mother plants

Can a T5 be used effectively for mothers or would a 600W be better. these mothers will end up in an outdoor grow eventually.

Hi. like all my plants, I start them under a cfl. Once they are strong and surviving solely on their roots I put them under a 600w HPS. The light from a HPS penetrates so much stronger that I find that they develope more branches desirable for cuttings. This is of course what a mother plant is for. To be honest, I try to get all my plants under a HPS as soon as I can. I veg under a dual spectrum HPS and flower with them too. I don't veg with cfl, nor do I use MH. I have had such goo results using sodium that I see no reason to change. Providing I never shorten the light cycle, I never see any sign of pre flowering.

Bradford said:

Can a T5 be used effectively for mothers or would a 600W be better. these mothers will end up in an outdoor grow eventually.

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T5's are GREAT for Mothers
Especially of they are the 6400k BLUE spectrum.
Keep it close to the canopy and all should be well.

If you use HID try and use MH rather than HPS
the CCT is better for keeping Mothers steadily growing without sudden bursts of growth or all the FLOWERING/PRE-FLOWERING triggers that you do not want.

I put all my mothers under T5's. Due to the size of my flower room, running MH in the mother/veg room is not really an option (power issues). I use 6 four foot eight bulb T5s to handle all my mother/cloning/vegging and have never had any problems. Like another poster mentioned, keep the T5 as close to the plants as possible. I have noticed that when I veg under T5's as opposed to MH I get less space between nodes. However, I only grow my plants to about 1.5 ft before flowering.