Okay , so this is my first grow and I kind of started out a little ghetto maybe but I’ve been doing research and I’m determined to grow this beautiful beautiful plant to the best of my ability.
But of course I’m no expert😌
So I call to you my fellow growers!
I have been using this one 120v 60hz 250W heat lamp. Just for one plant (so far!)
I really feel like it’s thriving and doin pretty well. Although I’m not sure how this lamp will work once my plant gets bigger.
Right now it’s about 21 inches tall and still reaching for the light. Does anyone know anything about using these lights? Good or bad? Thanks for any help everyone!
Hmm here’s just a little more information the grow room is about 3ft x 3ft by 6 ft height
I do have a great air circulation going on. It usually stays about 75-78 degrees F with the light on, humidity hasbeen around 53%.
A heat lamp is not the right type of lamp to use for growing plants. If that is an LED, or CFL (reconfigured), then it might work for a plant in early veg. If this is a 300-500 watt floodlight style lamp, then you have the wrong type light.
Thank you for your reply Latewood. It isn’t a 500 W floodlight but I am looking to get another one as we speak. I appreciate all the help! I will definitely most likely have more questions.
What do you mean heat lamp? Could you be more specific about the light, exactly what type and what it is made of?
Normally I’d say a heat lamp is not good at all for cannabis. Heat is not needed, especially in excess. It might not have the right spectra of light for plants, however your plant looks pretty good, considering.
Also there might be much more efficient lights to use for the watts that are being used, most incandescent bulbs are not good at all for growing and are a horrible waste of electricity for the amount of “growing” power they can generate in a plant. A CFL, high power LEDs or of course metal halide (MH) or high pressure sodium (HPS) high intensity discharge (HID) lights are the best and most common lights used to grow cannabis.
Why did you choose this “heat” lamp instead of another light?
I can see you have the light in a reflector and the bulb itself is a “reflector” type bulb, which is probably part of the reason Latewood asked if it was an incandescent flood light.
Do you know what the filament in the light is?
Does the light give a color temperature rating? It looks like maybe 5500K, pretty pure white and not more red like a “warm white” house light that would be color rated around 2700K. Smaller K numbers usually mean redder light and higher number mean blue-er light. Traditional practice is to give cannabis more blue light during the vegetative growth period and then give it redder light during the bloom flowering period towards the end.
Again, heat, IR or otherwise is not very important to the plant, it isn’t very photosynthetic active, you don’t necessarily need or want a lot of it in your light. It can be used by the plant, or at least some frequencies of IR are slighty contributors to the photosynthetic process, but 2 specific frequencies of blue light and 2 of red are most important and most photsynthetically active.
You would do much better with a actual 250 watts driving a CFL or MH in that space. A 3x3ft space needs about 50 watts per square foot with HID, maybe slightly less with fluorescent, and then even slightly less with a good LED.
3x3=9sq. ft. 9x50=450 watts, this is how many watts you would need with a HID light for your space, ideally, and if you can control the heat build up in that area. You can make do with less light and growing a smaller plant in that area.
Hi, I’m new to forum and just purchased cash crop grow box, will lights provided, 3 60 watt for growing, work or do I need specialized lighting. I am brand spanking new so any help is help, encouraging words only
The cash crop comes with CFLs in it, I’m pretty sure.
They are supposed to have excellent support for how to use those boxes, all specifics about using them should be addressed to the guys at Dealzer.
We are still trying to figure out if the person above has a good light to use, but it seems to not be a very standard light, none of this is very relevant to your box, which I assume probably has a set of blue-er cfls as well as the redder CFLs. You probably have a set of 2700Ks and 6500Ks.
Okay I’m sorry I took so long to reply … This may be a little more help. I’m obviously new at this and lights is something I am trying to learn more about and I can see that I’m in the right place thank you so much for the help.
Product Type: Heat Lamp Bulb
Lumens: 1200 lumens
Bulb Shape Type: R40
Base Type: Medium Base (E26)
Average Rated Life: 5000 hr.
Commercial or Residential: Commercial and Residential
OK, so a 20 watt CFL, which is supposed to be the equivalent to a regular 75 watt incandescent light, has about 1200 lumens, so it sounds like you could potentially be wasting 230 watts for the amount of light your bulb is making.
Getting a 250 watt CFL , not “equivalent” watts, but the CFL actually uses 250 watts would give you a ton more light in that space than this heat lamp will.
You can even make an “array”, light holder/hanger, that incorporates numerous 20 watt lights, or maybe better yet, numerous 45 watt CFLs, again actual watts not equivalent watts, and hang them above your plant, 9 x 45 watt cfls hung above your plant and you could have an awesome yield.
In your space, if you made a 9 x 45 watt lights, you’d make 3 rows of 3, Kind of like tic tac toe grid, and place one light in each square foot of your 3x3 space.
Of course you are going to have to learn topping and training to make a plant look like the one in the photo.
Also, if you notice your plant is very tall and thin and stretched out, this is probably due to the light being too thin, or not strong/intense enough. Low light makes those leaves stretch way out on their petiole, or “leaf stem”, like yours are.
Notice in the picture all the leaves are mostly close to the plant, except the one on the lower right that is stretching out to try and get out from under all the above growth and get more light. Because your light is so weak, it is almost as if the plant thinks it needs to stretch to get more light.
I will definitely most likely have more questions.
