Dearest Professor Lee,
This will be my first grow and I decided to start small (I made a seed joke lol) and make my mistakes now so that I can annotate these mistakes for later. Well mistake one is my budget. I am using sunlight for the initial plant phase (after the seed germinates), and regular ‘ole nutrient enriched soil. Now my problem is this: The sunlight is great but pretty soon I will need some lamps and I don’t want my electric bill to go up too much, nor do I want to spend too much money on a light setup (it’s a recession after all). What kind of lamp and bulb would you suggest for a gentleman in my predicament?
Frugal
P.S. I have lots of questions! What kind of question would warrant me one of your legendary books?
Dear Frugal
Sounds like you’re starting off your growing career the same way I did. If you’re talking dirt poor, pun intended, some simple fluorescents are still the cheapest grow lights to buy. You can use them to extend the sunlight hours of your garden or light a very modest closet garden. The great thing about them, besides being inexpensive, is that they can conform to odd places like under stairs and along vertical walls. They also come in a lot of different shapes and sizes such as tubes, U-shapes, circles, and bulbs. Of course the downside is that their light is very weak and won’t penetrate very far into the foliage. To compensate for this use as much reflection as possible, and/or extra lights along the sides and ends of the garden space to bolster the lumens.
If you only want to extend the length of your daylight garden try a couple of compact fluorescents bulbs. You can mount them in some simple cone shaped reflectors with clamp-on bases. These are available at do it yourself stores for just a little scratch. These lights will not foster any noticeable growth but will simply prevent the plant’s instinct to flower.
If a dedicated electric light garden is more your aim, and you can scrape together a modest budget, you can pick up a mid-range HID lamp for less than an arm and a leg. While it is true that these lamps have a larger start up price, and generate more heat, they make up for it by penetrating deeper into the foliage which generates larger buds. You could always copy what I did and start with a simple fluorescent system and later add an HID. I used the fluorescents to raise seedlings and clones and later added the HID to finish the plants. For the “frugal” grower only trying to support their personal needs a 400-watt high pressure sodium, HPS, is the best investment. A garden built around this size lamp will use about as much electricity as a computer and produce pleasing amounts of buddage.
Growers who get busted for their electrical choices were either using way too much electricity or stole it from the grid. But, these are extreme examples. For your modest system running 300 to 600 watts won’t attract unwanted attention. It would be like leaving a computer on while you’re at work. To calculate your average daily cost you will need two important numbers. First, add up all the wattages of lamps, fans, etc and secondly look at your electric bill to find out how much you’re paying per kilowatt.
While we use this formula to calculate your potential electrical expense I’m gonna imagine you live in New Zealand. I’ve always wanted to go there.
Formula: TOTAL GARDEN WATTAGE x HOURS USED/1000 x PRICE OF ONE KILOWATT = COST OF ELECTRICITY
In other words if you use 500 watts of equipment 24 hours a day you are consuming 12,000 watts a day. Divide this number by 1000 for a total of 12 kilowatts. Lastly, multiply this by the price your electric company charges you per Kw, say 10 cents. In this scenario your garden is costing you about NZ$1.20 a day to run. Doesn’t sound like much, huh? Let’s break the expenses down to what really matters. Let’s say it takes you 90 days to grow some plants from start to finish. That’s NZ$108.00 dollars. Now, just for fun imagine that you harvested 4 dried and cured ounces. Each ounce only cost you NZ$27.00 to grow. That’s a hell of a deal!
As you keep growing you’re bound to come up with lots of great questions so keep ‘em coming and maybe send some high resolution pictures (preferably about 300dpi). You never know what’s going to set off my free book button!
Good Luck,
Professor Lee
