I recently purchased two 120w Spot - Gro bulbs from Home Depot for a modest closet grow. I'm worried because I've read that lights have to have the right color spectrum and from what I can see these bulbs are very blue. Will they work? Anyone have any experience with these bulbs and/or suggestions?
If I am not mistaken those are incandescent bulbs. Get rid of them ASAP. Get some CFL's. Just make sure they are 5000k or 6500k color temp. It will say on the package. You will need a minimum of 100 ACTUAL watts of CFL for the first plant and an additional 50 actual watts for each plant after the first. You can get the 4 pack of 23 or 27 wattCFL's at Home depot for around $10.
those grow bulbs are a relic of pre-cfl times. the main purpose of them is to make money selling to people that don't know alot about lighting for plants.
Thanks for the info. Well the only problem I have with CFLs is that you need so many. If you need 4 for one plant and then 1 more for each consecutive plant that can add up quick I plan on growing about 5 or 6 plants, so that's like 8 or 9 lights. Say I'm trying to grow around that many plants, what would be a good space efiicient light to use? edit: Actually if it's 50 more watts for each consecutive plant that's like 12 - 14 lights for 6 plants. Any suggestions?
Those bulbs you got turn way too much of the energy they consume into heat rather than into light, so you will end up with relatively less light for your plants and extra heat to deal with. CFLs, fluoro tubes, or HID are your lighting choices.
Think I've decided to go with a Metal Halide/ HPS crossover system. How many watts do you need per plant with these?
Kinda depends more on grow space and how big you plan on them getting. A 600w should be good for that many plants no matter how big they get. You could get away with a 400w probably, but if you can afford it do the 600w. Just my opinion. The HID lighting (MH and HPS) penetrate foliage much better than CFL's.
Went to Home Depot and got 4 daylight 100 watt CFLs and 2 soft white 100 watt CFLs. All I could find for fixtures were clamp lights with metal reflectors. Will these work?
Glad to see you did your home work What's the color temps on those bulbs you got? btw almost my whole setup was collect from the HD you just gotta be creative and read some tutorials.
On the 4 daylight CFLs the color temp is 6500, on the 2 soft whites its 2500. Yeah If I can I'd like to not order anything online fertilizer maybe. I'm using the large top shelf in my closet for a small grow, the door is never closed all the way but am I gonna need ventilation? Would a small fan do the job?