is it ok.

winder

Member
hi all
im 20 days into the flower of my girl (hope it is a girl )and i would like your comments on the progress as im a newbie and havent got a clue whether i am on scheduel or not. i think i have everything in place and just would like some more experienced feed back on progress. thanx all. im flowering with 5cfls all 2700k spec. 3x20w all enclosed in a home made enclosure and 2x15w positioned at the sides of the plants.
 

Attachments

winder

Member
good good thats what i like to hear it all been worth it then. is everything else ok lighting,temp,humidity etc.
 

supernova29

Member
keep the temp between 80-85f for flowering, humidity around 50%. just make sure you keep those ph levels ok and your routine of nutes the same. Then just wait until ready to harvest. Im at at the same stage myself prob around another month to go unitl my harvest.
 

Evlaar

Active Member
if you go out and buy about 4 more 26w 2700k cfls you will probably just about double your harvest :joint: (walmart sells 4 packs of exactly that for 6 bucks) put as many more lights in as you can without your temps geting to high. she looks healthy and green, but a plant that size should have a grip of cfls around it
 

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
The stems are thin as hell. Looks like they weren't getting enough light or nutrients or something. I couldn't make out from your post what wattage bulbs you were using. It looks like you were saying 20w. You need 42 watters. Smaller is too dim and larger is too hot. I find 42w just right. You also didn't say what the square footage of the space is. You want 60-100 watts per square foot.
 

winder

Member
my space is about 80cmx80cmx1m height. as it is my first grow i had no idea what i was doing so i just left it on the window sill in the kitchen when i realised that it was getting a bit big i made a quick grow room out of things i could get my hands on. it didnt have any fertilizer until it started flowering as with not nowing what i was doing most of my time was spent researching and asking questions on here also i dont think that it has helped that i kept changing pots either coz its now in its 4th pot which it had a week of veg in and then straight into flower.. i have 3x 20w cfls in the home made light (in pics above) about 2-3 inches above my plant and have 2 15w at the sides. as i dont live in U.S there is no walmart or owt but i have seen some 25w cfls 1350 lumens 2700k. i am going to buy them on the weekend and i was gonna replace all bulbs i have now. and perhaps put some of the 1s that i remove around the base. also i am planning on getting a HID sodium light for my next attempt in the same space would a 70w HID producing 5600lumens do for this space or should i got to 150w?
 

BobCajun

Well-Known Member
I see. So you have about 7 square feet of space there. I guess since it's just one plant and the lights are all right near it rather than spread out over the full space it might be enough. The stem must have got thin from growing in the window before. You would need about 400 watts to cover that whole space if you filled it with plants. 70 watts isn't going to cut it. If you put it right above one plant it would probably work but not for the whole space. 300 watts would be the bare minimum and for that you could use two 150 watters, as you mentioned. I use them myself in a 3x1.5 foot space, which is only 4.5 square feet. They work well for that sized space but might be a little dim for yours which is almost twice as big. I'd say three would be needed and maybe a few CFL lights in there with them, which would improve the spectrum of the HPS light too. Maybe two 150 HPS and some CFL lights in there with them. Either that or three 150s.

150 watt HPS is easy to work with, nice small noise-free ballast and spreads the light out better than a single larger wattage one. To find these just go to a lighting supply store if you can't find them in a building supply type store. Just buy the ballasts and bulbs separately and get some wire and wire connectors (those little twisty things) and wire them up yourself, real easy. The wiring diagram is included in the ballast package. Good idea to put the ballasts somewhere other than inside the grow box, to avoid the heat that comes off of them.

Did you take some cuttings before you started flowering that plant? If not, unless you have other seeds you'll have to take some cuttings from the lower branches of the plant now before it gets too far into flowering. They'll revert to normal vegetative growth after a while if you root and grow them under 18 hours of light.
 

winder

Member
would i really need that much light just for a 1 or 2 plants. ok then that seem alot as the dimentions of the light means i could only fit 2 in max so you would recomend 2 150w how about 1 250 w would that cut the mustard.
 

Hairy Bob

Well-Known Member
Original post, second pic, is that an incandescent in the middle there? Certainly looks like it to me, get it out of there, they are next to useless for growing plants and give off more heat than light.
Ideal light levels are between 7-10,000 lumens per sq ft, the sun provides around 10,000 lumens/sq ft on a clear day. 3000 is the bare minimum you can get away with but will not give great results. You have just shy of 7 sq ft, so you want between 48,000 and 70,000 lumens ideally.
A 150w hps is about 15,000 lumens, 250w is roughly 30,000, 400w about 50,000 and a good 600w will give you 90,000 (all depending on the quality of the bulb).
It depends how much you want to get out of this, as that will be proportional to what you put in. When you consider that the price difference between the different sizes is pretty minimal, and that the larger wattages tend to be more efficient, it seems more economical to get a big light, and I would say in your space the difference in coverage between one big and multiple light sources will be small. I'd recommend a 400 or a 600, but either will require good ventilation, 150-250cfm can fan as an exhaust, dependant on your intake temperatures.
There are plenty of perfectly good cfl grows, but it boils down to the fact that hps are up to twice as efficient as cfls on a lumens per watt basis, although cfl advocates point out that cfls can be kept closer to the plants, and can be more easily spread out around them, but cfl light will only penetrate at best, 6 inches away from the bulb, which is why it is essential to have them as close as possible to the plant. Comparitatively (did I make that word up?) hps can get through at least a couple of feet of canopy and still give reasonable results on the lower buds.
I think I've rabbited on for long enough now, hope this helped you make a decision.
 
Top