Opinions on My Setup

I am new to this forum and wanted to share my growing setup and get some opinions. I will start by saying that I grow in a greenhouse and currently am growing my third crop. The first were White Widow seeds from Amsterdam and came out great. I flowered them outdoors in the fall (4 out of 4 females). The second crop were Maui Wowie seeds that grew exclusively in the greenhouse. They did well, but I didn’t pay attention to the bugs on the plants and aphids ruined the entire crop. I have two plain florescent lights (from Home Depot), each with two 40-watt bulbs. I keep the lights on 24 hours a day during the veg period and cut the lights to 12 hours a day for flowering (12 hours coincide with the natural light received in the green house).

I provided pictures – my plants are doing well. I am growing Durbin Poison, Haze 19 x Skunk, Nigeria and I have one Hash Plant and one unknown. They are currently different heights (4 – 15 inches) due to about a week or two between seed plantings. I just topped the tallest one so that it would get too much bigger than the others. The plants are about 5-6 weeks old (I always forget to mark down the day I planted, so I never remember the exact date). I plan on forcing flowering sometime near the end of this month (they’ll be about 10 weeks by then).

Any opinions/advice is greatly appreciated.[FONT=&quot]

[/FONT]

Personally I think you are going to have an issue with stretching with the lighting you are using, you are going to get a huge distance between nodes which is going to give you a small yield. if you can i would reccomend using CFL'S they will produce more light in a more concentrated area instead of the long tubes which have a really long spam of low light output.

Does it look like my plants are stretching? I'm really too new at this to know if that is the case - although I didn't think they were stretching. Will a smaller light cover an area big enough for the number of plants that I have (11 total)?

nice grow op. im new to the growing thing also but bee doing my hw. i would have to agree w/greenbeast looks like your plants are stretching for light. they should grow both ways meaning tall and wide. floro tubes are good for sprouts but once they get big enough you need to upgrade your lighting system. i would got hit up your local walmart and get some twist on cfl for a compact lamp. The one i have are 42W and they put out 2700 lumens per bulb . you can cop them at wal-mart for about $8each get a few they always run out of stock here where i live. You will want to get those light as close as possible id say about 1" from every direction possible. the more light to the side the fatter they will grow.

Yea, I also think you are going to have a problem with the stretching. Try and keep the light alot closer to the plant (2-4 in.) but make sure you put your hand under ot see how hot it is because you want to be able to put your light close enough without burning your plants. That will help with the stretching.

ShayneD.

your yield will NOT be affected by stretching, it may be a little harder operation, due to stretching and space issues but no yield difference, just smaller buds

Geez GraF, correct me if I am wrong, but if you have stretching than the offshoots will be further down the stem, if that happens you'll have light penetration issues down the road, hence a smaller yeild.

Smalller buds = Less yield.

Forgot to mention one more thing the ones at walmart are warm white for flowering but ive read and seen people use them throughtout the plant cycle and still get good yields. what you need is cool white for veg. but they dont sell any in 42w/2700lumens in cool white at walmart so i stick with what they have. and remember the more lumens the better.

Yeah it definitely looks like they're stretching. I'd hate to tell you to buy new lights but I think that would make a big difference! Like greenbeast said I would go with some CFL's (like 42 watts) or maybe even a T8 electronic ballast fluorescent lights, which are a little more effecient than what looks like T12 light! But if you can not afford stuff I would drop the lights as close to your plants as possible without burning them. And also you will need to enclose the area more so the light wont escape elsewhere. Make the room as small as possible as long as your plants will fit. Make the walls a flat white and this will use as much available light that you have put to good use.
Your plants look very tall with very skinny stems holding them up. Eventually they will fall over, and if they don't fall over your yeild is going to suffer tremendously if you don't tighten up the spacing of the nodes!!