Ok I am a newb and started a bag seed grow I got a late start and they have probably more then a month before they finish flowering. Living in Massachusetts frost is looming and to make a long story short am going to bring them inside to finish up. My question is what kind and how many lights do I use. 5 Total plants all lst grow 1 plant is bout 2 ft well into flower and seems to be sativa dominant. The others are about 1 1/2 feet indica dominant and just flowering. The area I will put them is 4 feet wide 3 feet deep and 8 feet in height. My main question is what kinda lights can I get on a buget, how many do I need, and how far from plants do I put them? Its an lst grow so when I say 2 ft that's length with bout 18 inch tops. All info helpful if grow area too small I am willing to sacrifice some if grow area ain't big enough but if I lose all due to frost I would cry.If you need more 411 let me know. Thanks in advance.
You want as much light (in watts) as you can afford while keeping the heat in check. HID lighting (High Pressure Sodium and/or Metal Halide) is still the king for most serious growers. Assuming you can get all five plants in there and they have room to grow I would think you'd want at least a 400 watt system. If that's too much, a 250 watt might do it but the plants on the edges may be stunted a bit. If you want them to not miss the sun then get a 1000 watt system. The higher watt systems are little furnaces though, so you'd need to make sure you can extract the heat somehow. Some people (I'm not one of them) use CFLs and get pretty good results with them. The effective light doesn't travel very far with CFLs though, so I think you'd need a lot of them, with a lot of socket splitters, hoods, cords and hangers all over the place to do it right. And you'd be constantly adjusting the lights. That's with the little spiral bulbs for household use (eg 23 watt, 2700K) - they make bigger CFL bulbs that probably perform better, but I'd bet those are near the same cost as HID systems and not as good. I'd beg, borrow and steal to get yourself the best HID that works for you. If you intend to keep this hobby going, it will pay for itself in no time.
Thanks I get paid on Thursday so will be shopping for supplies then. Luckly there's a discount store near me that carries both kinds of lights.
In a closet your going to be dealing with heat and most likely going to need some fans for ventilation and exhausting the hot air out. It isn't going to matter what lights you pick
Already planned for that I have 2 small fans that I am going to position at each end of the closet. If I need I also have a small dehumdifer if it gets too humid. Thanks for advice