How to grow closer thand one inch from light

I've been playing with different lights the past few months, and found that while floros are good for veg, they don't have enough "throw" for plants of any size in flower.

I've found my T5's are good for vegging a plant up to 20" and then the plant suffers. I've also played with T8's, and even over-amped them and found they are nowhere near a T5.

I have a combination of 400W MH and 600W of HPS moving across my grow on a light-mover and am very happy with the results. While my cheap light meter would go into the green with the T5 a foot away, the HPS/MH combination pegs my light meter all the way to the floor.

They make fluros up to 1000 watts... So power really isn't an issue... But the obvious answer why you can't have your plants a fraction of an inch away from your light (of any type)... Is that plants grow all the time, so they will grow into the light... Unless maybe you had a computer monitored pully system, that would constantly move the light fractionally.

legallyflying said:

I don't know what kind of bulbs your growing with but if I get closer than 12" with a 600hps it bleaches the leaves

Here is another useful point. LIGHT DEGRADES THC.

So blast away, but at the end your going to have tasteless, odorless buds that don't get you that high.

Click to expand...

Yep, it is a few more inches under my 600 watt hps, maybe 15".

that reminds me, I need to get in there and raise the light in 5 minutes.

Scarhole is on the right track

1. Lumen, lux, foot-candles, whatever... doesn't matter. Period. They describe light intensity visible to the human eye.

2. PAR Light is everything.

500-1200 umol is about it. anything over 1200 and you good Chlorosis, or "bleaching."

3. If you REALLY want to get specific it's YPF that really matters.

wpsf, lumens, watts... doesn't mean shit if its shit spectrum.. like cfls.

4. Your are wasting the ability of each light source by trying to get it <12", after a certain point you're losing intensity on the furthest parts of your coverage... not worth the trade off.

Reconsider brother, and good luck

Are you kidding me! too much light from one 1000W? they show a little light green-yellow-white on the new growth. But I can get them to 12" away because I have a cool tube. I keep my temps in that spot below 90. If I just moved them out of the closet into the bedroom right now at 10 days flower would I yield more?

PS sorry for the highjack.