FIRST CFL GROW - Successful so far...

What's goin on yall? I've only posted here a couple times regarding some lighting questions but I figured I'd make my own thread for my grow and ask all of you seasoned growers for your wisdom along the way.

Setup: 2 x 105watt 6500k CFLs under a 2foot reflector made from dryer venting. Each bulb advertised as 5000 lumens, 400watt equivalent. Bulbs are always at least between an inch (2.5cm) and 4 inches (10cm) from the plants.

Using a soil mixture which is 60% FF Ocean Forest, 15% Perlite, 25% Earthworm Castings. About every other watering, I use about 1/2 tsp of Peruvian Seabird Guano per 36oz of water, which is low concentration according to packaging (advertised 1 tbsp per gallon for small plants and up to 3 tbsp per gallon for big plants)), but I'd rather start low on adding nutes and work my way up. I also sometimes add 3-4 drops of this Liquid Cactus 2-7-7 Fertilizer I saw at home depot and decided to try. So far, no complaints.

General Info So Far: I planted 4 seeds from some good high mids bagseed in a box filled with basic potting soil/perlite mixture late at night on Jan 30th. Originally, I had no idea about the deep details of growing, other than basic biological facts, plant a seed and it should grow; so I did just that under a 26watt 6500k CFL. About week later, the first picture shown was my result.

So three seeds made it to sprout, SWEET! I obviously had quite a project under my hands now. I did hours of research to upgrade my grow setup for a solid personal grow, which has led me to my equipment setup now.

It is now March 2nd, and my plants are about 29-30 days old. Here's some pics:

Picture #, date, description:

#1: 2/05/10 - three babies

#2, 3, 4: 2/15/10 - Plants a week after they were repotted.


#5, 6, 7: 2/21/10 - Growin' nice 'n' green. The one in picture 7 seems to have foliage that is a darker shade green than the others, why would that be?

#8: 3/1/10 - Just over 28 days and my lovelies are lookin' sexy.


Any advice you can give me about anything is always appreciated. No matter how much I think I have researched and learned, I accept that I am new to this and surely can make mistakes, so a legitimate helpful hint is never immediately turned down.

Enjoy everyone, happy growin'!

You are better off using more, lower wattage lights than fewer, higher watts. The reason for this is, the higher the wattage, the hotter the ballast. Much hotter. Also the lower wattages 26-40 are a lot cheaper. If you have more lights, and one breaks, you still have many others still going. If you have 2 lights, and one dies, you have one light. Lastly, if you have more lights, you can space them out more and cover a larger area for actually less power and you can mix spectrums better.

I like to do a 4/1 ratio for light spectrums. For veg, ill have four 5000/6500k lights for every one 2700k light and the reverse for flowering.

Its also a good idea to flush your plants every now and again if you are using chemical ferts in both veg and flowering.

It also looks like you are about ready to do some FIM and LST. I start this after the 3rd and 4th sets of true leaves sprout.

cfl's and t5's are working very well for me

T5s and CFLs work great for me. But i have about 3x what he does.

greensister said:

You are better off using more, lower wattage lights than fewer, higher watts. The reason for this is, the higher the wattage, the hotter the ballast. Much hotter. Also the lower wattages 26-40 are a lot cheaper. If you have more lights, and one breaks, you still have many others still going. If you have 2 lights, and one dies, you have one light. Lastly, if you have more lights, you can space them out more and cover a larger area for actually less power and you can mix spectrums better.

I like to do a 4/1 ratio for light spectrums. For veg, ill have four 5000/6500k lights for every one 2700k light and the reverse for flowering.

Its also a good idea to flush your plants every now and again if you are using chemical ferts in both veg and flowering.

It also looks like you are about ready to do some FIM and LST. I start this after the 3rd and 4th sets of true leaves sprout.

Click to expand...

I'm actually planning on putting in between eight to twelve 26w 2700k bulbs relatively soon to balance out the spectrum for a couple weeks before I start flowering. They'll be in clamp reflectors with Y-socket-adapters above and to the side of the plants, pointing slightly diagonally downward toward the plants. That'll add about 312w/20000 lumens according to 26w/1750 lumens per bulb. Considering my grow space is not even 2x3ft, I had assumed that about 25000-30000 lumens would be sufficient, especially since 2:1 of those lumens would be in 2700k spectrum for flowering.

As far as ferts, I'm only using seabird guano for the most part in my water mixture. I use that once, maybe twice a week. Most of the time I am watering with just R.O. water from walmart or walgreens or whatever. Should I add more nutes gradually as I keep growing?

As far as trimming and training my plant, I was actually trying to stay away from topping or fimming, as I have read that it decreases the potency and requires your plant to grow longer since it is healing from the cuts. I've also heard it doesn't increase yield that much, it just keeps your plant short. I would like to keep it around 2.5ft or maybe a max of 3 feet... as all growers however, I do want to get the most yield and most potency as possible.

Also, how long can/should I do LST for? LST is something I was considering, but at the same time, I am hesitant to screw around with my plants on the first grow, especially since they seem to look so healthy and green so far compared to some other horror pictures I've seen.

Phoenix573 said:

I'm actually planning on putting in between eight to twelve 26w 2700k bulbs relatively soon to balance out the spectrum for a couple weeks before I start flowering. They'll be in clamp reflectors with Y-socket-adapters above and to the side of the plants, pointing slightly diagonally downward toward the plants. That'll add about 312w/20000 lumens according to 26w/1750 lumens per bulb. Considering my grow space is not even 2x3ft, I had assumed that about 25000-30000 lumens would be sufficient, especially since 2:1 of those lumens would be in 2700k spectrum for flowering.

