Hi guys i am going to start a new grow my setup is i have a growing area of 3 foot by 4 foot and i am going to use Floro's 6 48" GE Dallight 40 watt 3050lumins 6500 color temp each. I can fit 18 1 gallon pots in this area my question is is this enough light?... Thanks for the help.
That would be fine for vegetative growth but when you start flowering you'll need about 600w. It's a general rule of thumb that you need 50-100 watts per square foot when flowering. Here's a link for a growlight wattae calculator: http://cheaphydroponics.com/Merchant2/wattcalc.htm
You're definitly going to want to look into more light if you plan on growing 18 plants at a time. Look into HPS, that would probably be the most efficient lighting for your space.
a more plants is better, but i would consider trying like 10 plants and as he said look into mh and hps.. they are wayyyy more efficiant than flourescents.. it will cost you about $140 for the tubes and fixtures themselves if you went with flourescents, i would spend $300 on a good 400w sunsystem.. it'd be way more lumens for the price of electricity and the price of the light.
Woulld a 600w HPS be suitible for 18 plants the ones i see are not as wide or long as 4'x3' if so how much would it jump my light bill? Thanks.
600w hps is really efficient. you should get a convertable ballast so that you can run mh and hps. it wont jump your electric bill that much, just as you start to use it you need to conserve power in your house to compensate for that power usage... that way it wont really show up at all on the bill. but is this your first grow?
Yes it is my first grow. That is why i was going to try and use the floro's i already have them. I just don't want to go through the trouble if the floro's don't work.
my recommendation is to do a 2 plant floro grow just to get the feel for it so when you move to the mh or hps you will get a better yeild
Watch the videos in my sticky called "read before posting" This will explain what we cant put into words on this subject.
My space is about the same size and I got 6 30w cfl's and then 3 23w cfl's and I still dont think I have enough light I got adequate light but could do better after stop buying weed will help alot. oh and they are not but like four inches away too from the tops that is I figure I am close to 100w a square foot. I lst'ed the hell out of em and they are nice and bushy but not all that tall about 10 inches or so right now so I can keep the lights real close for the time being. any how I am in there looking at my bulbs that are more blue than red right?on most of em I got clamp lights anyhow. I am going to take and use Dykem it is a layout fluid and treat the inside of the reflectors and see what I get with that. Just a thought I will get back to you. Oh I got ten plants in my little grow too and it is gettting pretty close in there at 4 weeks cant imagine what 18 would be like. Laters
I highly agree with this. My closet I have had going for a couple harvests is slightly smaller than yours and I can only fit 3 (at most) plants at about 3-4 feet tall each. They will branch out more than you would expect, Mine are in 4-5 gallon pots. I think if you do just a couple plants (3-5) with a fluorescent setup in that small space and use a trellis/scrog method you'd probably get a better yeild with less work. Start small before you invest much time and/or money to get a feel for it. If you do well expand. Again if you're gonna do 18 plants you're gonna want a larger area if you want decent sized plants. In my opinion 18 plants would need a small room not a large closet. Oh yeah initially start with about 2x as many plants as you want then weed out the males as it tends to be about 50/50 mix.
I went and found this good deal on some 40w cfl's and got six of those and then got 3 30w sylvanias mixed in the big ones are 2700k and the 30's are 3000k so I think that I am in the right neighborhood anyhow everything is looking lovely but man dont think that I could handle near any 18 plants in my space but good luck with yours mine is coming along