Lighting for a SoG grow.

So I'm planning on having a SoG grow in a grow box and I have no experience in lighting for SoG, so I need some help. I will be running Auto strains.
The dimensions are: 30in tall x 18in wide x 24in deep / 2.5ft tall x 1.5ft wide x 2ft deep. (3 sq ft)

Would a 200wCFL bulb (~9,000 lumens / ~3,000 lumens per square foot) work fine? I plan on putting them on 12/12 straight from clone/seed, maybe veg for a week then flip. Any ideas?

Bump. 233 views, 0 replies. C'mon guys!

is it one of those fancy looking cfl's ? i use a couple 200w cfl's made by sunblaster inmy veg room . i use 3 pluss a 600w mh for a 5 by 5 area and all the plants under the cfl's grow just as fast as under the 600. im all for those big cfl's just make sure to have a nice reflective shade .

is it one of those fancy looking cfl's ? i use a couple 200w cfl's made by sunblaster inmy veg room . i use 3 pluss a 600w mh for a 5 by 5 area and all the plants under the cfl's grow just as fast as under the 600. im all for those big cfl's just make sure to have a nice reflective shade .

Its a 200w hydrofarm CFL with a batwing-like reflector covering 3 square feet. The box is similar to a filing cabinet.
Going by CFL guide (100w first plant, 50w per additional), this would allow me to grow 3 plants. Where I'm confused is whether that guideline applies to SoG, seeing as smaller SoG plants would not need so much.

I was hoping on at least 4 SoG plants (seed/clone) in this thing.

Edited by omdogg, 09 June 2012 - 07:20 PM.

I don't mean to sound rude at allbut I am just having a hard time following one thing .you realize SOG means sea of green right ? how do you plan on getting a sea of green in a filling cabinet sized grow box ? how long do you plan on vegging your plants ? your plant size is going to play a huge part in what type of light or lights you need. also during flowering you will want a warmer temp light . by warmer i mean on a warmer spectrum . around 2700 for flower and around 5600 for veg . you can tell the difference when you turn them on. 5600 will be a very bright white light . suppose to be a blueish on the spectrum scale i think . and the 2700 is a reddish color like a warm summer fall's evening . now im not 100% sure you cant flower with veg lights . you probably can but i don't think its worth it. do you have anything started ?plant wise or grow chamber assembly wise ? pics ? lol pics are always nice. if you haven't build a grow chamber yet i can show you pics of my plywood box thingy i made for mating plants . its basically a plywood box . W 3' D 2' H 4'. haven't use3d it yet. just sitting in spare room waiting for one of my bubba kush clones to get a litle bigger so i can make me some seeds ;-) and just to plainly answer your first question yes that 200watt will work fine in that sizebox . but remember that you should have a warmer spectrum light for flowering and a cooler one for veg.

