1st grow w/ CFLs

My grow room is pretty small, 4x3x9. 12 sqft of grow area. I am using the large CFLs. I am in my 13th week, burning (two) 85watt/350watt, 6500k, 4000 lumens, (eight) 105watt/400watt, 3000k, 4200 lumen. I am using the clamp on fixtures, which is great, I can place a CFL any where on top, or behind the plants, hanging low pointing upwards towards the plant. This way I can provide light anywhere onto my plants. Kinda hard to do that w/HPS. After this 1st harvest, with Grow # 2 my plans are to expand to 2 grow closets. One for clones and vegetation. The other for blooming. I plan to grow 2 plants per strain, 8-10 strains in all. I'd like to try every stain out there, but I am sure thats abit impossible. Well, here are some of my ladies.

definitely a nice first time set up man. The ladies look good. What strain is this first grow? (I am sorry if I missed it in the description)

I germinated White Widow, Big Bud, Kandahar, and Carnival. Kandahar is 90% indica, 10% sativa, Big Bud is 80% indica, 20% sativa, both White Widow and Carnival are 60% sativa, 40% indica. Purpose for my grow is for pain medicine. I have Lymes Disease, have had it since 1989. My old body rejects the narcodics anymore these days, besides the past 2 years, I think the narcs made me feel worse. Anyway, I picked these strains based upon they were recommended by most for the best regarding pain and depression....later

BTW in 3-4 weeks will see what strains works, if none do, I'll test other strains until I get the right one or two....take care

Going back to old post to update them. I used CFLs to successfully grow 6 bud plants. Back then I had done my research, but when a problem arised, came to this forum, got great productive solutions. Ended up w/an excellent grow, harvest and bud.

Grow Lights:
(six) CFL Sunlite Daylight, 85watt/350watt, 6500k, 4200 lumen
(eight) CFL Sunlite Warm White, 105 watt/400watt, 2700k, 5000 lumen
10 clamp on light fixtures

Strains:
White Widow, 60% sativa, 40% indica
Carnival, 80% sativa, 20% indica
Big Bud, 80% indica, 20% sativa
Kandahar, 90% indica, 10% sativa
purchased from Cannabis Ministry

Grow System: Aeroponic-Hydroponic grow system.
By using the deep tote boxes,( 1 solution box, 2 grow boxes ), air pump, water pump, (2) 12" air stones, aquarium heater, 24 hour timer for solution pump, programmable timer for CFLs, (2) 8 inch fans providing fresh air, (2) thermal gauges.

Operation:
Solution pump & micro-sprayers ran 1 min. on, 5 min. off, 24/day, change to 1.5 min. on, 10 min. off. Worked perfectly at that run time

Ph was maintained at 6.8-7.2 for vegetation, 5.4-5.8 during flowering. I flushed my nutes and water every 7 days w/o fail. After adding the new distilled water, I'd rinse my roots for 24 hours w/fresh distilled water, then add my nutes as recommended by General Hydroponics. I used General Hydroponics Flora Grow, Flora Bloom, and Flora Micro and CalMag.

Grow Time: 19 weeks from germination to harvest

Can't wait to get started on my second run

I like the new setup! Those are some nice buds too. I'm in the middle of my first soil grow and I'm already thinking of switching over to hydro Did you use any kind of tds/ or PPm meter during this grow?

SmeLLyTreeZ said:

I like the new setup! Those are some nice buds too. I'm in the middle of my first soil grow and I'm already thinking of switching over to hydro Did you use any kind of tds/ or PPm meter during this grow?

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Only meter I used was a Ph meter. I would dump my nutes mixed w/distilled water every 7 days. Re-plentish w/fresh distilled water, rinse the roots for 24 hours, than add my next batch of nutes, and when I topped off, just added more distilled water thru-out the week. My gals just thrived from that, however I might go with PPM or TDS, cuz I went thru 225 gallons of distilled water @ $.89 cents/gallon, kinda adds up in 19 weeks.

Wow, crazy set up with the clamps & those are some big cfl's bro. Where did you cop those at & for how much?

& good luck on growing/smoking every strain man. lol a lofty goal & one I would like to work towards as well but I think it is virtually impossible with all the breeding going on these days. Of course, that doesn't mean that it isn't fun to try...

rombomb420 said:

Wow, crazy set up with the clamps & those are some big cfl's bro. Where did you cop those at & for how much?

& good luck on growing/smoking every strain man. lol a lofty goal & one I would like to work towards as well but I think it is virtually impossible with all the breeding going on these days. Of course, that doesn't mean that it isn't fun to try...

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Yeah there is thousands of strains out there today, but I keep researching it. I hear Red Dragaon and LSD from Barneys Farm is a good choice for a strain and 8 mile high is a very good strain and anymore I hear alot about Blue Dreams
Still debating, still researching, slowly getting ready for my second run.

Yeah, the CFLs I got are from Express Light Bulb.com, those CFLs are big, but man they work great, I have 16 total,( 6 for veg, 10 for flowering) and 10 clamps and only so much power to pull from. Plus there is no heat issues. The cost varied, the 85/350watt, 6500k, 4200 lumens ran about $24.00/light, the 105/400watt, 2700k, 5000 lumens, $28.00+/light, clamps $6.00 at Walmart.

I knew getting into my 1st grow was not gonna be cheap at first, but now that I have everything, I'm good to go, not to mention having an excellent outcome on my 1st run, that's priceless in it's self, IMO.

If your planning a grow, I suggest to research it really good, ask questions at sites like this. I tried to grow 6-7 years ago w/potting soil, got some k-mart grow "cheap" lights, had a little success. That took me to the Aero-Hydro approach. Just be prepare to spend a few bucks, I saved up the bread to get mine up and running. But look what came of that.

Yea it turned out really good, it definitely pays to learn about growing before you actually get into it!

SmeLLyTreeZ said:

Yea it turned out really good, it definitely pays to learn about growing before you actually get into it!

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Still got alot to learn, made some real rookie mistakes, but that is how I learn I guess. lol, I even lost track of which strain was which, now that was real stupid. Also I had to move my growboxes out of the closet a couple of times to make room, my ladies just took off during the flowering stage, I was running out of grow space. All in all, it all worked out in the end

faderharley said:

Still got alot to learn, made some real rookie mistakes, but that is how I learn I guess. lol, I even lost track of which strain was which, now that was real stupid. Also I had to move my growboxes out of the closet a couple of times to make room, my ladies just took off during the flowering stage, I was running out of grow space. All in all, it all worked out in the end

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Worked out nice from the looks of it "thumbs up"