Quality of weed grown with fluorescent lights?

is this just forveg or veg and flower?

id grow 2 plants and surround the lights around the plants hanging vertically

wattage btw???

Originally Posted by monkz

id grow 2 plants and surround the lights around the plants hanging vertically

wattage btw???

u got the best idea, wat type of tubes?? T-12?? if so those r NOT that strong. i use them fer cloning ONLY

The quality will be good, it's just that you wont get the quantity you would get if grown under hps with same wattage. I'd like to give t5 HO's a try myself. Come this summer I'm going to do an indoor with them as long as I have 2 growing outside to make up for the quantity. The last thing I want to do is run out of meds between harvests & end up paying street prices for dank. pfft

Your buds can be totally fine using CFLs. Its in how you grow, nutes, soil, temp, humidity, all this plays in effect. with CFLs the trick is to position the light the right way. I would say depending on your space, add two of those tubes on top and then two on either side in the "middle" of the trees as they grow. as you go on it doesn't hurt to keep buying more bulbs and salting them around aslong as heat can be maintained. Just make sure you can afford to buy replacement 2700 or 3000k bulbs for 80% of the fixtures. Using one or two blues during flower helps keep the buds more dense. try to get t-5's pr t-8's.

I recommend you hold-out for a T5 HO fixture. You'll get way better results. T12's are for clones. Don't be hasty buying all your stuff, patience = success.

so far on the veghie note my time so good results with ho fl. flowering is yet to be determined so far so good (i'm using 400 wat halogen

Originally Posted by zensnapple

Hey all, first time grower here, going out later today to get everything to set up my grow room. I'm planning on using 4 four foot fluorescent lamps for the lights, money's an issue.

Is it pretty much guaranteed that the weed will be shitty if I use those lights? All the resources I've seen say that it will be lower quality, but how much lower will it be?

Any help/advice would be appreciated!

-zensnapple

many people believe that the light spectrum from warm (2700K) floros will flower with better resin production. I think most will agree that cool or mixed spectrum floros are as good if not better than anything for veg.

the biggest difference in the use of floros vs HPS is that HPS does a far better job of penetrating the canopy, but with proper techniques you can keep the bulk of your bud sites at an even level and get very good performance from floros! The big advantage to floros is that you can place your plants as close as 3 or 4 inches from the bulbs, so for a lot of people who are working in a small space it is the only option. By proper techniques I mean scrog or lst, and when I say you can keep them 3-4 inches away from the bulbs, I'm saying that you should.

as for the tubes... it depends on what you are talking about here, and how much space you are trying to light. In my flower cab I use CFLs (the curled up floros that screw into a regular socket) and I am very pleased with my results. I currently run 6@ 42 watt CFLs in a 20"x14"x30" space and like I say I am very pleased. Last summer I only had 4 of the 42 watt bulbs and that worked well too. When summer heat comes back I may have to pull the extra 2 out due to heat. Keep in mind that when I say 42 watt I mean 42 and not a "42 watt equivalent". the equivolent rating on the 42's is 200 watt.

Typical "shop lights" (t-8's or t-12's) may or may not produce any smokable bud... I'm going with a maybe and most likely not anything to brag about. The 3 most popular flouro options are T-5 bulbs, PL-L bulbs, or CFLs. The first advantage of the t5's (tubes) and PL-L's (plug in sockets) are that they use an external ballast and you can put that outside of your grow to divert some of the heat... not a lot but some. The other advantage, and probably the biggest one when using them in a cabinet, is that because of their thin tubular design they don't take up much height and distribute light evenly.

Good Luck!

Jed