I'm growing in closets (two of them) and I'm a bit of a hippy so I'm trying to save energy as much as possible. I'm using 65 W fluorescent daylight floods that have a power intake equivalent of 16 W. They're in 12" stainless clamps. My seedlings are in solo cups and once they reach a few inches I plant them in five gallon buckets. My question is, for both stages (veg and flowering) how many of these lamps can I use for each lamp in each stage, and how far above the plants should they be? I have a terrible stretching problem and can't seem to get my seedlings more than a week or two before they collapse
They work fine, I've used them many times before. My problem is stretching during the seedling and early veg stage. The majority oft seedlings collapse. Having said that, under these lights the plants mature fine. I would just like to raise the percentage oft clones that make it through the seedling and veg stage.
First of all, instead of criticizing, you could just answer the question, or are you just trolling and you don't know the answer? I've got two degrees in engineering, I know what I'm doing in terms of my bulbs. I just need to know how to position the lights beat to reduce stretching. The bulbs are not 16W they only use an equivalent of 16 Watts of energy. 16W is NOT the output of the bulb. Also, the color temperature of the bulb is 5000 degrees Kelvin, WAY within the realm for both reasonable vegetation and flowering of cannabis indica as well as cannabis sativa. I'm not going for the guinness record of most bud per plant. So quit shitting on my post and help a brother out.
I use a shop light for my clones 15 bucks at wal Mart or the Home Depot works great you can get it real close no stretching and it makes like no heat so its a win win for me I have one it takes 2 bulbs and it gets my whole tray going 74 plugs
Thanks man, some useful criticism. So just a regular shop light? And when you say close are you talking 1-2" close?
The room is warm, I keep it that way. The bulbs are extremely efficient. I can put my hand right under them with minimal warmth. So you're saying the closer the better?
Yeah that close 6 at the max man should help your stretch problem I had the same my light was to big for such young plants and would rather have to keep it to far or it was to hot to close but this works perfect
That's what I'm currently using is a Cfl. Cfl stands for compact fluorescent. I'm using a daylight cfl with a color temp of about 5000 Kelvin currently. All though in seriously considering the T5s and T8s that have been suggested.
Your bulbs should be an inch from your seedlings. Read the CFL sticky, your bulbs are 16w. They put out the equivalent of a 60w incandescent, which is a useless measure for growing since nobody uses incandescent lights to grow.
Nice do you have a fan in there cause even though heat might not be a problem I've hear the air moving them back and fourth is goot for building strong stems and circulating air... I'm bearly on day 7 of my first grow I'm just throwin friendly advice out there =)
Hey it's my first indoor grow too! And thanks for the advice, I had heard that so I do indeed have a fan in there.