Cfl basic grow guide

CFL BuDz

ok so your new to CFL or just need to brush up well this

is the guide for you

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Lumens Ok has a genreal amount needed for a decent cfl

harvest 5000 lumens this bieng said i use 10,000 with

good results

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Placement is key with cfl were you put your lights will

wiegh vastly on your results one of the big reasons

people have bad results is bad placement

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CFL is more suited to small grow ops and micro grows

good for sog , scrog , lst, ect ect

Topping is also well suited for cfl grows
see topping <

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Light Spectrums


Daylight (6500k) is an outdoor (blue) color light

Red Spectrum - (2400k) appears Orange White

White - (5000K) Soft White

MultiSpectrum - (6400K)

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CFLS And Vegative Growth
CFL's can be used throughout the growth cycle
most noteably for vegative growth.
daylight bulbs encourage fast bushy growth among

marijuana plants while Red Spectrum Lights encourage

leggy growth (see flowering with CFL's)
Blue Spectrum along side Red Spectrum is often used in

succession with one another to create a more natraul

lighting effect ( 2 blue 1 red )

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CFL for Flowering
Ok on to a touchy subject CFL V.S HPS CFL's are better

for small spaces where as HPS is better for larger areas
Good lumen range for flowering is 5000-15000 lumens per

square foot. CFL seem to have a less bleaching rate then

HPS despite popluar thought it is very much easy to

acheive a decent yield with CFL when used correctly of

course.
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FEEL FREE TO CORRECT ANYTHING I MAY HAVE

MISSED OR NEW INFO

Well you mention light placement but then don't say much about it.

CFLs are bad when it comes to light penetration, thus placement is key. They don't get too hot so you can get the bulbs nice and close to the plants to make sure as much light as possible is getting to your plants. Tied (pun intended) into this is LST / any other training method. You can/should use LST to position the plants' branches such that light is allowed to get to the entire plant rather than just the top set of leaves. If you just hang a bunch of CFLs form the ceiling of your grow box, then your plant will stretch up towards them and may look nice for a while, but eventually as the plant gets bigger taller and wider the bottom half of your plant will be blocked out from the light nearly completely. This means the plant is relying almost entirely on its top foliage for gathering energy where as if you move the lights and do some LST you can expose as much of the plant as possible to the lights

mgrady3 said:

Well you mention light placement but then don't say much about it.

CFLs are bad when it comes to light penetration, thus placement is key. They don't get too hot so you can get the bulbs nice and close to the plants to make sure as much light as possible is getting to your plants. Tied (pun intended) into this is LST / any other training method. You can/should use LST to position the plants' branches such that light is allowed to get to the entire plant rather than just the top set of leaves. If you just hang a bunch of CFLs form the ceiling of your grow box, then your plant will stretch up towards them and may look nice for a while, but eventually as the plant gets bigger taller and wider the bottom half of your plant will be blocked out from the light nearly completely. This means the plant is relying almost entirely on its top foliage for gathering energy where as if you move the lights and do some LST you can expose as much of the plant as possible to the lights

Click to expand...

sorry i was a little high at time of writing some lol

Good post ,

Keep the CFL info flowin ,,,

bump lol

I have had pretty good results with growing in a small cabinet, 16" deep, 30 " wide, and 60" high. I use a 200 watt CFL mogul base bulb with a hydrofarm reflector. The bulb is 6400 full spectrum and I only flower with it. I veg in a similar cabinet but use 4 100 watt CFL bulbs, small screw in standard socket. Have had three harvests and for what I paid in electric using the CFL I have to say it has been very economical to say the least. But as stated above I grow in a pretty small space and have found very little problem with heat, I keep the reflector hood and bulb about 2-4 inches from the tops. I have found that FIMMING works well for me in this space as the plant will stay short, 16"-20", with 4 Colas and some decent yield. As a MMJ patient on very limited income I have found this to be a great way to provide myself with good quality medicine at a reasonable price.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean when you describe the bulb you flower with...

its a 200W CFL that is 6400K? Not actually sure what Full Spectrum refers too

Generally you flower with 2700K and veg with 6500K, not saying its not possible to do it opposite but 2700K light promotes flowering better than 6500K light..

edit: also +rep to OP for spreading info on cfl growing

Nice thread and information bro +rep

mgrady3 said:

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean when you describe the bulb you flower with...

its a 200W CFL that is 6400K? Not actually sure what Full Spectrum refers too

Generally you flower with 2700K and veg with 6500K, not saying its not possible to do it opposite but 2700K light promotes flowering better than 6500K light..

edit: also +rep to OP for spreading info on cfl growing

Click to expand...

