I was jus woundering about how many cfls should I need to grow about 2 or 3 plants in the 1 to 3 foot range n let's say I wanna keep the cfls around a 23 to 27 watt range?
Holy crap! Six 42W CFLs is far too much for one plant. I have six plants growing under 8 42W CFLs. They were under a dozen, but the temps got too high (mid- to upper 90's) ... the plants couldn't get water from the roots to the leaves fast enough, and the leaves were curling.
Three plants = 4 or 5 42W CFLs, or 6 to 8 of the cheapy low wattage ones.
a common formula used here is 100 watts for the 1st square foot
50 watts for every additional square foot
it's a pretty good formula, not perfect
i grew out a NL to 29 inches tall with 3 26w cfl's, perfectly nice harvest