Hello! I am new to the GC community. Heres the situation: I have 4 plants growing in a hydro system I built. They're growing VERY quickly (in fact, I don't know if I made the thing big enough!!). Also, I have a larger plant in a 5 gallon bucket. You can see my lights in the images- nothing fancy. When should I start budding? Do I even have the lights to have a good yield? If I bought new lights, what kind should I get to not destroy my electicity bill, but still have enough light for nice buds? I also want to get some sort of area set up to put the plants in and coat the surroundings with mylar. Thoughts?
I was able to Veg a plant under 2 40 watt tubes to about 16 inches in 8 weeks. It was fimmed so that probably stnted it a bit. Then when I went to flower I went to 4 42watt CFLs on one plant. I was successful in getting her to flower and the progress looked OK but not great. Never thought I would be that successful. But I cannot finish the story cause I got amped and went out and got a 600 watt HPS used. The thing with the 4 42 watt CFL is though the flowered the plant the penentration sucks so while the top of the plant had lots of light, the rest of teh plant was in shade basically. I would have needed another 2 42 watt cfl bulbs to add side lighting. 6 x 42 = 252 watts. If I were to do it over with CFLs I would be using 4 65 watts on top under a reflector and two for side lighting with reflectors. Estimated cost would have been 6 x 20 for 65 watt bulbs and another 30 in reflectors. That puts me up to $150 in parts and id be running 390 watts. I know they say at least 100 watt per plant, but it is really a minimum. That does not put out enough light for flower. You could buy a used 400 watt and spend about the same on an electricty bill. The only reason to use CFL in my opinion is for vegging or because you cannot control the temp with an HPS. In that case I would hold out for 150 or 200 watt CFL. The other reason would just be to use some low wattage light for practice. If you have the room to set up with Mylar and you can vent that space, then I would consider an HPS.
YEAH dude ahahha im thinkin the same thing. is it normal for a plants node branches to be as long as the ones are like midway down? they reach way out, see that? hmm..