vtguitar88
Well-Known Member
Look, the most important consideration regarding light is the sheer quantity of it. If you have an insufficient amount of light, you'll experience inadequate growth, regardless of spectra. Also, no spectrum will be damaging to your plants. You will simply experience altered growth patterns.
In your case, your choice will depend on a few factors. How worried are you about your electric bill? How pressed are you for time? Do you care more about getting a harvest in a hurry, or slowly caring for a few plants for a long period?
It sound like with such a great number of CFL's (you said like 15 or something, right?) you are providing enough light to veg a few plants well. With this approach, you will notice slow vertical growth, but very dense, bushy growth. When you switch to flowering with the HPS, your ladies will reward you with a great many bud sites.
If you switch on the HPS, you WILL notice much faster growth. As in, probably an inch to two inches a day under optimal conditions. However, much of this remarkable growth will probably manifest itself in internode length, i.e. the length of the stem between leaf sets. However, since you still have the CFLs going, this will be alleviated somewhat, and you'll preserve some of that CFL bushiness.
So if you want the fastest growth, switch on the HPS, recognizing that you are spending money and resources to power that thing.
Otherwise, stick with the CFLs as a great number of these bulbs will produce a nice result for vegetative growth. That would be my advice.
