Hey everyone, hope you're doing well. We are back with the Epic Gardening Podcast. This is Kevin and today we're talking about CFL grow lights or compact, fluorescent grow lights.

So when I first started growing plants indoors and especially in hydroponic systems I really had no clue what I was doing.

In fact, I think the first thing I ever grew hydroponically was cucumbers.

I did grow those outdoors though, but I really just didn't not

understand gardening. I did not understand hydroponics and even when I moved

indoors I made so many different errors with my indoor growlite choices that it really was

sort of comical looking back at it.

But now I'm slightly wiser, let's say just slightly.

And we're going to talk about what to know about compact fluorescent

bulbs also known as CFLs that's what I'll call them in this episode. They're a

really great starting light for

beginners because they're pretty cheap, they're easily accessible. Usually you

don't have to go to a specialty store and they do a pretty good job of

growing a lot of different types of plans.

CFLs initially were designed to replace the classic incandescent lamp,

also known as the lamp that Thomas Edison reportedly failed 10,000 times to create before finally succeeding.

Incandescent bulbs were amazing, but they burn hotter and they waste quite a bit of electricity that we use to power them.

They put out 90% as heat and 10% as light.

On the other hand, CFLs can last up to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs while putting

out less heat. They also take less wattage to deliver the same amount of lumen output as an incandescent bulb.

So why should you use a CFL grow light?

A lot of people turn to CFLs instead of higher cost lights, things like high pressure sodium, metal

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