Quote Originally Posted by jedubz
Also forgot to mention: I'm currently using only 3 CFL's (2 x 1600 Lumens above the plants, 1 x 4200 Lumen sitting amongst them.) I have 2 more 1600 Lumen bulbs purchased and will be investing in some more bowl-shaped clamp fixtures for the additional two lights above the plants.

I hear lots of people talking about the 2700 Lumen CFL's. Is there something more optimal about this type of bulb? I'm not going to invest in a HPS light. This is a "ghetto grow" CFL project. I'm in an apartment building and generating a lot of heat is the last thing I want to do.
My biggest suggestion is to invest in more CFLs. I am curious, about your 4200 lumen CFL... do you have a link to the bulb info?

Also, about the 2700 lumen thing, i suspect like bigtopsfinn already said, you probably have the lumen count mixed up with the colour temperature (which is measured in Kelvins which is why there is always "K" at the end). you can read about it here if you are interested - Color temperature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but.... you could also be referring to 43watt (150watt equivalent bulbs) which do emit around that number of lumens... i believe my 43watt's are 2600 lumens. Lumens btw, are basically a mesaurement of the amount of actual light that comes out of a bulb, the wattage of a bulb really doesn't mean a thing at all... but generally, all 23watt bulbs emit around the same number of lumens (i've seen 1600 and 1700 lumen output on them)... the wattage is just the amount of power the bulb consumes, while the lumens is the amount of light output it gives.... so you want bulbs that give you the highest lumen output for the lowest wattage input, this is basically a measure of the bulbs effeciency... bulbs only emit 2 things... light, and heat. heat is undesirable (most of the time) as it is essentially wasted electricity, especially if you are growing during warm season and then have to crank your AC up higher which will consume even more energy to compansant for the heat output of the bulbs.

There are 2 common colour temps for CFL lights, 2700K which is commonly referred to as "soft white", and 6500K which is referred to as "cool white". There are some others on the market as well that tend to exist somewhere between those 2 numbers, and you can;t really trust that just because it says "cool white" that it is 6500K... i have 2 bulbs that said "cool white" on them, and when i took a closure look at the packaging once I was home discovered they were 5100K... which is ok, and I use them anyways as I kinda assume a little bit of a mix can;t be a bad thing.

Anyhow... the 6500K CFLs emit a light spectrum that plants make the most of during the vegging stage, while 2700K CFLs are better for the flowering stage - just like the plants like nutes that are higher in nitrogen during the vegging stage and more phosphorus during the flowering stage, they also prefer different light spectrums... its kind of a min/maxing technique


So to summarize, I need to take my little plants into harvest in 9 weeks. I have $100 to spend. I don't plan on growing again. What should I do?


--PS How safe is it to post pics? Is there a safe method? I have 100's of pics already only 3 weeks in.
for $100, i'd really say you want to max your lights, perhaps you might want to get some nutes that are rich in phosphorous and potasium (still want some nitrogen too, but its not as important for the flowering stage)... since you are not planning to do this again anytime soon... don;t invest in anything super fancy and specialized... that is the GREAT thing about CFLs imo, when you are done using them for a grow, you can use them around your house as regularly lighting without people wondering why you have all these specialized bulbs around the house.

as for pics - yes, it is safe to post them here, you can either upload them to the forums themselves, or you can post them to some place like imageshack and then link them here... personally, i think uploading them to the forum is way better.


ugh... sorry for the kinda long winded post, but it just seemed like some info that might be helpful for you.