well, i've made a decision, so it's not question

some context here, been growing in a 38 x 15 inch tube with 78w of cfl's - that's already pretty low
harvested a 29 inch nl#5 - yield was 35g of very strong bud
here's link for the interested
Grow Tube - Part Deux

35g turns out to be one hell of a bunch of bud for me, i vape maybe a 1/10 of a gram at night - so this grow setup produced almost a year's supply in one shot
that and i like to keep stealth to a maximum

so i'm joining the PC case grower club - going to use 1 26w cfl bulb per case
these are fairly small cases 13 x 7 x 15 inches
lst is obviously a must here

i haven't seen a good grow that goes this low in wattage - they may be out there
i'll be posting pics of the grow setup in a bit

i am very interested in this grow... it would be very cool to see what a single small wattage cfl can really produce in an optimum environment. i have roughly 220 w of cfls in a 1.5Lx2.5Wx5H box and will be concentrating my lights on one plant during flowering, i have an autoflower in there also that will be finishing as i switch my other to flowering. so once i switch all the lights will be on one plant.


i did lst on my sativa dom... it is now barely 5 inches tall (untied might be about 12) but has about 10-12 tops and still a couple weeks to veg.

how close do you think you could put the 26 w cfl to the plant without burning it... i bet you can get it almost touching all the time if not actually touching. i can get my 42 w pretty close, i have noticed however that the lower the color temperature the higher the actual radiant temperature

thanks for the look mkay420 - i'm pretty psyched at the moment on this grow

my last experience with cfl's showed me you can put the leaf/bud just short of touching with no burn on a 26w cfl
i actually shoved the plant so close i did burn a bit of fan leaf
but the burn was so low and the results so good, it wasn't a big deal
i should be able to tend to the plant much better than my last setup, which should let me put the leaf/bud right where i want it with respect to the bulb

cool do you have any pics of your last grow? i always love to see the results of a cfl harvest as this will be my first. my largest cfl i have to keep around 4-6 inches away because it is 105 w and puts off a little heat . but the others i have can be closer, around 3 inches or so. cant wait to see what your setup looks like...

there's a link to my last grow log in my original post i'm having a problem uploading pics since the last system change my old proxies don't work like they used to

i definitely dont see a link there....

this is the link: Grow Tube - Part Deux

so a very basic pc case setup - nothing fancy - dirt simple
cleaned out an old pc case - 7 x 13 x 16 inches - small pc case

so my main trick was to cut a small wooden crosspiece as a beam across the top rails - mounted with a few screws and washers - to that a single ceramic socket was attached
here's the view from the side



and the view from the top



ceramic is good - great fire stop
and the assembled pic - there's a power supply for the fan and a cord for the lamp



finally got my pic posting troubles better - a little bit of plant porn in a little bit

Hi growone. I did read your grow log about a month ago and was fascinated by the success you were having with such a low-wattage grow. At the time I thought that it must have something to do with the cylindrical shape of your grow space. In theory, a cylindrical tube would bounce light always back towards center with one bounce. Since light intensity falls away from CFLs so quickly, doing a bounce back towards center in one bounce would mean that the light hitting your girl would be of a higher intensity compared to a bounce in a square box that may make multiple bounces before ever getting back to center. Comment?

Also, something that I have incorporated to keep my plant from burning when the bulbs touch the plant is a 3 watt synchronous motor driver that slowly rotates a circular platform where my plant sits. The 3 watt syncronous motor was rescued from an old carousel microwave oven that quit working. The carousel still functioned, of course.

It was easy to remove from the oven and mounted easily on a 3/8 inch piece of plywood. The motor is mounted under the plywood and the stem of the motor rests beneath a hole where I dropped in the carousel and tray assembly from the microwave oven. The plant rotates one turn every 10 seconds or so, which is quick enough to not allow the fan leaves to touch the surrounding bulbs long enough to burn.

Anyway, I hope this grow is as successful as your last.

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I'm new here, so be nice!

all righty then, 2 pots to the case for the moment
they'll have to bunk together for a little while until the 2nd case gets done
the 'empty' pot is a jock horror - slowest sprouting seed I ever saw, over a week but see looked good in the end
the plant is a clone off my nl#5 mother which treated me so well
I revegged her for the clone, and she'll stick around until I'm sure the clone is OK
clone has been in the ground for a day - any comments on the clone very welcome