First grow help! Lighting: CFLs + sunlight?

Hey all.

I've been on these forums for about a week after deciding to plan a small, budget indoor CFL grow (will post it in the grow journal sections of course!) with maybe 2-3 plants, probably in a homemade cardboard grow box. Looking to get any beginners advice I can get.

Not going for max yield or anything as it is my first grow and I'd be happy to get any smokeable bud from it just using CFLs.

As for strain I'm looking at the smaller ones with shorter flowering periods as I am also pressed for time (seed to harvest maximum 10-11 wks) or one of the autoflowering strains. Anyone with any suggestions for a nice beginners strain with a shorter flowering period?

Not quite sure on how I'm going to do the lights. How many watts in total should I be looking at to grow 2-3 small plants (2.5ft max at harvest)?

I can get upto 85W globes where I'm at but would it be better to have more lower wattage bulbs?

Also, I get quite good direct sunlight here but it will be winter/spring during the grow with temps around 55-70 during the day. I've heard that sunlight is the best type of light by far.

Would leaving the plant out in the sun for about 8-9 hours a day and use CFLs for the rest of the time give better growth for the plant or would it just be too cold?

Does alternating between different types of light give the plant shock in any way?

I know its a lot of descriptions/questions but I wanna do this right and I'm pretty excited so any input would be great!

Cheers

I can't really speak on several of these topics.
I do know I have seen several occurrences of plants being moved from indoor light to sunlight constantly developing strange problems like bleached spots on the leaves and what not... it would appear the plants become accustomed to the type of light they are getting and can actually suffer from the indoor/outdoor schemes.
I'm going on about 40 separate cases I read while digging through these forums, but it seems best to pick indoor or out and keep it that way.

Any more input on this?? bump!

lowryder is a great strain... the plant remains short, and you can get this strain in an autoflowering strain. a bit pricey but worth the pennies you saved! as for light, of course plants react best under sunlight, for it is mary janes natural growing environment! with temps not staying between 65 - 75 degrees farenhite you will be stressing your plant if 1 day reaches temps any lower than 65! if using cfl's i would say for veg use 6500K Daylight cfl's, probably about 6 of them. for flowering use 2700K warm white cfl's, about 6 of them. when you set a plants environment and let it grow under that environment it gets accustomed to that environment, changing will/may cause stress. veg light schedule should be as follows: 18 hours on/6 hours off

flowering light scheduale is as follows: 12 hours on/12 hours off