Personally, don't believe the claims myself. However, it really does not matter because I personally don't think your a better or worse person whether you did grow or not. Point is you know jack now and would like some answers. For a one plant grow you will probably want to start with CFLs, 6500K for the Vegging state and 2700K for the Flowering stage. The "K" represent Kelvin which is the unit light bulbs use to measure their temperature or color. The lower numbers are simply more red while the higher ones are on the blue side. Lights themselves can be about 1" from the plant but issues arise with drying or heat raise it to 2-3". Most people germinate their seeds which is simply sprouting seeds in a medium they won't be grown in. Such as a cup filled with water, which they would be sprouted in and then hopefully moved to a much larger container with a new medium like soil. As it's your first grow I'd probably recommend Fox Farm soil in a bucket 5Gallons+ in size. Other questions post back, I may reply but probably not as I usually am just high browsing these forums and forget which threads I post in or loose intrest. Use the search feature though for more assured results.