On the other hand if the light is too far away from the plant, the stem will suffer elongation (stretching), which will result in loose and fluffy bud’s. My First Grow and FarmingToronto’s) Some people combat this by adding CFL’s to the side of foliage instead of on top of it. If you place the light too close, then your plant will have nothing to vertically stretch to and it will remain short and stocky. In order to efficiently use CFL’s to grow your MJ you will need to position the lights around 2 – 4 inches from the foliage of the plant.
Notice here the difference between the CT of these lamp’s Do what you can to avoid bulbs within that 3500K – 4000K because they emit very little light that Is useful to your plant. The reason being, throughout the year the plant’s outside receive more 6500K light because the day’s in summer are long and hot and as Autumn/Winter get’s closer the day get’s shorter, and gradually receives less 6500K light and more 2700K light as the plant flower’s. For Vegetation you will want to use 6500K or 5000K, and when you flower you will want to switch to 2700K or 3000K. You can grow an entire crop with CFL’s if you chose the right spectrum of bulb’s.
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Bulbs ranging in the 2700K-3000K spectrum are usually labeled Warm White or Soft White, bulbs ranging in the 3500K – 4000K spectrum are bright white or cool white, 5000K is labeled Full Spectrum, and finally 6400K – 6500K is labeled Daylight. What confuses some people is that the warmer a color is, the colder its color temperature is. This is a measure of how warm or cool the light given off by a lamp appears, with warmer colors having a yellowish tinge and cooler colors being tinged with blue. These are all the color temperature of the light you are using. Label’s including Soft White, Warm White, Cool White, Bright White, Halogen White, Daylight White, Full Spectrum. You might see a lot of different labels when shopping at the store for CFL’s. You need to totally ignore the Incandescent Equal and pay attention only to the Actual Wattage of the Bulb. As you can see here on this CFL the Actual Wattage is 23 Watts, and it’s Incandescent Equal is 100 Watt’s. One is Actual Wattage and one is the Incandescent Equal. Normally light manufacturers that make CFL’s generally will put two numbers on the box your CFL comes in. Now sometimes there can be a lot of confusion when it comes to power of the light due to poor labeling but we will do our best to clear all of that up. I’m NOT saying CFL’s are better for growing than HID‘s, but in some cases it’s the only thing that will work. CFL’s are in general a much cheaper growing solution, and their just plain simple to use – self-ballasted and it screw’s into a regular light socket. However, CFL’s are sold almost anywhere (Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, etc….
For some, HID lights aren’t available in their area. Maybe you are growing personal smoke, or you can’t afford an HID system, or an HID system just isn’t practical. Even though the price of the CFL’s is higher than Incandescent bulb’s, they are generally rated to run anywhere from 8,000 to 15,000 hours.
The reason being, CFL’s will put out the same amount of visible light using much less power and a significantly longer rated life span. A Compact Fluorescent Light is a type of fluorescent that was originally designed to replace the standard E26 Edison Incandescent Lamp.