Minimum of cfl lumens

A question from a fellow grower:

Whats the minimum cfl lumens i can use during all three stages of growing. (Germination vegetation and budding?

There is a formula - figure 2,000 lumen for 1 square foot of coverage - size of grow space? (L x W =? then ? x’ 2,000 = # of lumens needed fro your space

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You can use watts for your formula as well. You need about 40-50 watts per square foot with CFL’s. And this needs to be actual watts, not equivalent watts, but the actual watts the CFL light actually uses.

Happy Growing,

MacG

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When looking at this from an electrical usage standpoint, this means you need about 50 watts of actual electricity used by the light per square foot, no matter what type of light you use. Except old fasioned incandescent lights, even at 50 watts they won’t provide what a plant needs to stay healthy, but CFLs with the color rating mentioned above will provide a healthy balance of the light a plant needs. And of course “special” horticultural LEDs, T5s, CFLs, and HIDs at 50 watts perPt square foot will also provide everything a plant needs to stay healthy. If you notice, you can use half, or significantly less, the watts for veg that you would use for flower.

When growing in a container, for the most part, you can’t expect the soil to provide enough nutrients for the plant for the entire life cycle. So you will wan’t to feed it with something for most of its life, but you don’t absolutely have to buy or use specialty name brand nutrients. But you do need to provide enough of the right nutrients to be able to get your plant to yeild its max potential.

Of course download and checkout the free e-book, it will help you get started no matter what you decide to get or how you decide to grow.

Hope this helps,

Writen by MacG

Posted by @garrigan62