I just fired up this cabinet again after being shut down for a while. Last time I ran this, I used a 250W HPS with a remote ballast. I got good results, but the heat was hard to control. This time I'm using a 70w HPS and two 42w (actual wattage) CFLs, and the temps are much more consistent. I popped these a couple of weeks ago; the one straggler still in the peat pellet took a few extra days to germinate. If this run goes well, I'm thinking I'll replace the CFLs with 50w HPSs.
I like what I'm seeing. Subbed. I use white walls as well; mainly because I like the way to looks. Takes better pictures, imo.
I also want to see that 70w ups in action! Just one question. Can you adjust the height on the lighting?
I've used Reflectix before in a closet grow, it workds good too. I went with the plain white finish in the cabinet because I move the shelf up and down, and there's no extra clearance between it and the walls.
The shelf's adjustable, so I'll drop it as I need to. With the lower wattages on the bulbs, I figure I can keep the plant tops close to the lights without burning. I've seen some nice grows with multiple low-wattage HPS bulbs; that's what I want to try next.
I like the idea of using hps and cfl, just wanted to add that if the bulbs were mounted horizontally you would provide better light to your plants. More lumens are put out through the sides rather than the top of the bulb.
These plants will be flipped to 12/12 while they're still small so they'll grow single colas. Then I'll space them so they grow right up next to the lights to the ceiling of the cab.
That sounds good, only thing I would be worried about is heat that close to the buds... I have never grown with hps but I am assuming they get a lot hotter than the cfls do. Good luck with the grow man, I will continue to watch your thread.
That's the trick; I've seen grows like this with plants right up next to the bulbs. Some of them have bare sockets dangling from wires, with the bulbs hanging way down into the plants, but I like having things secured a bit more than that. Since the lower wattage lights just won't penetrate through the top of the canopy as well, this delivers light farther down into the growth. The picture doesn't really give a good sense of the cabinet dimensions, but I think I can tuck them in there without touching. I'm shooting for six flowering females; that keeps me legal! I expect a few males will get weeded out, and I'll have to fill in with new seedlings started in another cabinet.
Nice, cant wait to see this thing going ha. Im getting anxious about my own grow, should be chopping my ladies down in a couple weeks : )
imo I think you would be better off positioning them horizontally, I see what your saying about having them between the plants but the plants will grow toward the light. it might be worth placing a glass tube over the bulbs so the plants can push up against the tubes without getting burned. anyway, this grow have very much got my interest. I have recently been thinking about changing my 2x 125w cfls for 4x 70w hps or 2x 150 hps. I love the idea of small hid bulbs because they give you such even spreads of light over a large area while keeping the head height very low
Not a bad thought about the tubes; I've seen this done with hardware cloth around the fixtures, and that may be my solution if things get crowded. Thanks for that reminder; I've been puzzling over it a bit, and it just came back to me. The reasoning behind this set up is that with small bulbs placed horizontally, you don't get good light penetration through the canopy. Keep in mind also that there's more room than it appears in the picture to keep the plants off the bulbs, and that plants placed into 12/12 early on tend to grow upright into single colas (check around to find some 12/12 from seed grows to see this). I've grown 12/12 from seed before, so I know what to expect of the plants. This is my first time with the vertical bulb setup, so I'll see how it works. A lot of "conventional wisdom" comes from cash croppers who want to boil it all down to standard yields and $ per gram. One reason I like the micro grows is that there are a lot of innovators with novel ideas to try out. PC case growers, LEDs...lots of cool stuff. This is as much a hobby as it is a source of fine smoking material.
I'm not real happy with my soil. It's a garden mix I had on hand, but real soil, not peat (anyone ever fight those damn soil gnats in the peat?) It's a bit heavy and sandy, and has some twigs and crap in it. I added some perlite I had on hand to loosen it up. I'm not a big advocate of special marijuana products; I figure these plants have done well for eons without our magic mixes. I want to find a better product, but I'll sit tight until spring when the gardening supplies come out again. Not much to be had in the place where I live this time of year.
Here's the remote ballast. The kit includes the transformer, ignitor and mounting brackets. You can get all different sizes. I used a box I had laying around. If I decide to go with a three-HPS setup, I have a bigger box from an old 400w HID that I scrapped; I'll stuff the guts for all three lights into it.
are your cfl bulbs going to block the light from the hps bulb from reaching the outside plants? or are they staggered? tough to tell from the pictures or maybe you just ain't worried
Yeah, during this grow I'll move the plants around to keep everybody happy. I pull them out of the cabinet anyway to water. I think it'll more be the plants in the middle screening the ones on the outside. This is one of the reasons I'm thinking of switching from the CFLs to 50w HPS.