Quality of weed grown with fluorescent lights?

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

is this just forveg or veg and flower?

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

wattage btw???

monkz said:

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

wattage btw???

Click to expand...

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

zensnapple said:

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

Click to expand...

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

Well said Jed.

from what ive read bud grown under fluros is still good shit if it has good genetics, the buds just dont get as big and they tend to not be as dense as buds grown with HID lights.

I would think that floros would be best for micro growing 1 plant using the scrog method. 1.5 to 2 square foot screen using 2ft T5 HO's 6to8 bulb fixture you probably will pull off close to 3zs or even a qp. I say this because I have one of those 250watt cfl's & I was using it as secondary light with my hps on my first grow & the branch that was growing towards that 2700k cfl was just as dense/frosty as the buds on top of the canopy getting light from the hps. I'm sold that you can grow good herb with floros but only if the bulb was close to your plant. The right floros with the scrogging method will produce quality herb. Most definitely

I'm not down with the whole "lack of bud density" thing either. I'm running Apollo 11 which is a mostly sativa hybrid and my buds seem as dense as anything I have ever smoked. Resin is crazy too. Key is getting the buds up next to the light so that the light can penetrate deeper into the plant.

Don't think I'm hatin' on the hps though. In a big grow it is the only way, but for a confined space and a small, manageable grow the flouros work wonderfully FME.

Jed

CFL simply stands for Compact Fluorescent lighting and we've all seen that CFLs can grow the good. Using HID now but when I used to grow with CFLs and fluorescent they always produced very nice buds, just not as dense as an HID but still nothing to complain about.

monkz said:

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

wattage btw???

Click to expand...

Along those lines, just wondering, and any input would be appreciated, but I'm on my first grow, and what I've started out with is 4 - 4 foot T5's which are 54 watts and 5000 lumens each for a total of 20,000 lumens and 216 watts total. I do have the two different spectrums for veg and flowering. Right now, I've got two plants that are about 3 inches tall, with one of the lights horizontal at the moment about 3 inches from the top of the plants, and they seem to be doing fine.

What I plan to do, once the plants gets taller, is hang the 4 T5's vertically, like a teepee, so the lights are close to the plant and the plant will be basically bathed in the light, over the whole plant, as opposed to a single bright light at the top.

Does anyone thing I'll get a decent yield by doing this?

SmokeMore said:

Along those lines, just wondering, and any input would be appreciated, but I'm on my first grow, and what I've started out with is 4 - 4 foot T5's which are 54 watts and 5000 lumens each for a total of 20,000 lumens and 216 watts total. I do have the two different spectrums for veg and flowering. Right now, I've got two plants that are about 3 inches tall, with one of the lights horizontal at the moment about 3 inches from the top of the plants, and they seem to be doing fine.

What I plan to do, once the plants gets taller, is hang the 4 T5's vertically, like a teepee, so the lights are close to the plant and the plant will be basically bathed in the light, over the whole plant, as opposed to a single bright light at the top.

Does anyone thing I'll get a decent yield by doing this?

Click to expand...

That can work... I don't know about the tepee thing but vertical works for sure. I saw a thread on another forum where a guy ran 6 55w Pl-L lamps (basically a T-5 bent in half with a clip on conector instead of the pins) on the inside of a 32 galon garbage can and after about a month of veg he ended up pulling out a massive spherical plant that dried at about 6 zips. If you do vertical it would be best to contain the light IMO. You could probably scratch the teepee thing and just use a box or tent with a reflector at the top. Another thing the garbage can guy did was use the clear plastic floro covers over the bulbs so that the plants could touch them without risk of burning. I think he also channled some airflow through the tubes though he only used a single fan so it was passive. He called it the "the high pod" and I think that thread will come up if you google.

The PL-L's are 22 inches long so for 4 55w t-5's, I would think it would be best to keep the interior space about 12-18" so you get decent penetration. That would probably rock the stretchy sativas!

I was impressed for sure, and I am considering trying some vertical tubes in my grow.

Jed

Thanks Jed!

I really appreciate the reply, that makes me feel alot better!

I should have been more clear and explained a little more, I actually have a grow tent that's 4' x 4' x 6.5' tall and I plan to hang the lights vertically in the shape of a teepee, with the 4 lights basically starting at a single point at the top and then hanging down vertically, at an angle, close to the plant down the whole length of the plant, on 4 sides of the plant.

I have a plastic shelf in there to hold the exhaust fan and other stuff, plus the plants are raised up about a foot or so, so I can deal with any runoff from watering, so the actual "grow" area is maybe 2' x 3' by 4.5' total. I'm growing Indicas so I'm hoping for a Christmas Tree shape on the plants.

I went with the 4 ft. T5's trying to strike a balance between total lumens and electricity cost, which cost is not really the issue, but I live in a trailer park and pay the electric at the office, and if it went up too much, even if they didn't suspect anything, they'd at least comment about it.

Hopefully I'll get through the veg stage, the flowering stage, and then at least get something to smoke while I'm waiting on the next grow, which should be improved due to learning.

Thanks again!

Im sure somebody has mentioned this already, Im just lazy and dont feel like reading...lol....

Lighting in no way effects the potency or quality of the green...It effect quantity.....White widow grown with floros or an hps (as long as its grown the same way by soil or hydro) will taste the same and produce the same high....The difference is with an hid you will probably double your yeild.....

some others have mentioned using fluoro's vertically, i haven't tried this yet but i have good reason to think it works well
this is from another grower forum, these were t8 bulbs - i was impressed - looks like top quality results

The picture above looks really nice...

I want to start a grow with 40 pcs 35W T5 HE tubes.. all in 16 ft².

The purpose of that is quality, stay low with the box and have 100.000 lumens/m² wich I understand is equal to sun.

What do you think?