Light is one of the most important things that is needed for growing marijuana, sun light is the best source of light, but that is not possible when growing an indoor garden and for this garden artificial lighting, when properly used can take place of sunlight. The marijuana plant during many of its growth stages needs as much light as absolutely possible and there are special lights that are used for growing plants that allow them to grow without sunlight to their fullest potential.

There are different types of lighting and each produces different frequencies of light that the plant is able to use, such as the common household light bulb, which is not the right type of lighting for growing plants. That is because it emits a high percentage of far red and infra red light which will cause the plant growth to be concentrated at the stem and this will make the plants grow tall and spindly. This can be a danger to the health of the plant as it will become top heavy causing the stem to bend.

The incandescent spot light is also not the proper lighting for growing the cannabis crop, while it does emit both blue and red light, it is not able to be placed close enough to the plants, which causes the plants to have to stretch to reach the light. This means yet again stems that are growing spindly and can cause problems and the red light also causes plants to concentrate on foliage growth.
The lighting that is best is florescent lighting, which emits the amounts of both red and blue light that the pot plants need to grow to a bountiful harvest and it is also able to be placed close to the plants unlike other types of lighting. One of the most common of these plant lights are the Gro-Lux lights, and these come in two different types, the standard light and the wide spectrum light, these can be used together while growing a crop of weed.

The advantage beside the fluorescent light being the best choice for growing is that it is possible to find the size of light for the grow area, for the grower that has adapted a closet to plant their crop or for the grower that has a large room. This is due to the fact that this type of lighting can be found in lengths from one foot to eight feet.

When deciding on this type of lighting the grower needs to make educated decisions to have a successful crop and this includes knowing that wide spectrum lighting were designed as a supplement light sources and that these produce a spectrum of light including infra red and higher concentrations of red and blue. The use of commercial fluorescent lights are known by experience growers as cool white, and emit as much blue light as a special grow light bulb, and this is used by the plant to grow foliage.

There are also bulbs that come in different standards, a regular output, a high output, and a very high output and the difference in most cases will be the amount of time the plants will take to grow to maturity. Plants will mature at different rates, because it will be dependent on the amount of light per day they have.  While to the beginner they may feel more light is better, however plants with longer dark periods bloom faster. During the first six months, the plants need as much light as they can get to grow, but as they age, they require less light and the older the plant is prior to blooming and going to seed the better the pot will be.

One of the ways that is extremely easy to know the amount of time the plants have light and to relieve some of the human care is to use vacation timers. These can be purchased in hardware and other stores, and are used to turn lights on and off while a home is empty so that it will appear like there is someone home.