Omdog: Lighting is a very complex subject but some people try to make it a lot more complicated than it needs to be. First, you need to understand how they measure the light that you're using for what you want to do with your plants. I’m not an electrician and I certainly don't have all the answers but I'll try to simplify it for you.
Wattage is the load rating of a lamp or the amount of current or electricity that the lamp draws or uses. As I recall from a Physics class I took in the mid 70's, but don't hold me to it now because I don't have the book in front of me: “Watts is amperage draw times the supplied voltage,” and it's usually read in a relatively small number. CFL’s typically draw:14, 17, 21, 29 watts. Incandescent light bulbs draw: 40, 60, 100, and MH and HPS draw: 250, 400, 600, up to a 1,000 watts. What that means is that the higher the wattage rating on the lamp the more electricity it uses and the more it costs to operate.
That's what got us all into all those little curly-cue CFL's, (compact fluorescent lamps), and they dropped my electric bill drastically on a level pay plan to a point where I don't even get a bill from the power company for three months of the year. Before my incandescent lights were burning 60 watts each, now they’re using only 14. It makes sense.
The really tricky part of this is that they advertise the wattage of electricity they use and the amount of light they produce and compare it to the equivalent used by an incandescent lamp putting out the same amount of light. The ones I just bought claim they only draw 14 watts but they put out the same amount of light as a sixty watts incandescent light bulb. The one I use on my clone mother draws only 29 watts but claims to put out the equivalent light of a 100 watt incandescent bulb. Now is that clear to you, or are you just as confused as the rest of us? But we're not done yet.
Lumens is a measurement of the amount light, the intensity it projects, the brightness and that's usually measured in hundreds of lumens. I don't know where the top of the scale is but the new brighter, Ecosmart CFL lamps I just changed over to in my home advertise that they generate 850 lumens of light while consuming only 14 watts of electricity. Now you don't have to light a match to find the damned things at night when they're turned on like their earlier predecessors. My wife used to bitch that the old ones being too dim to read under but now she complains that the new ones are too bright. Go figure. Now let's consider the color of the light they're producing.
Color, frequency or temperature of the light it produces is measured when it's run through a prism and seen in the available spectrum of colors. It’s measured in Kelvins; K's. These new lamps I bought are rated at 4,800K's, which is pretty close to the 5,000K green T-5 grow lamps I use in my tent for vegging. The lower the K's, the redder and the warmer the light. The higher the K's the cooler the light and the color goes from green to blue. Cool, green to blue light is for vegetative growth and warm red light is for flowering. Got that? If you can keep that straight think about what the sun produces during the year. In the spring and early summer the light is bright and cool, it has a higher K rating number; it's greener toward blue and our plants grow. If you have a copy of Cervantes’s “MARIJUANA HORTICULTURE THE INDOOR/OUTDOOR MEDICAL GROWER’S BIBLE,” look at page 160. Grow lamps are green to blue and that's the cool light that’s suitable for vegging. Come fall we get those beautiful warm red orange sunsets and the light is red and warm and that’s the 2,700K red light we use for flowering.
Now let’s look at the practical side of this. I’m going to fool my plants with the right diet and lighting to go from seed sprouting to harvest in half the time they will normally need in nature. From seed sprouting through vegging I feed my babies a high N diet that’s low P and K to go along with the 5,000K grow lights and the longer lights on schedule. Right now I'm using 5,000K T-5 grow lamps for my plants to veg under. I'm told this is a moderately green light they like for growth and photosynthesis. One grower uses 6,000K's lamps and another grower uses 6,500K's. I was warned against the higher K rating by a person I trust at the hydro store. The other lamps cost a little more but my friend at the hydro store claimed he sees less light related problems with the 5,000K's so that's what I bought, and they've worked fine for me. Most people have these on for vegging anywhere from 24 to 20 to 16 hours a day. You choose.
When my plants begin to preflower I change their diet to a lower N and higher P-K nutrient blend and the lamps in their T-5 fixture to warm red flowering lights that are rated at only 2,700K. I also drop the light interval, (the time that they're on). Some folks go directly to a 12/12 schedule but I use a progressive light schedule that starts at 20 hours of light at seed planting with 4 hours of resting darkness and I reduce the light by one hour a week. But that's another issue altogether, and I explained it here already in another post.
After some experimentation I settled on a progression to a bottom figure of 10 hours of light and 14 hours of darkness and stayed with that until harvest. And the strains I'm growing seemed to really like it.
So if you're asking elementary lighting questions I suggest you RTFB. Refer to the following sources: 1. Read: SeeMoreBud’s book, “MARIJUANA BUDS FOR LESS GROW 8 OZ. OF BUDS FOR LESS THAN $100.” 2. Read: Jorge Cervantes’s book, “MARIJUANA HORTICULTURE THE INDOOR/OUTDOOR MEDICAL GROWER’S BIBLE.” 3. Read: Ed Rosenthal’s, “MARIJUANA GROWER’S HANDBOOK.” 4. Read: Mc Carthy’s book, “GROWING MARIJUANA.” 5. You’ll also want to subscribe to, “HIGH TIMES,” magazine. Each issue is chocked full of useful information. .” All these resources are very well written, well illustrated and packed with information that will answer most of your questions before you know to ask them. 6. There's another excellent book I'm reading right now by Greg Green called, “THE CANNABIS GROW BIBLE-SECOND EDITION,” it’s every bit as good as the ones I mentioned above but a lot more technical. All of these resources are available at major book stores and at most growing forums. They will save you and your plants a lot of stress. The only problem with these forums is that if you get in a jam and need help right away it may be a while before we can get back to you. I sincerely hope this helps. Hank

Thanks for the replies.

I do have experience in growing under LED, MH & HPS. I know all about nutrients, types of lighting, etc. YES, I do know SOG means Sea of Green. And yes, I have read and watched about growing plenty. I do NOT have experience with SoG grows, BUT would like to start one.

Plants in this box would either be going 12/12 from seed, or 12/12 from fresh rooted clone. My plan was to stick a 200w CFL (warm spectrum) to flower in this 3 sq ft box.

My question was, in a box of that size with a 200w CFL, how many plants should I stick for a SoG style grow? General CFL guidelines say 100w first plant, 50w per additional(total of 3 plants). Now since this IS a SoG style grow, I assume I can stick MORE than 3 plants in there?

Again, the plants will go 12/12 from seed, or 12/12 from freshly rooted (small) clones in small soil containers. I haven't decided if I will go the hydro route, seeing as I'm mainly a soil grower.