Need the best information for a two plant cfl setup?!?

Need help getting the best results out of Canatonic and Pennywise using CFL's. two organic soil, two hydroponic. Never grown before and needing to help a caregiver keep cancer free. How can he grow the best quality medicine?! Does he really need LED or HPS or even a combination, ...need input. would anyone help educate please, thank you

You can grow great, potent bud using only CFL's or T5's. The only problem with fluorescent lighting is that no matter how powerful the bulb is, it's light effective range is only about a foot. You want to keep the bulbs 2 inches away from the nearest part (to avoid burning) and no part of the plant further than 8-10 inches from the bulbs. So you need to train your plants to take full advantage of the light or have multiple single bulbs surrounding a plant that is untrained. If the light is too far away, the plant will stretch and become even more difficult to keep trained.

I would recommend doing a SCROG setup- look them up, they are cheap and easy to make. With a scrog you have all kinds of options. You could get around 250 watts of 4000-6500k CFL's for vegetative growth, and for flowering get maybe 400-600 watts of 2700k cfl's.

If you are wanting to stick with 2 plants, I would use 5 gallon pots that have drains-and that have the water tray built into the last 2 inches. Or just get 5 gallon buckets and drill a few holes about 3 inches from the bottom for drainage. I am personally not a fan of some fully organic soils... If you want something good, that you can buy at walmart etc- Try miracle grow organic GARDEN soil (not miracle grow organic potting soil-that stuff sucks horribly TRUST ME) This will last through 2 months of vegetative growth (and then some)....


I said AND THEN SOME, this soil has nutrients that are supposed to last 3 months.... You gotta flush them out when it's time to flower or else the bud will taste funny and grow wrong. I recommend going to a local grow shop and getting a nice bottle of flowering nutrients.. Miracle grow is actually great for vegetative growth if you are trying to keep things simple. Walmart sells a small flowering fertilizer in granular form for about 5 dollars per container- It's actually great bang for your buck if you are on a budget.

With a "Bonsai" mother plant, 2 plants vegging- One a month ahead of the other, 2 plants flowering- One a month ahead of the other, 250 watts 4000-6500k vegetative, 400-600 watts 2700k flowering- You could expect between 125-300 grams per month depending on how much effort you put into it.

If you were to simply follow my instructions, water and feed the right amount.... You could expect 125-200 per month. If you were to make a custom soil mix, use prime fertilizers and keep the ph just right... You could expect 175-300 per month. That's up to you Welcome to the forum.

-PizzaMan5000

I appreciate the info pizza man. What if he stuck with fluorescents for veg and went ahead and bumped up to 600 Watt HPS? Is it going to make a significant difference in quality and quantity?

Yes you will notice a big increase in yield and denser buds...... However I feel that you can actually get more THC per gram under fluorescent light- at the expense of weight. I've noticed the pistils are much longer and more substantial under fluorescent light, which is apparently due to the lower amounts of heat stress, and the fact that although cfl's have less lumens per watt, more of the light given off by fluorescent bulbs is usable to the plants........Withing the first few inches.

Here's some quick basic pro's and cons-

HPS:
Pro's= Denser bud, less training required due to the high penetration of HPS, higher yield per watt than fluorescent. 600w is also the most efficient wattage as far as lumens per watt is concerned.

Cons= The setup is expensive, the bulbs are expensive (a bulb burning out between paydays can kill your crop if your budget is really tight), they creat as much heat as they do light- so you will need more ventilation. Also I don't know how legal your grow is, but a HPS bulb will raise eyebrows of the law.

Florescent bulbs:
Pros= They are cheap, they aren't designed for growing- draws less attention, they grow HAIRY bud, less ventilation required, less heat stress, you can fine tune your color temperature by using multiple different bulbs, if one bulb burns out and you have no money- it'll be ok.

Cons= Expect to train your plants or use a scrog, less grams per watt, although buds are prettier; many people squeeze buds to see the quality of the grow- and they think density means better for some reason. The grow room looks less tidy and professional with lots of wires and little lights strung everywhere..... That just bother's the german engineer in me.

I misspoke in my earlier post. I meant every two months. math from my grow was getting in the way of my thought process.

Thanks again Pizza man. Also, is hydroponic harder to maintain than soil? I heard if I choose Hydro, the water cannot get above 75° or I will have unfixable problems, is this true? Also, I was reading and came across a really cool setup, it was a 3 x 3 x 5 tent with a solis tek 400w/600w option ballast running a simple plantmax 600w hps inside a Daystar Flange Lens Grow Light Reflector with 25 x 5 inch active air carbon filter. It had more than four plants and looked good. My buddy on the other hand Will just stick with four plants, one organic Pennywise, One Hydro Pennywise, one organic catatonic and one Hydro Canatonic. He would prefer the strains to be as healthy and as beneficial as possible so if there's anything else you be interested in sharing, I'm all ears. Thanks again bro.

I'm am by no means a hydro expert. Or growing expert. I have little hydro experience, but do enjoy talking with my friends that DO grow hydro. From what I understand, the water in hydro should always be cooler than in the room. Some people go as far as using chillers to keep the temps down. But I will say that using a deep water culture is probably going to give you the most bud for your money and hassle on your first grow room. Personally, I just use soil because my room is SOOO frickin' cramped and I have to be quiet as a house mouse in there.... I'm planning on digging TRENCHES to keep my pots in (look at my profile or grow in the introduce yourself section and you will see).

Long story short, don't ask me about hydro..... Because I'll probably set you back. I'm clever in makin' lemonaid..... Not hydro

I am getting good results with cfl , keeping the bulbs vertical and VERY close to the plants

Peace BH