Will this shock my plants and a few other Q's

ajs85

Member
Hey all,
Perhaps you read my first post on my plants I over-nuted and had to flush.. they are doing well and should be flowering soon, i decided to keep them outdoors where I moved them from the pots instead of doing a flush.

Anyways, I have some new ones beginning to sprout (the first leaves have just opened up) and next saturday (six days from now) my friend is taking me to a nice store he knows to get some lights. I am going with either T5's or CFL's - which would anybody recommend for a first time grower? they are the only lights ill be using through the entire grow, I dont have too much money to spend since this is my first time and all.

Most important question: will going from less than 12 hours of daylight to 24 hours of lights from my new lights (all the tutorials say 24 hours light, 0 dark while vegging) shock my plants? Should I follow a different lighting schedule since I sprouted them outdoors in the sun?

Also, in the case of either CFL's or T5's (because I think different wattages are required) what wattage bulbs should I get for a small operation (10 plants max probably; five this go-round).

Any other tips for a newbie would be appreciated. Thanks all!!
 
I would prefere CFL over the T5. CFL will give more intense lighting, T5 are milder and very well suited for seedling and propagating but you want the more intense light as the plant matures, I just keep the CFL further away when they are young and when the second leaf set has developed I drop the CFL's to an inch above plant.

Switching to 24/0 straight away might be bad, but Im not sure on this. I would advise to increase in increments until you get to 24/0 maybe like 12/12 then 13/11, 14/10 and so on to reduce stress. Like I said not sue on this so please get it confirmed elsewhere first.

There is a science to working out watts of cfl to square ft, but I dont remember it, if you look into CFL in the faq's you may find a more scientific explination, but for that many plants I would use 2 200w 6500k CFL's for Vegging, using two gives you better coverage than 1 big one. And for flowering 3 maybe 4 200w 2500k CFL's

Best of luck
 
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