How many lumens should i give my seedlings?

[Drivermate]

I just started off with my first grow. I have 2 seedlings next to each other (in different small containers) under two very improvised lights:

1 Household LED 12W (~1300 lumens)
1 CFL 20W (~850 lumens)

For a total of 2150 lumens.

My grow space area is 2,6 x 2,6 feet.

I know that i may be pretty under-equipped, but my questions are:

1) Is it possible to keep growing them with this setup?
2) Is there a way to calculate roughly how much light i need?

I was wondering if there was a way to grow indoors with as little money as possible, even if it means slowing the grow by some weeks or even months.

Thanks in advance!

[wibe]

all right away but at least a couple feet above for now.

[gbauto]

Is it possible? Yes
Is it worth the effort? Not really.
Light is the most important nutrient you can provide-without enough of it and growth suffers.
Nowhere close to enough light.

[Drivermate]

How much light would you consider it to be "barely enough" for 2 plants in a 2,6x2,6 area?

[gbauto]

You're working with about 6 sq ft of area to cover. With the best commercially available led's, it would take 180 watts to achieve sufficient light levels. CFL's are about 1/2 the efficiency in comparison so I'd shoot for 400 watts of CFL's. Not looking so promising now, is it???

[SoOrbudgal]

2x2x6 tent cause you are trying to grow without spending $$$ you have to have at least 220 tru watts minimum. My 2cents

[Canuck147]

You can grrow your plants with the lights you are using - but the buds just won't develop into much.
Need at least a 23 watter per plant - or more.

[wibe]

min wattage for led with distributed light output i'd say is 120w in almost 3 ftx3ft.

just string together a bunch of cfl with y-sockets if you want cheap and ghetto i see it here all the time.

[Drivermate]

Thank you! Probably going to do that.

[dilvish]

I tried the cheap lights route too on my first grow. I bought 5 seeds, 50 litres of Fox farm Ocean soil, 5 gallon fabric pots and the Flora series nutrients. The only thing I didn't spend any money on was lighting. The plants were tiny and at about 4 weeks they were no bigger than seedlings. I opted to put them outside but they only received about 4 hours a day of direct sunlight..the rest was in the shade. all of the plants were tiny by 12 weeks and I realized the biggest factor was lack of proper light. I likely got about 30g from all 4 plants combined and I let them grow for 17 weeks...a pitiful harvest. I didn't even recoup my costs based on what 30g would sell for these days.

If you want to see decent yields you have to have decent lighting. Proper amount of Light by far is probably more important than anything.