It's a bit pricey, but quite efficient and does a great job during the flowering phase for most plants. Keep in mind that you'll need to buy at least of these to get enough light intensity to actually produce flowers and fruits on your plants. Can you flower with CFL? It's optimal to use 'daylight' k colored bulbs for the vegetative stage and 'soft white' k colored bulbs for flowering, but you can use any color CFL during either stage and your plant will grow well.
The color spectrum of the bulb is not nearly as important as the total wattage. Can a regular light bulb help plants grow? Regular incandescent bulbs get quite warm, and they aren't all that energy efficient.
They give off more red wavelength light than white. So can a regular light bulb help plants grow? Yes, you can grow a plant with them, but it's not the best idea. Is led better than CFL for growing? CFL systems are great for small spaces, small budgets, or for starting your plants. You can see all of our hydroponic grow light options here!
The actual wattage counts. If you have two larger plants that each take up 3 square feet of space, you would want watts per plant, or watts total. That would mean 24 of those watt bulbs from the example.
Note: once you have more than a plant or two, it makes more sense to get a T5 fixture or a cheap LED light. CFLs are great for a small grow, but once you get up to 10 or even 5, in my opinion bulbs, it just becomes too much work to keep readjusting the lights, due to the rapid plant growth.
Ideally you want to surround your plant s with CFL bulbs, so that they get light from every side. You can choose how your plant grows. Weed plants grow upward into a Christmas tree shape naturally, but that is not good for us.
This results in one large bud at the top and several smaller buds below. You want to force your plant to grow short and fat. That way they are more flat on top and can grow multiple large buds. You can get them to grow this way by bending and tying down various stems to get them to grow outward.
If you force the main stem to grow horizontally from the beginning, other stems will grow upward from it, creating a shorter and fatter plant naturally. If you have a short and fat plant, there is no need to hang bulbs below the canopy. Hang them all above, with some off to the side and a bit lower, so that they are next to the top of the plant.
Anywhere you see a shadow area, put a bulb there. If you do not have enough bulbs to fill all the shadows, that means you need more bulbs. CFL bulbs can generally hang fairly close to your plants, but this does depend on their wattage. A 20 to 30 watt bulb can hang within a few inches. Hold you hand where the plant is, with the back of your hand facing the bulb.
Keep it there for 30 seconds. If your hand gets too hot, then it will also be too hot for the plant. Back the bulb off a bit. If you have a plant that is growing tall, you may want to get some light on it from beneath as well, or at least from the sides.
This will depend on the plant, however. If you are growing cannabis, you will get a much better yield by not growing tall plants, so I highly recommend keeping them short and fat. In fact, I would encourage you not to buy special CFL grow bulbs. They are generally much more powerful, so you would only have one or two above the plant, ideally in a reflector. The problem is that fluorescent bulbs do not have great penetration. That is why you hang them so close to the pants. With fewer powerful bulbs, you have to hang them further away and are more likely to get shadows.
More bulbs that are less powerful allow you to hang them close and to completely bathe your plant in light. In addition, bulbs that are specifically labeled as grow lights are almost always overpriced. When the classic incandescent lamps invented by Thomas Edison are no longer efficient in modern days, the CFLs are created to replace them. The compact fluorescent lamps win over the incandescent bulbs with a longer lifespan, significantly less heat emitted, and more light outputs with the same watts.
They are the big bang for the buck. The days when your electricity bills are a burden for growing plants indoors are long gone.
Meanwhile, the T5 lights are not great for your spaces and are not portable like the CFLs. This makes CFLs the perfect choice. CFLs can be used alone for the whole growing phase for all kinds of plants. They can be used in combinations with other light types as well.
Most of the CFLs sold are not full spectrum. Mostly they are in two color types: warm and daylight colors. And instead of indicating the color of bulbs when lighted, people use Kelvin to measure the light color or also light temperature. Kelvin is abbreviated as K. Best for flowering, and blooming. Best for all phase of growing, especially vegetative stage. There is also a dual spectrum type, in which the manufacturers have customed to produce some yellow lights mixed with some blue ones.
Any experienced indoor growers know that you cannot get a one-color bulb type and uses it for the whole growing phase even though you can still use it and enjoy some fair results.
