Hey guys! first thread and first grow i need to know how many bulbs i need and how many watts they are supposed to be. Doing 2 plants. Do i need different bulbs for veg and flowering? also, is aluminum foil usable instead of mylar? I hear it wasnt, but it looks like im gonna have no choice... I know i know these are total noob questions, but hey... I kinda need them answered. there are so many different bulbs and shiet and im getting confused :/ Thanks in advance!
a) a rule of thumb is 100 true wattage for first plant, 50 additional watts for every additional plant. So 150 watts about for 2 plants. b) You want compact fluorescent bulbs with the color 65K for veg and 27K for flowering. But I've seen grows with just 27K. c) aluminum foil does more harm than good. It has reflectivity of less than 30% while flat white has reflectivity of about 90%. White pieces of paper is probably easier to get than aluminum foil.
The CFLs in my case are 27Ks, they have been from start to now (almost harvest). Personally I think they made the veg process very slow. I'm using foil, it seems to be working fine, but a lot of people say it's NAUGHTY, so not sure. I definitely wouldn't say it only had 30% reflectivity, since you can actually see yourself in it (it's a mirror pretty much), and mirrors are ~100%, so it has to be near that . The problem I heard about was "heat spots". Not sure what they are, but I don't think I've had anything like that.
wow, never knew aluminium sucked that much. That stuff will get tossed the f*** out of my growroom rofl.
I'm using 2 6500 K 150 watt equivalent (60 true watt) CFLs for my veg, and will switch to one of those and one 2500k for the flowering in my PC grow.