My advice would be to definitely get some mylar, especially when using cfls so all the light can be absorbed into the plants.
What is "plain soil"? And bone meal is better for flowering as it has more P and K, blood meal is more suited for the vegetative stage, or other high N fertilizers like compost you make in your backyard or alfalfa meal or E.W.C. Mylar doesn't all of a sudden make light available to the plant, it just reflects a lot more of it, making use of as many lumens as you could get. I would invest more in air bubblers for AACT's as opposed to mylar to make the most of your money. 3 gallon is minimum for flowering but 5 is more like it, the bigger the better. Same goes for veg time and flowering time, the longer the better. Getting some sprayers (For foliar feeding as well as clones or seedlings) is advised. If you have extra money to kill go ahead and buy some kind of rock that microbial life can "hang onto". Such as perlite, vermiculite, glacial rock dust or Azomite, the latter being one which contains many trace elements for your plant as well. What is your budget looking like anyway? Definitely make a grow journal as well, I love following these ragtag set ups such as mine.