And regarding the CFLs, because of the way they are created, there are no specific CFLs that can fit all kinds of plants and their growing period. Say you can use the red light for whole growing phase, and your bud, flowering stage loves that, but you should know that the bud and the plant will not grow adequately without a strong root system, vigorous leaves, and stems to move moisture and nutrients throughout the plants.
Often the ratio of the different wavelengths will be different for various plants, growing phase, but as a general rule of thumb, you will want more blue light for the vegetative phase, and more yellow for the flowering stage. So better allocate an unequal ratio with for the specific phase. Say for the vegetative phase. Even though you can still get good results with just one type of spectrum, this is the recommended practice for maximum results.
Or if you cannot use duel spectrums for your setup, you can stick with the rule that the blue daylight bulb for vegetative growth, and switch to warm yellow bulb when plants reach their flowering phase. So you have two different options to go — use a big small CFL bulb or buy separate bulbs and build your own.
Of course, if you go the DIY way, and if you separate bulbs and set up them yourself, the cost will be lower. You can put the bulbs all around the plants, which will be definitely better than using one big bulb, which only gives light from one side. As said, you can place the CFL bulb as near your plants as possible. Unlike some hot types like the HPs and other high-intensity light like LEDs, you can place the CFL bulbs near your plants without afraid of burning them.
Check and adjust CFLs often. This is a perfect choice of a light bulb for people who are oriented toward something more heavy-duty from the CFL grow light arena.
As good as this is, defects also seem to be quite common so you should arm yourself with patience when buying it as you may need to make a few return calls to the manufacturer. Are you looking to buy the best CFL grow lights? Well, you are definitely not alone in this endeavor as CFLs are some of the most popular light types used in the last two decades. However, there are other hidden advantages to using them that not everyone knows about.
These fluorescent lamps emit cooler light that regular, incandescent light bulbs so they offer the great advantage of being incredibly used and quite favored by many gardeners who are particular about their indoor plants flourishing.
The problem here is that most CFLs found on the market today only display things like wattage, lumens, or Kelvins as a description for their light bulbs. However, they are not a very good measuring unit when we want to find out how effective the said unit is when it comes to helping plant growth.
PAR, on the other hand, or photosynthetic active radiation, is the actual range of the light, so it is quite important since you need it to understand how deep the light is going to penetrate and help even the smallest bulbs grow. However, we feel it is important to point out that a PPFD only tells us the actual number of photons that can approach plants and, as many home growers will tell you, light quality is as important as light quantity when it comes to growth, especially indoor one.
With that being said, this is the reason why we still need relative measuring units like lumens, wattages, and Kelvins, so we can make an educated guess. Furthermore, people also like choosing the best CFL grow lights due to other benefits like low cost, less heat used, the convenience they provide for a small setup, and so on. When it comes to pure gardening, a beginner should also know that there are two types of CFL grow lights that matter: soft white and daylight. The main difference between these two lays in their color temperature, something that is an extremely important characteristic of lighting when it comes to growing plants.
As any biologist will tell you, plants require different temperatures of light during the different periods of their natural growth so this is why you will have to provide it for them if you want to have healthy green friends.
A full spectrum CFL grow light is therefore not going to be enough most of the time since you have to properly make use of both options. This is the stage where your babies are putting out a lot of leaves and grow quickly anticipating their flowering phase. As a result, they need constant exposure to daylight in order to metaphorically finish their meals, as in complete the photosynthesis process. As a result, the daylight model is ideal for their needs while still saving quite a bit of power and money from your pocket due to its use of a high-pressure sodium or metal halide system during this beginning period.
The reason for this is that the warm light is able to provide a replica of the state of the sun when most plants are flowering, allowing them to spread their seed so that another generation starts bustling out their roots. They were designed to provide a more energy-efficient option for regular incandescent light bulbs. Unlike fluorescent tubes, CFLs also bring an integrated ballast to the table. Not only can you grow plants with these babies but you can even purchase a CFL grow light kit that should make everything easier for you.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs are a very good source of supplemental light when one needs to grow his or her plants in conditions that do not benefit from a lot of traditional, sun-given natural resource. As a result, CFL lights are quite adept at providing that extra light to increase their perception of day length and encourage blooming. However, keep in mind that these products are not a direct replica of actual sunlight since they produce far less light intensity.
This is a question that everybody seems to ask since CFL lights have emerged as the go-to trend for growing indoor plants.
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