i have some plants outdoor that im alittle worried about them getting stolen so ide like to flower them indoors. theres 3 of them about 1 1/2 feet tall. how many CFL's do you think i need? i dont wanna under-do the wattage and get a shitty yeild but i also dont wanna stick like 50 cfl's in there. i have plenty of space to do this, not a ton of money and im planning on just going to walmart so tell me what you think i need to flower these 3 ladies indoor?

To flower inside you will need 2700k color temp cfl bulbs.

just figure optimum lumens from cfl is 5k per sq ft. 3k is acceptable. CFL must be kept from 1" to 12" away from the plant, any farther than 12" and consider 0 lumens reaching your plant from that light.

I just threw out that number because i don't know the width etc of your plants and they will at least triple in size by the end of harvest when switched to 12/12.

Also CFL does not penetrate leaf canopy worth crap so if you want lower growth mid/center/side lighting will be needed.

Unless you have to I personally would not go with CFL unless you have done it before or are trying to micro grow. Small HID HPS ballast's & bulbs can be boughten fairly cheap from most hardware stores. (75w, 150w etc). (There security lights or driveway lights etc. do not buy mercury vapor. get High pressure sodium *HPS*which is best for flowering.)

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Dial into your plant's needs. Don't work to keep your plant alive, make it work to stay alive.

ive read up alittle on CFL growing, but do i just need the lights within 2-4 inches of the top of the plant? or do i NEED some on the sides too?

If you allow your plant to just grow up without doing any kind of super cropping or LST then you will need some for the side & lower lighting. That is probably the biggest downfall of the CFL is the lack of the ability to penetrate the leaf canopy to get to the lower growth

HID on the other has great penetration of the canopy and covers a larger area. But produces much more heat.

If you want to use CFL and get the best results for the amount of light, plants & space used i would look into SCROG. If you scrog you will control everything that flowers and how it flowers. And also be able to keep a nice level canopy of CFL right above the screen so all buds get good soaking of light

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Dial into your plant's needs. Don't work to keep your plant alive, make it work to stay alive.

ok ill look into that...i was looking on walmarts website and about all i can probaly afford right now would be 2-42w watt, and 6 23 watt cfl's, plus a $20 fan. i also have 2 13w 2700k cfl's already that i could use for side/bottom growth idk. i dont think thats enough for 3 plants at about 1 1/2 feet tall and not more than 1 foot wide atm....

Depends the best thing about cfl is that you can position them basicaly anywhere so thats a pretty decent amount of light man, what you tossed out up there is 248w of cfl power. thats actually not that bad at all..

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Dial into your plant's needs. Don't work to keep your plant alive, make it work to stay alive.

hmm alright im probaly going to do that then...thanks for your help man +rep

oh also do you have any idea how much sockets to put them in are or how much y-splitters are? i heard their cheap

i tryed looking on walmarts website under y-splitters, sockets, and light sockets couldnt find anything, whats the "correct term"?

I'm not sure as to how many you can put on 1 cord but quite a few. I have a thread somewhere here on using cfl's without a socket but have no idea where lol..

Im not sure what the correct term for the Y adapters would be, i found them at ace hardware for like $2 a piece. I looked for them at MJers but the one here seems to suck and not carry anything lol.

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View my current Bubblelicious CFL SOG. Daily Pictures. Comments welcome

Dial into your plant's needs. Don't work to keep your plant alive, make it work to stay alive.