I would say if you are growing indoors you should build a box with good reflection, flat white paint on the inside. Get some Y adapters, put maybe four of the 23w cfls in a good reflector, I find that the pendant lamps from ikea work great, they are flat white inside the reflector and give a nice even light spread. Do you have any electrical skills? The lamps from IKEA have a 3-prong grounded plug. I wanted mine hard-wired into the mains so I cut off the plug, added an inline switch and hung it from my ceiling over a shelf in my closet. Put three Y adaptors in the socket so I have 4 sockets to put CFLs in. I'm only using two because even though the ficture is rated for 100 watts, I found that 92 watts of CFLs caused my CFL's to burn out within about 4 months which I didn't appreciate. I think it was just too warm inside the lamp and the electronics in the CFLs weren't designed for heat.

Anyway, you want to get enough light that you don't stretch too much in veg. If they are stretching you need more light. Then once you get them growing nicely in veg, you will need much more light and a space which is lightproof for your 12/12 cycle, so you will want a good solid box with exhaust so you can put a fan in there. You also need a timer, these can be found for around $5.00. The pet store has good reflectors, I got one which holds three lamps, one lamp controlled by a separate switch. The pet store also has UV lamps for reptiles, these are a good addition to your flowering cycle as UV facilitates THC production. I wish I had bought several two-lamp reflectors because I can only fit one three-lamp reflector in my cab, but the two-lamp reflectors I could place in a different orientation and get three or four into my cab giving me 6 or 8 lamps instead of just three. I used a bathroom exhaust fan blowing air out of a hole on the back of my cabinet. I have some clones in there on a 12/12 cycle waiting for them to sex so I can get rid of all my males and have more room in my veg chamber. Here's links to my flowering cab and my entire grow:

http://boards.cannabis.com/indoor-gr...e-cabinet.html

http://boards.cannabis.com/grow-log/...g-popcorn.html

I got a fair harvest from my first grow using much less sophisticated equipment, which taught me what the heck I am looking for when growing, the basics of the plant biology and life cycle, sexing, etc. Your first grow will probably be more of a learning experience than anything very productive, but that's okay. Here's a link to my first grow, back when I was paranoid and I was trying to claim that it was a friend of mine doing the grow, lol.

http://boards.cannabis.com/basic-gro...irst-grow.html
JD1stTimer Reviewed by JD1stTimer on . Germinating + More info needed... Hey everyone. Noob first timer here, just thought I needed to register on a dedicated forum for a new hobby of mine, to find out more information! Having been given a couple of random seeds last Wednesday I proceeded to begin germinating, I followed a general method from YouTube which showed putting a paper towel down and then layering this with water (lightly). Then putting the seeds down and another wet paper towel on top of this. Now, some videos I watched said keep it air tight - Rating: 5