Mendocino eh ? 707 ! I grew in redwood Valley for years myself..
Yeah I was generalising on the lights, usually MH are OK for veg, whereas high impact discharge are usually going to be the go to ballast to power high pressure sodium lights.
Heat being an issue I Always opted for T5 or cfl for veg and hps for flower without much concern about giving them blue green light as its only a 8-11 weeks flowering and 3-4 months total indoor anyway.
Stretching will be an issue during transition and the first stages of flowering though as all plants tend to have vigorous growth at this stage regardless of strain.
I've tried dual lights mh and hps and basically a bit of everything over decades and I don't see any reason to fool with mh from my experience..
Indoor is a compromise and I'd rather enjoy outdoor any day even if it doesn't test as well because you can't replace the full spectrum of a dynamic sun over seasons. It makes the bud more holistic or something intangible IMHO.. Looks nice but indoor bud is meh for me, good for consistency and sales etc but it's missing that je ne sais quoi..
Interesting conversation!
I do believe the plant is stretching a bit, it wants to grow right up into the bulb. I'm probably going to take most of the big water leaves off the plant in the next day or 2. As for a flowering bulb, hopefully they make flourescent bulbs for that with more red spectrum, I can't afford to buy a HPS light system, and a large enough LED array is also pretty expensive. I'll have to go to the local hydroponics store and see what kind of lighting they have in stock for flowering that I can afford.
I doubt that I can cut the light back to 12 hours for the plant right now, our daylight lasts too long this time of year, and I don't have a place to put the plant where there's no windows.
That's a good idea about cropping it in stages instead of all at once. I'll have to do that.
I have a 400 watt metal halide light and ballast that works, but I don't want to use it in the room where the plant is, it generates so much heat that I would have to set up some kind of ventilation system to get rid of it. If I had a dedicated grow room, I could set all of that stuff up, but the room that the plant is in is also used for other things.