Let's raise awareness about screw-in led bulbs! Budget friendly growlight

I used the LED flood style grow light bulbs and regular round shape LED grow bulbs from Walmart with diffusers on, all blurple in color plus 2 blue bulbs (not sure if blues did anything) I think I had18 bulbs total in a 3’x18”x4’ tall box and they did pretty good on 4 vegging. Ended with 2 cuz 2 maled finished flowering them with 2 vipar Spectra v450’s in same box. Got 2 ounces from a train wreck clone the size and shape of a baseball mit(great smoke!!) and other one was a herm but about half was better than Mexican dirt weed :-/. I posted on it a while back. Was going to use them to put between and along side other lights as a gap filler or booster. Ain’t nuttin wrong with using them shits, they’re cheap and there’s a big ass box of them at most stores right by ur house

Cannaprentice said:

Also I would argue that leds have a better light penetration so you don't need to get them all close and personnal to light up lower growth.

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Yeah all the light is focused in one direction.

There are a few other guys on here who haven't popped in doing the same thing, one of them is lighting up a whole 5x5 tent.
Over the pond they seem to get way better prices on the bulbs though.

Oh and if you keep clones in a small pot and low light you can keep them a very long time.
There's a guy who keeps his mother plants like 10" tall in tiny pots, he treats them like bonsai's.

I'd be surprised if hw store bulbs actually cheaper than say Bridgelux strips and a MW driver for the same PPF. When you consider electricity over 4-5 years, there is no way they are as cheap. The chips are probably 2-3 generations behind and the drivers are as simple as possible. Strips are a quarter inch thick, mine are screwed right into the wood at the top of my cabinet. Can't beat that in a tight space.

coreywebster said:

There are a few other guys on here who haven't popped in doing the same thing, one of them is lighting up a whole 5x5 tent.
Over the pond they seem to get way better prices on the bulbs though.
Oh and if you keep clones in a small pot and low light you can keep them a very long time.
There's a guy who keeps his mother plants like 10" tall in tiny pots, he treats them like bonsai's.

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I got them for less than 5$ a pop so it's still relatively cheap. But the price goes up with the wattage and I got 13watts, not the usual 8watts bulbs so maybe that's why
And very interesting stuff about the clones and even mother plant?!
That would be absolutely amazing to be able to keep a small bonzai like collection of motherplants! Gosh the possibilities!
If you got any link or informations I would absolutely love to take a look!
How much wattage are we looking at to avoid growth?

Observe & Report said:

I'd be surprised if hw store bulbs actually cheaper than say Bridgelux strips and a MW driver for the same PPF. When you consider electricity over 4-5 years, there is no way they are as cheap. The chips are probably 2-3 generations behind and the drivers are as simple as possible. Strips are a quarter inch thick, mine are screwed right into the wood at the top of my cabinet. Can't beat that in a tight space.

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I'll look into them for my next light build that's for sure! They look really promising, I didn't hear about this.

but if somebody can't order online for some reason or prefer not to have to pay shipping, they can stop by their nearest hardware store and pickup something that will grow quality weed and that's the point I was trying to make

Cannaprentice said:

they can stop by their nearest hardware store and pickup something that will grow quality weed and that's the point I was trying to make

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I still use an 8 tube bank of T-12s I built 18 years ago for small plants. Used a piece of 5/8" plywood with the ballasts on the back and the sockets mounted closer together than they are in the fixtures. Can use 2,4,6, or all 8 depending but once I'm going to 8 then might as well use a 400W MH and get much better growth. 8 tubes use 320W so for two tubes worth more I got juice!

Getting hard to find decent tubes for it tho. Wife used it to start her tomatoes this spring and it worked great.

Cannaprentice said:

And very interesting stuff about the clones and even mother plant?!
That would be absolutely amazing to be able to keep a small bonzai like collection of motherplants! Gosh the possibilities!
If you got any link or informations I would absolutely love to take a look!
How much wattage are we looking at to avoid growth?

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https://chuckersparadise.com/threads/bonsai-mothers-and-root-pruning.491/

When I used to use cfl to clone I could keep a tray under 20w in tiny pots for a month or two.