Alright so I know you've seen the threads with this title HPS vs CFL. Most will claim HPS is superior for flowering, while a small minority defend the CFLs. I thought I'd share my thoughts and the comparison I made between the two types of lighting, and which is best for flowering. I found that HPS really is better than CFL for flower, b/c you yield much nicer, denser buds. The calyxes stack more compact and the plant doesn't stretch as much. The buds actually seemed to mature faster under HPS and just form better shape, whereas CFL yielded more prickley buds.

This isn't a thread asking for advice or graphs with explanation about lumens trying to educate myself or anyone on which type of lighting to go with. Just plain results from my experience. After playing with both types of light, I started using CFLs for veg only and HPS for flower. This is just the most efficient way I can grow and get the results I need.

So here's the deal, I grew two plants - 1 under CFLs, 1 under HPS

I didn't use the same camera for each plant, so the HPS pics are a little better.

Both plants were plucked a bit early with mostly cloudy-amber trichs.


First we'll start with the HPS results:


These nugs turned out pretty dense for indoor. You squeeze them and they really don't give.



Close up of a nug that flowered under HPS.



The calyxes stacked much nicer with the HPS, there is much more density to the nugs grown under HPS.




Next we have the CFL harvest:


You can tell by looking that the buds are more fluffy/leafy, and they actually ended up a lot more light weight.



They look like massive nugs, but once dry they weigh nothing. They seem to dry much quicker than HPS buds also.



You can tell this popcorn bud was early, but with CFLs they just didn't finish as evenly and it's obvious the density isn't there. Even my tiny popcorn HPS pieces weren't this fluffy.



So there...that's it. I'm all for CFLs for getting things started or supplemental lights, but HPS is the way to go with flowering if you have the ability to use one in your set up.

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D.I.whY? Because I CAN!

I'm not sure if it's noticable by those pics, but the buds from HPS yielded more bud matter while the CFL bud yielded more leaf:bud with a lot of smaller calyxes that didn't fatten up.

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D.I.whY? Because I CAN!

What is the Wattage used?

lol

Duh sorry about that.

The HPS was 600w.

CFLs were 4x 42w orange warm spectrum. 4x 36w blue cool spectrum. 2x 28w Full spectrum grow bulbs.

I know the total wattage is not the same, but the 600w was lighting a much bigger area and this was just one of the plants in that area. The 600w will be sufficient for 9 2.5-3.5 ft plants with out any problems. The CFL setup was an arrangement of bulbs that illuminated 1 entire plant. Just 1, so to penetrate 9 plants you'd need much more than 368w of CFLs. I'm not sure exactly how much more wattage you'd need to burn, but running the separate lights to penetrate the different parts of the plant would be much more inneficient with CFL.

Keep in mind I'm working with appx 4ft x 4ft space, so 9 plants is about the maximum load for my flower room. CFLs may be useful for smaller areas but for this size, i think HPS is the way to go.

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D.I.whY? Because I CAN!

Yea you already know I'm high as hell.

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D.I.whY? Because I CAN!

nice buds man what was your strain

These were Lemon Skunk.

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D.I.whY? Because I CAN!

um yea you so didnt even use the same amount of lumens for both CFL and HPS, thus you got shittier CFL buds, lol i can understand you being confused im sure your high as hell but try doing the same thing and have equal lumens from both lights, that would be alot better comparison, some of the buds ive grown with cfls are so compact they are like rocks, anyways its a good idea, but you should use the same amount of light from both HPS and CFL next time.

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Disclaimer: This journal is strictly fictional, nothing posted on here is real or has anything to do with actually growing marijuana.

You have a point slinger, but there are also more factors that go into your bud density (e.g. nutes, environment, etc). As I stated in the first post, this isn't me trying to educate you or give you a lumens chart, just my experience from one type of lighting vs the other.

Now that you bring up lumens, let me point something out. Lumens don't add...

Check out this (I'm quoting Al B. Fuct):
"To illustrate the point, I took my lux meter and measured the luminous output from within 50mm from the tube of one and then from within 50mm from the tubes of two identical CFLs.



Meter indicates 66,300 lux. Reading was wandering +/- 100 lux.



Meter indicates 66,400lux. Same amount of wandering in the reading, essentially the same reading and wandering as with one CFL. The meter is measuring the peak light intensity- not the number of photons. If I could get more CFLs within 50mm of the sensor, you'd still see exactly the same reading on the lux meter- or whatever the reading was from the brightest of the CFLs.

I still get CFL evangelists arguing the point with me... but while they're waging the losing battle, I'm pulling poundage out from under my HPS lighting.

It's this simple- if you wanna grow some dope, buy the right stuff- once... instead of going through the same learning curve everyone else has encountered many times before you."


It wouldn't matter how many CFLs I try to stack on my plant, the lumens simply don't add up that way. With that said, I don't even remember the exact lumens for each CFL bulb, but with CFLs I have a much broader color spectrum using Warm (orange, cool (blue), and full spectrum bulbs simultaneously. So what I'm saying is that I had more than enough coverage on the one plant under CFLs, adding more wouldn't have helped any.

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D.I.whY? Because I CAN!