hi,

currently growing in a cupboard, have 3 plants 1 bubblicious (7inches) 2 grapefruit (3 inc)
using 125w blue envirolite cfl with a reflector, in soil with nutrients, all is good used a t5 flourecent to start veg then now using CFL. the leave turned slightly darker in the middle and looked undulating, is this normal!?
when i put the CFL in it was about 20 cm from tops so when i noticed almost imediatly raised to about a foot and a half, will post some pics soon, but can some one please tell me how close you should have these 125w CFL's i cant seem to find an answer anywhere!

also have a red for flowering, should i just used this for flowering or the blue aswel? if not when should i swap over the lighting? as they grow massivly when you turn back the lights! so would blue be better!?

thanks, peace

you want your light as close as possible to the top of the plant. otherwise it will stretch badly using cfl's. put your hand between the bulb and the plant. if its too hot for your hand its too hot for youe plant.

yea i got that from others but cant judge it thatwell, it gives off quite a bit of heat considering,
what are the first earliest signs of the light being too close?

any answer for the q about when to cahnge from a blue to red bulb? and if a red (2700) 125w cfl is adequate?

cheers

you want to keep the blue cfl bulb throughout the veg cycle and replace it with the red bulb when you switch to the flowering stage. get the bulb as close as you can to the top of the plant and put your hand between between them. if you can hold it there for 60 seconds without getting burned then it is not too hot for your plant. the one blue 125w cfl will be fine for the vegitative stage (provided thats the actual wattage and not the incandescent equivilent wattage) but you may want to get a few more bulbs around the plant for the flowering cycle. you really need to surround the plant with cfl light because the cfls don't penetrate light more than 3-4" into the canopy so without more bulbs the lower buds will take forever to mature. good luck. any more questions feel free to ask away.

thanks unforgiven,

ok well i have a small T5 running horizontally lower down the plants, would it literally be ok if i removed the blue bulb completely for flowering, and just used the red and the t5? will there still be enought blue light emitted from the rec (2700) buld to maintain the fan leaves?

also when should i change the bulbs? should i enduce flowering with the blue and then switch to red as there is a shite load of growth at the start of flowering....so would it be better to stay with blue for a while into flowering?

thanks

personally i would use both for flowering all the way through unless you plan on adding more red spectrum bulbs. the blue won't hurt it at all and you're absolutely right that it may help out a bit during the stretch period. they say to mix flourescents in a 3-1 ratio of red watts to blue watts in flowering. the plant still uses all spectrums of light but more of the red spectrum is needed during flower. how big is your grow space? to get a good yield with cfl's you want to have about 100 actual watts per square foot of grow space, and as i said, more red spectrum than blue during flowering. lets see those pics!

cool cool, here are the photos.

i think they look quite healthy even thought the light is about 1.5 feet away.

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they do look healthy but if you look at the bigger one you can see what i mean about the stretching. those nodes should be no more than an inch apart from each other. the more the plant stretches like that now the smaller your buds are going to be once you flower. you've got to get that light alot closer. you want those nodes as close together as possible. and the 2 in one pot is a really bad idea but you probably already know that.

ok im jujst worried about the leaves as when the light was 20-30 cm away the middles of the leaves turned a darker waxy colour so raised them, will lower and leave for a day or two and see how it goes,

i know its a poor choice but you know, needed to conserve space and didnt have 2 medium pots! will just tie down so the grow away if they start competeing for light!

take a read through this thread here when you get a chance. Cfl Proximity To Foliage