Im growing in my friends apartment closet, we have divided it up into 2 parts for vegging and flowering. We want to constantly maintain just about 10 plants, 6 Vegging and 4 budding and once we cut the 4 flowering plants down, move 4 from veg over, clone 4 more to constantly maintain 4flowering6vegging.. If you guys could follow that. We have pretty good space, my real question comes down to how many CLFs around 100-150 watt bulbs, 2700 K, will i need to yield a respectable amount off these 4 plants? First 4 will be GDP, Shiva skunk, and 2 grape apes. When should I change them to 12/12? And at what heigth? Im not to worried about how tall they get as far as time. Should i be able to get some quality buds and a pretty decent amount doing it right? All the plants around 8-10'' tall, when shold i start flowering? Some help would be great. ill put pics up sooner then later
You can start flowering now if u want if they look nice and bushy. The rule of thumb for lights is 100 watts for the first and 50 for each plant added. Short of baking them more is better within reason. I have my plants in flower the last 2 wks, most are at or above 10 in. I have only 36 to use in height, and I am using CFLs, warm white 150s are 42 real watts,with good results
since you have to share your bud, you might wanna get mh/hps, at least a 400w. youll get better yeilds with hid lighting.........
true that, or even order a 150 watt HPS somewhere on here...those e-conolights only like 20 dollars w/a ballast....use a 150 watt watt HPS and some CFL's on the sides....should yield a good amount...could end up with 100 dry grams...is that would you consider a respectable harvest?
and the CFLs i think your using are only 26 watts...but its equal to 100 watts...so your only using 26 actual watts per bulb...
you and your "partner" spend the loot and get a 400w hps and its all smooth sailing from there...........
If you are anything like me then paying your electric bill could be an issue with an hps/mh setup. However, i have yet to fork over the cash for one of those setups so i'm not the best judge of it, if any of you have input i would love to hear it because i know the investment is well worth it, i'm just a stingy bastard i suppose. I flowered three females under 9 2700k CFL's ranging from 40w (actual watts) to 26w. so figure the whole thing was pumping out around 280-300 real watts. I yielded a half ounce (dry weight) per plant. Each plant was around 2.5 feet tall and i was adding molasses to help pack on weight to my colas. The quality of the bud was excellent too, it would have been worth around 50-55/8th. Thats all i can offer as far as yielding with less than 10 CFL's. Speaking to a close friend who was working with a 400w MH/HPS conversion setup he yielded 2 ounces for 2 females. so if your budget can permit that sort of set up it sounds as if it could be the better way to go as far as yielding goes. But, again, my grow op accounted for approximately 8 dollars a month using a cfl set up so i couldn't argue with that. *if any of you have calculated how much you pay per month to run a 400w mh/hps i would love to know.
a watt is a watt... so if you're growing with 300 actual watts of cfl's for $8/month then a 400 watt HPS would run you about $10.66/month
^^^ Yup, seems like it's worth it to me. Sloath, that $2.66 would yield 2x what you did with CFLs... But you'd need to invest in a whole new setup, probably. What kind of ventilation system did you use with that grow?
Im not trippin hard with money, as far as putting a 400 Watt HPS bulb in a closet? How many fans will i need? Thats going to be a huge heat problem, then we have to worry about how hot it gets and put some ventilation system going. If i was able to grab a nice 400watt hps what else would i have to add along with it?
The closet i used only had one opening and that was the doorway so i positioned 2 desk fans blowing in opposite directions, one out the door from the back of the closet and one sucking in clean air from the outside positioned at the doorway. This system maybe lowered my temps 1-2 degrees, luckily my plants survived on an avg daily temp between 82 during the day and 77 at night. The info in regard to energy usage is promising. If i can find a good deal on a Mh/Hps conversion set up with some ducting then i will definitely do that. I know they get a little hot and my climate is sunny socal so heat issues affect me more often than not. Plus i'll be moving in the next few months so a new lighting system is already being considered, just waiting for the right deal.