RedBeard
Newly Registered
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:48 am
Location: Texas

Lighting question.

Right now I have a green tea plant in my room (probably a year or so old). It is in a pot and not really in a hydroponic set up, but I put a CFL light on it and my question is are all CFL lights the same or are there special ones for plants? Because right now I am just using a 13 watt CFL I bought from Target for 3 bucks. Haha.

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Halfway
Green Thumb
Posts: 600
Joined: Sun Nov 08, 2009 9:48 am
Location: Northern Rockies

Redbeard, certain bulbs are far better than others.

For vegetative growth you need to get as close to 6500k as possible. 5000k will work as well. Requirements for "flowering" stages of plants are generally bulbs in the red range of 2500-3000k.

Many bulbs do not show the "k" rating, so you may have to do a bit of "sleuthing".

Best of success!

bren.t
Full Member
Posts: 16
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:17 pm
Location: Houston

I've found that daylight spectrum cfl's are pretty good for vegetative growth. Haven't tried them for flowering. You may want to get another light, but it all depends. I'd watch for stretching on the plant and get more light if needed.

vorkus
Newly Registered
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:37 pm

As mentioned the 6.5K or 5K bulbs are best for vegetative growth. You want to be at the other end towards 2K for flowering. I'm not familiar with tea tree but unless it is a understory plant you are going to need a lot more light. You might want to look into a 200w or 250w CFL (made by Feliz) or tube lights like T8 or high output T5s. I'd shoot for at least 10000 lumens and see what happens.



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