what type of CFL is best for veg/flower

First off, you need to do some research, and read the various threads around these forums. Not to sounds like an ass, but the questions you are asking are about as common and basic as "what is soil?" To give you a quick answer, you want 6500k (bright white or daylight) bulbs for veg. 2700k (soft white or cool white) are used for flowering. The basic rule of thumb is 100w per plant and 50w for each additional plant. With CFLs, the wattage listed on the package is the replacement watts, not the actual watts. For example, most 100w CFLs actually use about 23 watts. So when you total up your watts, use the actual wattage number, not the replacement. For 100w, you would want about 4 of the above mentioned CFLs. Check out Kamel's CFL thread at the beginning of this section. Lots of good info that will help.

 

Am I wrong but I thought CFL and ALL lights go by the Lumen being key factor watt being consumption of energy and lumen the out put of grow energy ?

 

ok im going to dig this out of the grave because i have the same question as is quoted Above sorry about the whole 2009 thing

 

Here's a post i found on Board.cannabis. sorry for reincarnating this again and i hope both of you have had that question answered by now, but for the sake of leaving no question unanswered as i was curious myself after.


"You should have a look at the http://boards.cannabis.com/indoor-lighting/140735-answers-about-cfl-hps-how-much-light.htmlthread, which is stickied and answers many/most of these questions.Lumens are a measure of the power of light as perceived by the human eye. (And before anyone starts to talk about plants "seeing" differently...the human eye is able to perceive light in the wavelengths used to grow.) You can grow a plant with 3000 lumens per square foot, but you're definitely on the low end with that. 5000 lumens per square foot and up is what you want to strive for.As noted, CFLs don't have much canopy penetration. Distance form the plant is much more important for CFLs. Light from any source decreases in intensity in exponential relation to distance; the amount is the square of the distance form the source. Double any distance from a source and the amount of light will be one quarter of the previous amount. If you've got an HPS light, the 1 1/2" difference between 7" and 8 1/2" won't be huge. With a CFL, the difference of 1 1/2"...going from 1 1/1" from the plant to 3" from the plant...is the difference between getting some buds and getting nothing.For vegging, you want to find what will be called "daylight" or "full spectrum" bulbs. They should be 5500k to 6500k. For flowering, you will want to use "warm white" bulbs. These are more common. They are usually 2700k.Ignore the "watt equivalent." Watts have nothing to do with growing. Watts are a measurement of energy, not light. Lumens aren't perfect, but they're more than accurate enough to determine if you have enough light."- RoughRider