Izual said:
I was going to go with soil. I'm having problems understanding the lighting aspect though.
Without geting way into the complication of lighting it breaks down like this. Your plant is going to basicly go through two stages, veg and flower. For each stage you are going to need a differant type of lighting. Since you are going to be growing indoors and that kind of enviornment stays at a constant level (temp, air flow, ect) you are going to have to mimic the outdoors and the changes the plants encounter out there.
I, myself, use CFL's (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp). They are reletively inexpensive and easy to find. Most importantly they come with their own ballast. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_ballast)
Now after you germinate your seeds and get them stable and in the dirt some people like to keep their plants in the dark for a while and some like to immediately start the plants on a lighting scheduale. I like to start getting them light immediately. For this I get about 10 65000k 1600 lumens CFL bulbs.
Now what is meant by 65000k is where it stands in the light spectrum (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum) of color. 65000k has a more blue coloring to it and I find best mimics the lighting from the outdoors during a normal full summers day. Lumens
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumens) is basically how "strong" the light is and how much energy it will transfer into the plants. You want to get as many lumens to your plants as possible.
Now as you continue with your grow your plants will get nice and big and strong until one day you decide it is time to enter the second stage of growth, flowering. In this stage you are going to be mimicing the fall months and as such your will be changing the color of your bulbs and your lighting regimine.
When flowering I like to use a 27000k bulb which has a more redish tint to it and best mimics the color of the sun during the fall. The bulbs are again CFL and give out about as many lumens as the other bulbs I have. Now since the days are shorter in the fall you want to shorten the time the plants are under the light. I use a 12 on 12 off lighting pattern. Without geting to complicated this basically tells the plant it is time to drop its flowers (bud).
Really that is all there is to it. Of course there are a lot of other factors in your grow. Nutes, insects, soil, pots, and water all play a huge roll in how your plants will turn out.
Good luck.
P.S.-Pardon the misspelling I was in a hurry.
