It CAN be done (and quite well) with CFL

[Paht_Hed]

Ok so I am only using CFL's for this grow, I have 2 pants of Opium both feminised from Paradise Seeds. I am using the Flora 3 part along with Foxfarms Big Bloom which I started using about 4 weeks into flowering. I am on week 6 the day of this post. I use twice the strength of nutrients as stated for Flora and the exact stated for every feeding of Big Bloom and I spray them both with a foliar feeding of Big Bloom every day when the lights come on. I am running 600 watts of CFL (Yeah this seems like a lot but I am only getting 32,000 watts so keep that in mind. I am working with limited lumens.) I am trying to maximize the lumens I am using by putting the lights closer to the plants and I am getting good results almost that equivalent to some of the HID grows I have seen. I am sure I can get even more growth if I were to upgrade to two 8 lamp t5 units per 2 plants and run 864 watts for 80,000 lumens. Also keeping the lights close I think has attributed to them being so short and bushy/dense which is what I was aiming for.

[Weedhound]

I'm afraid I don't understand why.....if you are going to run 600 watts.....you don't run them with HID lighting. Might even be cooler as well.

[Paht_Hed]

I plan on getting better lights but I was going to go with t5 setups. They run cooler and put out almost as much. 97 lumens per watt where as a 1000 watt hps is 147 but I can put them 3 inches away from my plants. Good luck doing that with a 1000 watt hps.

[Weedhound]

Lol, very true....the hps would fry them Don't you have to adjust the lights alot as they grow since they are so close? They look VERY good for cfls btw.

[olliegrow]

wow..lookn good, ive done a smaller grow with 2-65 CFLS from light of america and 4-40 watt additional CFLs over 2 plants and they did very well but when I added my 430 HPS it blew the CFLS out of the water...the yeild was not comparable but you seem to be doing very well with your set up..clap..clap...peace

[Paht_Hed]

Lol, very true....the hps would fry them Don't you have to adjust the lights alot as they grow since they are so close? They look VERY good for cfls btw.

My plants really didn't grow that tall so I only had to adjust the lights every so often.