This is my first grow, my plant is about 16 inches and i've been vegging with some cfls for about 2 months now. Some of the lower leafs are starting to get dry and curly, and the main stem is a bit thin. Can i start flowering?
yeah you can, I would let them veg for one more week, but its up to you. The leaves and plant in general look healthy to me. If the stem seems week, I strongly recommend you put a fan up to blow on them (if you dont have one already) that immitates wind and helps them get strong, if you dont put up a fan you may have to put stakes up or tie strings to the branches to keep it from collapsing under its own weight. fans just help with it. what nutrients are you using? whats the wattage on the cfls and how many do you have?
At some point i used an old fan, but it stopped working for some reason, and i can't afford a new one atm. Also i'm using 2x 18watt fluorescent tubes, kelvin rating is unknown. I do not use any nutrients. Also the stem is not weak, it's just kinda thin.
you definately need more light than that. You need 100 watts for what you're doing. Id get an HPS, either way you need more than 36 watts. you need atleast 100w per plant, minimum 50w. plant looks great though so if you cant afford a new light, just keep doing what you're doing. If you had money to spend, 1. get one new 100W light. 2. get a 10 dollar fan that clips to something, you dont need anything fancy, but something to blow some air on the plants. other than that, you could get some flowering nutrients for when you switch to 12/12 cycle (if you want).
I have 10x 15watt 2700k cfls, but i used this one because it's more bright. I don't really wanna use nutrients because i'm afraid of burning the plants and stuff like that, also i've heard it affects the taste of the bud. I will try to find a cheap fan.
plant looks good I wouldnt worry too much about it. If you choose to get nutrients you can just give it half of what is called for and you wont risk burning it. If you flush the plant a few days before you harvest it cleanses the roots of nutes so the flavor will be nice.