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Old 06-11-2014, 08:21 PM
GpsFrontier GpsFrontier is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Lake Havasu AZ.
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Hello Bigdaddy216,
I don't think you will have much luck with only those two cfl bulbs.

First, peppers aren't small plants like lettuce.

Second, When figuring florescent lighting, you want to go by the "actual" wattage, not what they say the equivalent wattage is. You have two bulbs 65 and 85 watts, for a total of 150 watts to grow two large plants.

Third, Unlike HID lights, florescent lighting doesn't travel far. The effective lumen count for florescent lights drops significantly beyond one foot from the bulb. So the lower leaves won't get enough light to photosynthesize much (like twilight hours all day).

Fourth, Peppers are a fruiting plant, and fruiting plants need plenty of good light to conduct photosynthesis in order to support all the growing fruit, as well as all the growing foliage. While plants like lettuce grow nice under florescent, they are short plants, and non fruiting plants as well.

Not that you cant grow fruiting plants with florescent lighting, but you need plenty of it, and it needs to surround the plants for even coverage to do much good. Other wise you wind up with small underdeveloped fruit. In the long run it will probably cost the same, or even more to grow them successfully with florescence's, than with than HID. I don't know the area you have to work with, but that's one reason why I try and grow everything outside in natural sunlight (lighting equipment costs).
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