As far as ferts, I'm only using seabird guano for the most part in my water mixture. I use that once, maybe twice a week. Most of the time I am watering with just R.O. water from walmart or walgreens or whatever. Should I add more nutes gradually as I keep growing?

As far as trimming and training my plant, I was actually trying to stay away from topping or fimming, as I have read that it decreases the potency and requires your plant to grow longer since it is healing from the cuts. I've also heard it doesn't increase yield that much, it just keeps your plant short. I would like to keep it around 2.5ft or maybe a max of 3 feet... as all growers however, I do want to get the most yield and most potency as possible.

Also, how long can/should I do LST for? LST is something I was considering, but at the same time, I am hesitant to screw around with my plants on the first grow, especially since they seem to look so healthy and green so far compared to some other horror pictures I've seen.

Click to expand...

cfls wont support a 2.5 or 3ft plant well cfls just dont have the penetrating power I would flip to 12/12 early to prevent such growth

cacamal said:

cfls wont support a 2.5 or 3ft plant well cfls just dont have the penetrating power I would flip to 12/12 early to prevent such growth

Click to expand...

I kinda had a feeling about that actually. Would it be better to light the undersides of the leaves? Like, have the reflectors on the floor pointing up?

My plants are all around 8-9 inches right now, so should I switch to 12/12 once they're like 14 inches or so? I figure that way, they would stay under 2 feet most likely.

As I asked, when is a good time to start and stop doing LST? Will it affect my plant's flowering if I do LST in the flowering phase?

Oh and in addition to the last post, I also wanted to ask...

Since the previous person recommended I don't grow my plants too tall, and I have my plants in 8 inch pots (equal to a little over a gallon) right now, do I still need to transplant the plants to these 3 gallon pots that I bought? I bought them under the assumption that I was going to need a bunch of extra root space for a 2 footer or taller, but if I keep them to 2 feet or less, would I still want to transplant?

cacamal said:

cfls wont support a 2.5 or 3ft plant well cfls just dont have the penetrating power I would flip to 12/12 early to prevent such growth

Click to expand...

not true at all if you know what your doing..

exhibit a...

tigerblowztreez said:

exhibit a...

Click to expand...

So basically, as long as I give my plants somewhat intense light all around and don't just concentrate my light at the top, I can grow it to a few feet? Not saying I am going to do this, just wondering; I would much rather have healthy lush 20-24inch plants than some 3 footers that are barely gettin enough light because of the distance, if that is the case of course.

By the way, when you do LST, does it permanently disfigure the stalk on your plant? I'm also curious to hear a personal story or two about the pros and cons of LSTing to decide if it's really worth it.

EDIT: Oh and also, could someone throw me advice on when I should start LSTing? Someone earlier said after the 3rd/4th sets of true leaves appear and I just wanted to verify. Also when should I stop LST?

yeah you can grow a decent size plant with cfls. you just gotta get light covering all around it. dont limit your lights to just above it. as far as lst, theres a big thread on it here somewhere, but i dont have the link lol.

Cool I'll look around for it, thanks for the advice so far. I'll be uploadin some new pics in a couple days of the ladies in development.

As far as light fixtures go, is there any supplier that carries light bulb sockets already wired with the plug and all? Otherwise I was just gonna get clamp reflectors from home depot for my extra 2700k lights I'm gonna be putting in.

Hey man,Im new but i wanted to say something.Ive grown and budded 3 plants with CFLs.What looks like a quarter weighed 2 grams.Just sayin.CFLs make it VERY fluffy and airy.So..Might wanna look into a small HPS

Crazie311 said:

Hey man,Im new but i wanted to say something.Ive grown and budded 3 plants with CFLs.What looks like a quarter weighed 2 grams.Just sayin.CFLs make it VERY fluffy and airy.So..Might wanna look into a small HPS

Click to expand...

It's funny you mention that actually. I'm sitting here writing a speech for a class on energy consumption actually, and I was thinking about how if I used a 150W HPS and some surrounding CFL's just for supporting light, I'd end up using 150-200 less watts and get the same amount of light.

So, a couple quick questions to be answered pleeeeassseee :

1) Would a 150W HPS be a significant addition to my grow setup (meaning would just a 150w HPS actually make a difference compared to CFLs?) I only am growing a few plants at a time in a 2x3ft space, with about 5-6 feet of height that I could raise the lights up to.

2) I'm growing in a closet that has the door shut almost always to keep light and cats out. I only have an oscillating fan that blows around my plants to keep em cool, and does perfectly well with my 2 105w Bulbs I have 3 inches from the plants now. Will heat be an issue with a 150W or 250W HPS? In other words, could I go with a relatively simple 150-250W HPS
( like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-250-watt-HPS-GROW-LIGHT-250w-High-Pressure-Sodium-w-/120491776365) and not have to worry about heat?

Again, thank you all for your great advice and help.

i can't asnwer yer heat question but you should def think about getting that 150w hps. i am buying on in a week or so when my tax money is available

Well, after looking at some various pictures about how a few other 150W HPS grows turned out phenomenal, and I was having a conversation about lighting with one of my buddies who's starting to grow as well, I couldn't resist...

Went for the 150W HPS system for 69.99; seemed pretty legit as it was from htgsupply. Hopefully it should be here by mid next week; can't wait to fire it up for flowering!

Sooo... how should I go about changing my title to 150W HPS + 200+W CFL grow? Lol.

Here is a sketch that I made of the setup I was planning on having...

The crescent shapes near the bottom are clamp reflectors with Y-connecters and 2x26w CFLs (one 6500k, one 2700k) in each reflector. So one 150w HPS, 4 52w reflectors... should be around 25,000 lumens eh? Lemme know what you guys think.

should work fine