Full spectrum means that it can be used during any stage of life it uses all colors as opposed to just one ,, on a side note i will add that in with the guide

mgrady3 said:

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you mean when you describe the bulb you flower with...

its a 200W CFL that is 6400K? Not actually sure what Full Spectrum refers too

Generally you flower with 2700K and veg with 6500K, not saying its not possible to do it opposite but 2700K light promotes flowering better than 6500K light..

edit: also +rep to OP for spreading info on cfl growing

Click to expand...

I know it does sound backwards but it is a 6400k full spectrum 200 watt CFL that is rated at 10,000 lumens. When I was looking at setting up I went to a local garden center and talked to the owner. He told me for what I was looking at doing ( small cabinet ) he recommended the light. I was leery but as I said it has given me great results. I found this definition on wikipedia -

Full-spectrum light is light that covers the electromagnetic spectrum from infrared through near-ultraviolet, or all wavelengths that are useful to plant or animal life; in particular, sunlight is considered full spectrum, even though the solar spectral distribution reaching Earth changes with ...

All I know is this light works very well for me in the small space that I have. My temperatures at the top of the plant stays around 85-90 f and at the pot rim it is around 75 with the light on. The box says " full spectrum insures proper development and maximum flowering "
This is the results from a topped " white Russian " using the 200 watt 6400k, full spectrum CFL

http://www.google.com/url?ei=WjAuTZPkCYeasAPRwLC7Bg&sig2=dQaGVioAneCsyl9eMZsMLA&q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum&sa=X&ved=0CAwQpAMoAA&usg=AFQjCNFpmfoZwJ3Azr9-H2rIXrr1jQC2IA

bumbp lol P

no offense, but you should keep working on the guide. There's too many spelling mistakes for me to begin to correct lol. But its definitely a step in the right direction and your intentions are good, so best of luck with the guide! =)

wow, ok. I like your guide typos or not. It is looking good man, please keep it going!!

B ump lol

I don't have the link on hand but somewhere you should link to the guides/stickys that I believe are somewhere on this forum about LST and Topping.

Those two techniques can be crucial to CFL because often they are used where space is an issue; thus topping and LST are crucial for cfl grows because of the light penetration issue I addressed earlier in the thread.

also make it more clear that the 2700K are better for flowering whereas the 6500K are better for veg phase

Also something im not sure of that from what i've found (Well not found really). What wattage to go off of the actual watts or equivalent watts. - anyone wanna shed some light on the boards here on this one?

You go by Actual watts
Equivalent means equivalent to an incandescent bulb... but who uses those to grow...

go by the actual watts, 23W, 26W, 30W, 42W those are all common for the small spiral cfls

bizumpP lol

Yeah, I've found that if you use the actual wattage and do the math the representation of the manufacturer's "Lumens/Watt" is usually pretty accurate. I've been trying to do some more math to figure out IF it is exactly less economical, even in a larger ACTUAL wattage setting for CFLs, a lot of genius's will represent the equivalent watts for their CFLs, which is retarded, cause I'm sorry, an 850W "equivalent" light, should output more than 12,000 lumens, 200 ACTUAL watts, sounds much better for that output. Regardless, I'm curious as to if running 400Ws of CFLs, still costs as much as running 400Ws of an HPS setup, light alone, but I would have to get input from someone who's used a 400W HPS bulb, and calculated the cost out. In my current grow I'm using one of those 5-flex lamps cannibalized for it's sockets, one 55W 27K in the center, and four 42W 27K surrounding with two 26W 27K just for some more lumens. Course this was a very make-shift and hurried setup, if you read my post "Dropped in my lap" you'll understand why. But My next grow I'm really excited about because I essentially want to build a 420W CFL hood, with 4 105W Full Spec 5000K CFLs, I may experiment with 2 5K and 2 27K for flowering to see if it makes a difference, I want to lean towards no, since the 5K light does hit the full spectrum. Anyhow, I estimate it'll cost a little over 100 dollars for everything, bulbs, materials, wiring, sockets, etc., may even figure a way to work a small inductor fan in there for easy carbon filter attachment. However this will all have to wait awhile, I gotta finish this grow out first, but I still have a Mango seedling to play with so I may test it out. Anyhow, the 420w light is planned to be used in conjunction with my first experiment with ScrOG, look forward to posting those results and final weights. estimate that @ 13 cents/ kwH it'll cost me about 40 bucks a month to run that light the whole month.