Master kush vs northern lights

Nirvana NL is some stank, bro. It's an easy grow, fast too but it is stanky. Good high.

Nirvana MK is a good one too, has that airy Hindu Kush high to it. Big yielder, easy grow not as stank grow, but fragrant flowers with skunk undertones.

Both are good choices.

Nirvana's "Chrystal" is a big yielding White Widow hybrid, easy to grow, killer WW soaring high -- that shit is ripped. Big ass buds. Mold can be a problem if you don't handle it right. Has a fuel pungent stank while maturing.

Blue Dream is a good starter too. High yields, not as fragrant during growth as many other strains.

masterlights420 said:

The specs for the panel is 225 14 watt led's with 3:1 ratio of red to blue lights

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Hate to burst your bubble, but those tiny square 14W LED panels are garbage. Light spectrum is poor and absolute light output is low.

Something like that is OK for starting seedlings or for maintaining ordinary houseplants indoors, but unless you want a scrawny 4 inch tall plant, you're not going to get very far trying to flower a cannabis plant under one. 14 watts isn't enough energy for anything worth talking about.

Taking even one plant from ceed to bud is a several month effort; don't waste your time with that.

Seriously, if cost is an issue here, you'd be WAY better off with half a dozen $1.50 15 watt CFL lamps from WalMart. Hell, you'll way outperform one of those dinky LED panels with ordinary old-school tube flurorescent lamps.

You can buy a 150 W "garage light" type HPS lamp with ballast and bulb for as little as $60 new. That's not optimized for growing, and you may have to fiddle with a bit to work it into your space, but you'll get good performance for low effort and cost.

Edit:
Just checked, and the cheapest of the specialty 150W HPS grow lights with built in reflector are also about $60 (maybe plus shipping, depending on where you get one). These use magnetic ballasts and tend to hum a little, but again, you'll do WAY better with something like that than any crappy LED panel.

Nirvana's NL is not the most stable of strains, my preferred pheno is short and squat with very little stretch overall. Low odor.

I have never grown out any Nirvana fem NL seeds. In a pack of ten reg beans you will find one or two "beanpoles"...these stretch like crazy and finish looking like a stringy beanpole, the buds are good but the yield is weak.
Better buds and yield are provided by the short miniature Xmas tree phenotype.
Never grew Master Kush, but all of the Kushes I have grown all exude a pungent reek.
Good Luck.

Would a 125 watt cfl with a reflector be better

Jogro said:

Yes, a *good* LED panel would be better than some poor jury-rigged CFL panel, but that's not really a fair comparison because the LED panel will also cost roughly ten times as much.

If you know what you're doing, you can build something pretty awesome with CFLs for $50. Don't think you can touch ANYTHING LED of quality for that amount. Also, you can get a complete 250W HPS kit with reflector, bulb and digital ballast for under $120 now, and for a small grow, that will pretty much blow away anything else in its price range.

CFLs are fine for "microgrows" of 1-2 plants. Just make sure you use enough wattage, that you pick the correct spectrum CFLs, that you keep the garden ventilated and to the extent possible arrange the lights CLOSE to the plants with reflectors to optimize light yield.

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I run 1,000 actual(24 bulbs)watts of mixed spectrum, kept telling myself I should switch but kept adding CFL's. I never figured on heat being an issue b/c the entire room has direct A/C along with 2 fans...boy was I wrong. 2 bubba kush in 5 gals got completely destroyed, looked they were simply tossed in the oven.

Now the lights remain 6" away.

To OP: Your most efficient bulbs are the 42 watters...both 2700K(soft white)and 6500K(Daylight)are readily available at Home Depot etc.

Good luck!

masterlights420 said:

Would a 125 watt cfl with a reflector be better

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Those are huge, I regret having bought 2 68 actual watt 2700K bulbs. They take up over twice the amount of room as the 42 watts, but only give 50% more energy.

What's the cheapest way to effectively grow one plant

masterlights420 said:

What's the cheapest way to effectively grow one plant

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In the ground.

masterlights420 said:

Would a 125 watt cfl with a reflector be better

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Better than a single 14W low-end LED panel?

No comparison whatsoever. The CFL with reflector would be night-and-day better.

masterlights420 said:

What's the cheapest way to effectively grow one plant

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Sunbiz has it right. Cheapest way to grow one plant is "sunlight".

