grasscity religiously. It really does teach you a lot.
'daylight' is a label they give the bulbs instead of just advertising the K number. Although the K number is also on there, Daylight, Soft white, bright white, warm white, etc are all in reference to the number. I have 7 x 23w 5000k CFL bulbs. Before that all I had were 2 random 2-3000k bulbs. So 7 x 23w 5000k and 1 23w which is, I assume 2700k, and 1 20w 2700k.

When I went from 2 bulbs to 9, the plants loved it. I'm growing 2. Check out my thread. Hope you fill your head full of all this available knowledge. I love forums.
 
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