First of all what im doing now is just for fun. im killing them or watching them die probably long before they flower. so...i got bored one day and decided to germinate some bag seeds...surprisingly everything has been going fine without me buying anything..and theyve had pretty horrible conditions from what ive read.. right now theyre sitting (about 2 inches tall. one has its second pair of...cotleydons or whatever kind of leaves forming) under a shop light that i have...4x40W "cool white" fluorescent tubes...i dont think the shop light thing itself counts as a reflector .... how long do you think they will last? lol...or how long until they smell BEING SERIOUS. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My question about veggeting light... In the CFL guide above it says a mix of mainly 6500k cfls and maybe a few 2700k will do good for vegging...im assuming that works great..but im not planning on dealing with small ...hot places really when i actually set everything up Would it be better to just use an HPS the whole way through if i can?...or to buy a MH?...or probably better yet mix them?...im sure everyone has their own opinion..id love to hear some
by the way..i actually just put the shop light right above them and added a fan blowing over there somewhat lightly.. before just now they just had my desk light...and my cigarette smoke. hah. remember. just for fun and a little intro for me without buying ANYTHING...its already proven to me that these plants want to grow. ...legalize.
when i began vegging my seedlings i had them under 6500k cfl lighting. i purchased a digital ballast a few weeks ago which can run either MH or hps bulbs and thats when my growth really exploded. take good care of them
so your saying u added your HPS while you were vegging and it grew quicker?..did you keep your cfls?...or some of them?
i still have my cfls, im planning on using them in my clone room, but in my veg room i dont have any cfls in there anymore.
Your light sounds good. They could last quite a while. That depends on the strain. The light you have is good for vegging. You want warm white for flowering. An HPS is definitely better at feeding light to flowering plants, but if you go that route then you will have to deal with the heat. CFLs are logistically less challenging in that regard, but they do not light up the plants the way a HID does. If you have separate vegetative and flower grow areas, then you don't need a HID for your vegetative space. There's no hurry once you get a cycle going.
yeah thats kinda what i was wondering...cuz im not going to have 2 HPS lol...so pretty much my veg room would most likely be cfls....otherwise, i could just not have a veg room (at first anyway)...and use my hps (and maybe like 2 6500k cfls) once they get to be a few inches tall... This question isnt in the right place.....but does the vegetative state of the plants life effect the potency?....what i mean is...while its vegging..will the amount of light your using, how long you let it veg...etc.. effect the future potency?....or does the potency mainly come from the flowering....
......well, my cat decided to eat the best one....it was the one forming its second pair of leaves and shit...sprouted a day or 2 before the others... it seems she left the other 2 alone at least
i vegged under a 2ft 4 bulb t5 and also flowered with it too it worked well for my inadequate space i had and for the fact it didnt produce much heat and the plant leaves could almost touch the bulbs with no burn . then i stepped upto a 4ft 8bulb t5 120000 lumens and budded with a 400hps
I have a 4x4 tube system too and I start all of my plants on it it works great...if you just have a couple plants you could go with just that maybe with some supplemental cfls or a small hps you dont need much else
No, not unless you absolutely starve it for light. The quality of CFL light is actually very good. It's just lower intensity than MH or HPS. So plants growing under CFLs will grow slower than those under HIDs. But they will be healthy and happy and, in the fullness of time, they will produce kind bud. And if you have a separate veg area, speed is not of the essence. While you have plants tying up your flowering space for two months, you can use those two months to veg out more plants under CFLs. It is also a challenge to properly illuminate large plants with CFLs because they don't penetrate through the canopy as well as higher intensity light sources do. That's why people who use CFLs tend to use use many small bulbs rather an one big one. That gives them the ability to compensate for the lack of penetrating power by positioning bulbs at various points around the plant. Another popular technique for overcoming the lack on penetrating power of CFLs is to train your plants so that they are wide and short rather than tall an narrow. That makes it a lot easier to get light to all those secondary bud sites. There is a tutorial on Low Stress Training (LST) stickied in the Absolute Beginners Forum.
sweet..thanks everyone.....i guess ill kinda figure out what works best for me as far as vegging goes...i will probably only have a few plants cycling at all times so CFLs seem very possible for vegging even bigget plants..right now these 2 tiny plants are sitting right under a 4 foot long 40 watt tube...it seems like a 40watt cfl would be way more efficient to single one or 2 plants out with..and maybe just have 2 of the tubes hanging above in the vegging room i never really plan on flowering with cfls
So..your saying i can veg perfectly fine with either CFLs or my HPS alone..just a HPS will make them grow faster? This is probably what ill be doing tho...vegging with CFLs and flowering with my HPS..i might use the HPS the whole way through if i dont have a seperate room...which would kinda suck...unless they grow pretty very evenly
