i could only afford one light. what problems do i face?

i could only afford one light. so i got a HPS light. what problems am i going to have with this. its my first INDOOR grow

If you veg your plants under HPS they will grow upwards very quickly, while staying fairly thin. This is because HPS put out lots of the warm red end of the spectrum that plants use when flowering, but very little of the cooler, blue light that they need for bushy vegetative growth. I would definately recommend getting a MH conversion bulb for starting out, then save up and get either some flouro or a MH lamp so you can run veg and bloom at the same time, get a harvest as often as you can take cuttings.
Dependant on the wattage, size of your growroom ambient temps and amount of ventilation you may run into heat issues, HID lights are well known for getting very hot in small spaces, if not well ventilated.
Give us some more info on your setup and check out the growfaq https://www.rollitup.org/view.php?pg=faq

too much weed?

thats why i picked the HPS lights. keeping the temp up is a issue.
if i put the lights closer or buy a diffrent bulb will this help my plants not to be stringy

i got a 6x6x8 room thats well ventalated. two fans. no foil or anything. i found better materials than foil, but not as expesive as mylar. and 2 250w HPS lights. well two bulbs and sockets anyway.

you didnt state what is the wattage of your HPS lamp/ballast?? 150, 250,400,600,1000,10000000. It is helpful to know what the wattage of the lamp is to recommend proper distance from your plants. As far as one of my books states, 400w 12-24in, 600w 18-24, 1000w no closer than 24in. This is for when plants are out of the seedling state and on to veg/flower.

In general you want to get your light as close as possible without burning the plant.

go to www.powerkingshop.com -- they have both HPS and MH bulbs for pretty much any wattage and the bulbs cost 18 dollars. Cheap as hell, and i think thats even canadian dollars too. The bulbs are great man, no lie, they really do work well for the money you spent on them. How many watts is your light setup?? the 400, 600, n 1000 mh bulbs really do burn bright man, your not gonna miss any lumens lost, and if you do, itll be because of your ballast, not the bulb. Quality bulbs for generic prices dude. These guys are like the Wal-Mart of hydroponics. They dont have a whole hydroponics shop or anything, but they carry lighting. I got my 600w MH/HPS digital setup for only 180 bucks, including ballast, reflector and bulbs. Worth lookin into...

-N to be honest, even if your using a HPS light during the entire grow, people do it all the time, n their plants look like fuckin beasts at the end of the grow. Just make sure a fan stays on the bottoms of the plants so the stems can turn into nice huge tree trunks, and youll be straight come flowering time. It wont affect your yield at all man, i read growbooks all the time, and its said REALLY frequently that all you really need is a HPS light for the entire grow. It doesnt effect yield whatsoever really, because once flowering the HPS does have sufficient blue spectrum to promote growth in everything, so theres really nothing to fuss about when it comes down to it. You made the right choice though, picking the HPS since you only could get one bulb. If you would have went with a MH, your veg would have been nice n strong, but you would have ended up with light, airy buds that dont weigh anything at all. So good job on that shit man, n dont worry about the other stuff. You got the main problem out of the way, the lighting.


Do you have a way to cool the lighting if your growing in an eclosed space??

im using a 400w hps, i had it over my plants as seedlings, and they have shot up and have a very thick stem on them, they've done very well, and the temps only get up to maybe 90 degrees on a bad day.

i got a 2 250w right now

thats two 250w lights. but im not sure if one ballast is enough for them

and keeping it warm is why i got those lights in the first place. the room wants to chill at 58-60 degs. the sun almost never hits my house

According to Ed Rosenthal, many test grows have been done comparing HPS vs MH grows and the HPS always wins out. I don't know about you guys, but Ed is the ganja guru and a horticulturist. I'll take his word on it.

yeah theres no debate as to wether or not HPS is more beneficial to a plants growth during flowering, but while a HPS will work great during veg too, having a MH bulb to use just for flowering should make the plants turn out stronger and grow more vigourously. I aint arguing with a pro in any way shape or form, but its proven that the blue spectrum is what makes the plants grow out n explode during veg, and HPS works because theres a sufficient amount of blue in its spectrum. But using almost ALL blue there would defnitely be a difference. I would love to see somebody do a side by side run of just vegetative growth, one run done with MH n one done with HPS. i wouldnt ask for anybody to ruin a potentially HUGE grow and flower with the MH, but seeing the veg stage would be great, to definitively answer all the speculation and hype about which is better...

I'm curious as to why u bought 2 lamps and sockets. But any ways to answer your question no, u would 2 ballast.