Hello gardners

well.. i would like to thank you for this website, everything is awesome and for a noob, if you are patient enough to read everything, you can have a perfect crop from the first try!

still.. i read all over the website and now i'm planning how to grow.

my questions : i saw a few movies and in one of them they say i need a ballast for mh lights. What exactly is a ballast and is it expensive ?

another thing.. i have been looking for bulbs to buy and i found some 150 W mh lights. should i buy three of them ? i am willing to grow 4 or 6 plants, i got 1 square meter or a bit more.. funny thing is the 150 W bulbs are really small i dont know if they are good for growing.. one is like 5 centimeters or so..

and one more for now :P considering i am new to growing, can anyone tell me what seeds should i use ? i want something with lots of thc but also a strong plant that is not very difficult to grow.

thank you very much in advance!

Hey smokiesmoke, welcome aboard!
I read your post twice looking for any mention of a budget and I didnt see any. You can spend as much as you want, its easy to waste money, but its also just as easy to be too cheap. To be successful you need to get a decent light, and yes you'll need a ballast and a hood too, unless you want to grow with cfl's. I believe cfl's would not produce a great product in the end. I would recommend you into something like this High Tech Garden Supply
Its only $119.00 and yes you can use this light from beginning to harvest.
While you are at that site, buying your light setup, order some foxfarm nutes, the 3-pack is only about $40.00, its very good.

As far as what strain to buy, ask 100 people and get 100 different answers!
Having said that, growing inside, I'd recommend a good indica, as they dont grow as tall as a sativa. Personally, I am currently growing mazar, a high times cannabis cup winner two years going, and if you take the time to grow it a little past the recommended flowering time, it changes from an "up" type high, into a very narcotic knock you back in your seat type high.
Lots of luck dude with your grow, keep us informed!

Tsk tsk tsk.

Here we go with the ingrained dogma, that nothing other than a HPS will be successful! Give him the options and let him make his own mind up - stop perpetuating this rediculous myth than the only light to use is a bloody HPS !

Hey babygro, I am not a believer that you cant grow under flourcents at all. My point was that it is not something for a beginner, as there is a learning curve involved. You obviously read into my post something I did not say! Tsk tsk tsk.


I know of several successful growers who swear by T-5's it has many benefits, lower operating expense, lower temps, I could go on and on.
One downside to T-5's is they do cost more to purchase, and this is a small grow, 4-6 plants, I stand by my recommendation for this grower.

So babygro, anyone that has followed your posts, can see you have knowledge of lights and costs involved. This is the second time I have seem someone that keeps gooe records say the T5's cost them more to operate. How do you respond to that?? I know you feel strongly about this and I believe that you are only trying to be helpful. You know how old people are, it takes us a while to catchup.

Sorry smokey didn't mean to jump your thread. I get that way when I visit the widow. To try and answer your question about the mh bulbs , you need to look at the base of the bulb. All the ones I looked at yesterday at Menards had mogul bases. They are bigger then standard bulbs. You will need a fixture that takes a mogul base. They department clerk thinks that is because they need a ballast to operate. They don't handle those seperately so you would have to buy a fixture that takes that base. The least expensive they had was an out side light for $30.00. You would have to take the fixture apart and modify it to go over 6 plants and you would need to of them. It would be less expensive and a lot less work to buy the 400watt light. I think I looked at that sight once and every thing you would need was included, not sure about the chains.
I think what babygro is saying is that it will cost more to operate.

How do I respond to that? How about you point out to me where someone in this thread has said CFL's cost more to operate? Watt for watt, 400w of CFL's will cost on average just under 50% less to operate than 400w of HPS or MH.

Now, what do you say to that?

PS, T5 tubes are NOT cfl's.

6oowatts are a little more efficient probly. firing the light on takes most power. from thereon out its about the same in the end. son for the performance might as well get 1000 or 600 switchable.

__________________
"All stupid people should be shot in the head. Thin the heard people its called nature" -adam corolla

http://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal...xperiment.html

I didn't read anything into your post over and above that you're just another in a very long line of people on here who automatically recommend HPS systems to newbie growers regardless of whether that's the best choice for them or not - and I'm 1) getting tired of seeing it and 2) on a mission to stop people from doing it.

There's no more steep learning curve in using CFL's or fluorescents than there is in using HPS systems. There's no substitute for understanding the lighting requirements of plants, and to simply automatically recommend HPS systems, because you're lazy and know they'll work, (although not particularly well in vegetative growth) rather than trying to educate people into the various options open to them is inexcusable.

I'm not saying fluoro's are the best and neither am I saying HPS's are the worst, I'm saying - tailor the lighting to someone's circumstance and requirements and don't automatically assume that HPS is either the best or will suit everyone's circumstances.

wow, things seem to be getting out of hand around here. The point I was making is that the T-5's cost alot more upfront to purchase.

As an example this T-5 light has a 4 lamp, 4 foot fixture, and it emits 20,000 lumens, you would need 2 of them to equal a 400hps light, which we already established a starting price of only $119.00
the price for the T-5 fixture is $149.00 x2=$298.00

For the $300 bucks you now have something close to the output of the hps, although the hps actually has 53,000 lumens, not 40,000

I was trying to tailor it to a budget.