I have 2, 4 foot tall tower speakers. About 10 inches wide each. I plan on turing them into a grow box. I have done lots of research, but Im still confused on what kind of lighting I need. I plan to have only 1-2 plants in the grow box. And will be using bagseed as my first grow. What kind of lights would I need? I assume One light per plant would be good? What type of bulb do I need? I hear you have to change the bulb to a different watt bulb to induce flowering? Can someone please explain to me how this works? Thanks.
ok so to start there are CFL bulbs. The energy saving twisty bulbs. You will need at least 100 ACTUAL watts for the first plant and +50-75 for each additional plant, but more light is always better. For vegging the plant you wilkl need 6500K CFL's but for flowering you will want the 2700K. This does NOT induce flowering but your light schedule will. While vegging the plants you will want the lights to be on 18+ hours a day but always keep it the same amount of time (most do 24/0 with lights on) When flowering you will switch to the 2700k lights and change the light schedule to 12/12 which will tell the plant it is time to flower Remember with CFL lights you have to keep them 2-4 inches away from the plants for them to be effectibve The next type of lights you could use which are more expensive are MH/HPS lights and sorry but i dont know as much about these but they are more effective from what i hear but they also produce more heat so you have to make sure you have proper ventilation using these sources of light.
Thanks.. So you swich to 2700k for flowering. is this nessacary? Or could you veg+flower with a 6500k bulb? Differences? And I cannot find the right bulbs online. I looked in homedepot.com and whatnot and cannot find it. Can you post a link or links of the cfl light bulbs? Actual links from stores.
Bulbs here: Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs - 23-26 Watt - 100 Watt Equivalent - BuyLighting.com You can get them at home depot as well.... Just look on the back side of the package for Kelvin temp (K) http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Kelvin_Temperature_Chart.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kelvin_Temperature_Chart.jpg&h=586&w=1324&sz=54&tbnid=hY8a-Tj23d97XM:&tbnh=66&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkelvin%2Btemperature&zoom=1&q=kelvin+temperature&hl=en&usg=__nn64LBS8X1RFUnRLncBvFhJyIdY=&sa=X&ei=1AZTTZyIGsP38AbnlqTaCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CC8Q9QEwBQ
If you plan on using cfls, get some velcro or some magnets. Stick them to the back of a power strip and move it up and down as the plant grows. That way your plants can absorb the most light possible.
Thanks for the links... It really helped. And that power strip idea sounds good. Since the speakers are tall, I was thinking of making some kind of pulley system. But a magnetic power strip sounds better. Any other ideas would help too. these are basically what the speakers look like.
From my understanding it matters how the bulb s lumens is measured like if its so many lumens in the color temp or if its it a full spectrum its lumens from all the colors.. I wouldn't worry about it to much though Just try to get 100 or so true watts worth of CFLS in there and u should be ok.
More lumens - brighter bulb ,it is better to have more lumens. And the right spectrum temperature (K) is very impotent as well .