Any advice on growing with cfl's???

You can achieve any height that you want through topping, fimming and LST. Just try to flower around 8" or so, this will keep it from getting too tall.

Anjinsan said:

D00d that's on the small side. 18" is not very wide for a mature plant. 3' minus the space that lights take up...will not be very tall either.

You might want to stick to autoflowering strains or grow 12/12 from seed if that's all the space that you have.

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im thinking similar thoughts. if you really want to get serious about growing your own youll want to think about upgrading your space in the next 2-3 wks. the space you have now will suffice for awhile, but will yeild very little if youd a whole grow in there.

do you have a closet you can use? whats your budget like?

just keep them small, my box is 2 feet deep, 3feet tall by 3 feet wide. i flower at 6-8 inches tall to allow for growth, and space for lights. plants will double to triple in height through flower phase. you can always tie down tall plants as well.
i veg under an 18 on 6 off schedule because the root system grows at night with the stored energy from the light it receives. some veg under 24 hour light but for me and my setup and style it is working great under 18/6.
flower under 12 on 12 off.
also watch for soil depletion, nutrient deficiencies in soil usually mean to repot with new soil. dont just try to feed more nutes youll do more damage. just repot with new soil save the headaches and worry.
my temp runs between 70-85 with humidity around 30 to 50 rh. my lights are 3 inches from canopy, i control each of my 20 cfl's separately depending on outside temps, if its 100 degrees out i adjust how many of them are on to control heat. i also run my lights at night with cooler temps.

First of all 1 of my seedlings is brown bread so i only got 3 now! I'm going to leave them a week or too in that tank and read up about topping, you said you flower yours at 6-8" but what kind of yeild do you get???? My budget is low at the moment but if i need to upgrade my space i will! Any info about topping and other ways i could get round this problem would be appriciated, o yea just setup another 2x20w cfl's so i now got 4 and i also bought 1 extra bulb and fitting which i might put in, not sure yet. I couldn't find any y splitters around here so i just wired too fittings together. Lol its all working anyway hopfully it will stay like that. I'll get some new pic's of the rig later and post them so you can have a look at the handy work!!

get a real light. dont get 20 wrong ones

They seem to work for other growers, what did you have in mind????? The plants seem to like them as they have grown an inch in a day and look really healthy. Im always open to new idea's so shoot!!

HOMEGROWN4DE said:

They seem to work for other growers, what did you have in mind????? The plants seem to like them as they have grown an inch in a day and look really healthy. Im always open to new idea's so shoot!!

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What he is referring to is an HID light, which is not required, but will produce better results.

You can still get great grows with CFLs, so don't worry about him. Check out my grow.

AG - Round 2

Lol i thought so! This seems to be doing the trick anyway, do u think 4 cfl's is enough for the space i have or should i put more to work?? I only got 3 plants now so was thinking of doing xoxoxox

I put a couple more cfl's in now with another homemade reflector, i have them as side lights and the babies are loving them!!! The only problem is that one of them seem's to have small white spots on it, only one leaf tho. I'll try getting a pic of it and i'll post it later, any advice would be great
thanks

cfl are good for veg but not for flowering u will want a hps for sure.

mine look good nice and dense. 2 weeks into flower. hps is ideal sure. cost too much so doing what i can. wanna give me your hps? thought not. so stickin with cfl. first grow so dont know yeild yet, just lookin to produce enough to get me to next harv so i dont have to buy med mj. not lookin to produce a ton, keeping it cyclic. cfl's do work cheaply.....

yea i know they would be better but this is cheap and it seems to work!!! there are plenty of people on rollitup that have had good results from cfl's so i'll see what happens i think. i too am only doing it so i don't have to pay the high prices, 3 plants is plenty till next harvest i hope.

CFLs are fine for flowering, and many of us HPS users started with them. They are a great way to get into growing with very little cash outlay.

Granted, they aren't as efficient as HPS, so you pay more in electric by comparison, but for a first grow, or for grows with limited headroom, they do the job well enough.

i do intend on getting a HPS just wanna see what the cfl's produce and if its enough i'll keep using them, like i said im hoping 3 plants is plenty for me to smoke.

This is my second grow and first grow with CFLs. My last last grow was outside and did not turn out well as my plants were all male and I had no idea what I was doing. But this time is a whole different story with the bubbleponics system and CFLs that I'm using. I started with 5 plants and only 2 made it into the vegetative stage. Now I'm 2 weeks into flowering and I only have 1 plant left but she is a beauty-and all with CFLs... And heres where I have a comment for you homegrown- The yield with only CFLs can still be very good. It depends mostly on your plant genetics and the amount of time that you leave them in the vegetative stage. I saw that you said you bought 20 Watt bulbs-- Buy lights with higher wattage if you want a better crop and yield. I'm going with 65Watt daylite lights and soft white lights, and 85Watt soft white lights. I vegged for 8 weeks and the plants grew to a height of 27 inches and very very bushy. I only topped them once and the one I have left-after only 14 days of flowering, has grown an additional 17 inches and is now 44 inches tall! I'm hoping to harvest by week 8 or 9 and finish at a height of 5 feet. I'm also expecting this one plant to yield about 5+ ounces of dried buds. So if you ask me, I'd say CFLs can definitely give you a great harvest.

I recommend adding a bit more light before flowering. I'd say around 150 actual watts of CFL for your space.

if you want to get the most from your CFLs, some form of training is a good idea. It can be a lot to take in on a first grow, and many new growers don't bother, but it will increase the amount of weed you get.

Topping, FIMming, supercropping, LST, or ScrOG are your main options. Topping is probably the easiest to do. You simply chop the top of the plant off, and 2 tops will grow in it's place (if done properly, look for a guide to see where to cut). Topping can be done multiple times, to make a bush style plant that is still short, with many smaller colas rather than one large one.

The reason training is recommended for CFL grows is the fact that they have limited penetration, and lose intensity quickly over distance. The idea is to get as much of the plant as close to the light as possible.

Good airflow is just as important as enough light. It can be the difference between fluffy, airy buds that look okay but weigh very little, and rock hard buds with plenty of mass to them.

thanks for the info, iam going to read up on topping and it does sound like i'll be doing it with my plants. i am always looking to improve my lighting so thanks for the heads up and i'll gett some higher wattage bulbs, im just having 2 search ebay as the shops round here are shit and only stock up2 20w!!
anyway happy growing and if there is anymore advice it would be greatly accepted!

ok correction.....first cfl grow. used to use hps 20 years ago, got rid of that fixture long ago. saving for a new one.
adding pics from this morn. started flower on 8.7.09 so 17 days. showed sex in 2.
veg under mostly 6500 kelvin cfl "daylight" spectrum.
flower under mostly 2700 kelvin cfl "warm white" spectrum. and you'll do fine.

ah! problem with pics. trying again

here's other 2
i'm using a variation of lst i call vlst "very low stress training" no pinching branches just slowly curving them and holding them down a couple days, then releasing them. about to do it again

lucky's has 6 cfl packs for $2 these are 23watt/100watt replacements. this is what i use. they have all spectrums. i paid $1 a piece for mine.