Assuming sunlight isn't an option, that "depends" a little bit on how big your plant is, and how you tabulate the costs.

Remember, plants can range anywhere from a 6 inch auto to an 18 foot high tropical sativa "tree". Its certainly possible to grow gigantic single plants indoors if you're so inclined, and even train them to spread out over large areas.

Also, there is an issue of startup cost vs ongoing cost. With any "serious" indoor grow, electricity costs become the biggest single fixed cost. CFLs are cheaper on a per watt basis to buy, but in terms of energy cost/yield HPS lighting is a lot better. Even though it costs more up front, over the course of many grows, HPS lighting will pay for itself in lower cost per gram of final product.

Usually the best way to consider how to proceed it to look at your space constraints, budget, and amount you want to grow, and work it from there.

If you're asking what's the absolute bare cheapest startup cost to grow out one plant, you could do that with just a few CFL bulbs and cobbled-together fixtures and/or reflectors for $20-30, or maybe even less depending on what you have lying around. You won't necessarily get the "best" results in terms of efficiency or yield, but you can get good results if you know what you're doing and put in the work.

Again, since entry level HPS setups cost so little now, if you've got a space that's a couple of square feet to work with, I'd suggest just making a little bigger investment in up front costs. Assuming you're careful and do things right, these will MORE than pay for themselves in the increased value of the produce from your very first grow.

FWIW, I've grown under sunlight, HPS (various sizes), MH, CFL, T5 fluro, and T8 fluro.

Each of these ways "can" work, and each has its own plusses and minuses. Which is "best" depends on what your exact requirements are.

I'll just state my opinion here.

CFLs are GREAT for starting seedlings, cloning, vegging small plant, and potentially maintaining mother plants. You can flower with CFL, but IMO these are really only optimal for "microgrows" of less than 3-4 square feet. CFL is attractive for small scale, low startup cost, and easy scalability (you can easily add/remove lights as necessary), but you're still limited by relatively low per-bulb efficiency.

Once you get bigger than a single small plant, you're better off with HO T5 lighting, or HID lighting.

Again, cost of entry level HPS setups has dropped so much in the last few years, that there really isn't much of a good reason NOT to use one, if you're even semi-serious about yield. If you buy a used one, you can even probably recover most of your cost later in resale should you decide to upgrade or to stop growing. Resale value of improvised CFL setups is effectively zero.

Ok thanks every one I'm going to go with master kush just to keep it bushier I'm going to have one 150 watt cfl with the reflector hanging above the plant an a few 23 watt cfl's lower and closer to the plant

Oh and should I start dwc or wait till my second or third grow. I understand how hydroponics work very well.

masterlights420 said:

Oh and should I start dwc or wait till my second or third grow. I understand how hydroponics work very well.

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You may understand hydroponics, but do you understand cannabis?

Compared to hydroponics, soil is cheaper, lower maintenance, and highly forgiving. IMO you should definitely start with soil and gain some hands on experience with the plant before switching to hydroponics.

I concur ^ with Jogro , look at it like this .. Do you really want a hyped up hot rod for drivers training or a dependable old VW .. The hotrod can be history with one crash but the VW will take a licking and keep on ticking !

So would the 125 watt cfl with reflector and 4 23 watt cfl's work fine for master kush in soil

masterlights420 said:

So would the 125 watt cfl with reflector and 4 23 watt cfl's work fine for master kush in soil

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Yes.

You won't need all that at first.

Start with just one 23W CFL for the seedling, and increase lighting as the plant gets bigger and needs it.

I'd suggest growing the plant under 18 hours/day light (or more) until it has 4 sets of leaves in veg, then "topping" (pinching off top growth) once to create two dominant main colas. You may want to bend the tops open a little to open up some space inside for better air circulation and light penetration.

Once the plant is big enough, you'd want to put the 125W on top, then surround each side with one 23W CFL for good side supplemental lighting.

When plant is about 12-15" tall, switch to 12-12 lighting and expect the plant to roughly double in height over the next 9 weeks during flowering.

Make sure you have some sort of odor control measure in place especially the last 2-3 weeks of flowering, because if you don't you may regret it (badly).

Your plant should be done at roughly 9-10 weeks after switching to 12-12 lighting.

thanks you've helped a lot