Well as i've been reading about growing, I saw a wide variety of answers for how many Watts and Lumens a single plant thrives in. Basically my question for the experienced growers, how many watts and lumens do you provide for each of your ladies? What is the bare minimum of light to give to a plant for it to thrive? Responses are appreciated!
There is no bare minimum. It depends on what a succesful grow for you is. My general guide is 100W or 3,000 Lumens per plant. But, you can get away with less.
3,000 lumens is good per plant... but don't be missled. don't look at how many watts the light is. look and see how many lumens the bulb puts out... you can use cfl's if you just wanna do one plant for cheap. when you're looking for cfl's, that's when you need to look at lumens not watts. just because its a 45w bulb doesn't mean its putting out so many lumens you know?
Good point. And keep in mind if you go with HID that a digital ballast will put out more lumens than a regular ballast at the same wattage as a regular ballast is less efficient and consumes watts just to run itself.
So from my understanding, increasing the amount of lumens a single plant recieves causes the plant to have increased yields and potency if i'm not mistaken. The more light the better the end product will be is what I understand.
Yes, to a point. At some point the plant just can't use anymore light. But I think the average grower is well below that point. It is all about finding the right balance between cost of light production and yield.
yes for the most part that is correct... a plants ideal condition would be 5,000 lumens... and keep in mind you should use a more blue tinted light for veg and more yellow for flowering. i can't remember which is which but it has to do with the K
Along with the lighting and lumens, i'm debating on two different types of nutes for an all organic grow. My choice is between a combination of three Earth Juice products: Grow, Bloom, and Catalyst, or between another fert called Super Plant Tonic. It is made by Blue Mountain organics, and they provide you with 1 lb. of bat guano, 1 lb. of worm castings, and 1 lb. of chicken manure. I've searched the forum and i've found enough info on Earth Juice, but I haven't seen the Super Plant Tonic mentioned and would like some feedback on it from someone who has/is using it in one of their grows. Here's the link: http://cgi.ebay.com/Organic-Fertili...lizer_Soil_Amendments?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116