i have not found that to be the case at all i set up a side room just big enough to put a 20 gal rubber maid tub and wired well shit i'll just show u here's the pics now u tell me cfl's don't work.and as far as "but it takes a lot of care and attention to detail" not really i filled it with 10 gals of water put nutes in and off they went and iv'e noticed that the ones under the cfl's are a nice darker green as the others under the 1000 watt light hps is a lighter green the ones u see in the pics are 3 weeks old from seed so yes with the proper amount of cfl's i think u can grow damn good plants as iv'e also done tomato watermelon peppers and carrots like this and there nice a big as well i have 4/ 42 watt/150 and 2 / 24 watts as u can see in the pics i wired them up myself cost me close to 50 bucks for all the stuff and there doin damn good if u see i made a lil slider platform for the 2 24's so when the plants are small i can still get the lights close and still have the big ones over head as needed and when the plants grow i move the lower lights to the smaller plants so they get enough light hope this helps