I've done one grow with shop lights in a small closet. They're cheap and put off a decent amount of light for what they are. Pretty much any serious grower is going to tell you to use fluorescent only for vegetative growth. They're right, but believe me, i understand not having fat wads of cash to invest in this sort of thing. The fixtures will run you about 10 bucks apiece, and you'll need about 3 or more. I used 3. They take T8 4ft bulbs. Highest wattage and light output I've seen is 40 watts and about 3200 lumens with minimal heat. If you use 3 shop lights, that will give you 19,200 lumens using 240 watts as each fixture holds two bulbs. To give you a comparison, a basic HID light system will give you roughly 40,000+ lumens using 500 watts. That will run you about 200 bucks or more. So...moving on. You'll need a growing enclosure to contain the light on your plants. Otherwise, 40% or more of your light will be wasted lighting up your attic and not your plants. Some people use reflective mylar, some people use white plastic, some people build a wood box and paint the inside of it white. Any of those will work. Do not use aluminum foil. It tears up easily, and does not evenly reflect the light. You'll have bright and dark spots. Not good. Your main problem in an attic will be heat, depending on your climate. I live in the southern US, and an attic here routinely gets to 130 degrees during the summer. You want your plants to be between 72-78 degrees F. Anything over 100 degrees can be lethal. Anything below 72 will slow the growth. If you can't keep your attic at that temp, or at least the inside of your enclosure, I'd reconsider using your attic. You won't regret it. Ventilation is your next concern. Some people just circulate the air and some people use CO2 tanks. I like to use a fermenter. That's just a 5 gallon bucket with a lid. 3-4 pounds of sugar and a packet of bakers yeast from the grocery store will produce CO2 for about 2 weeks once you fill 'er up with water. Rinse and repeat. Stick a fan in there too to keep everything mixed up. If the leaves aren't moving, they're not getting fresh air. The wind encourages the stems to toughen up too. Keep the number of plants small. No more than six, and start budding them when they're no taller than 6 inches. More light, and bigger plants are fine, but with flouros, you have to make sacrifices. Also, make it so you can raise and lower your lights. Keep them about 3 inches above the leaf canopy of your plants. Since the flouros don't get hot, you don't have to worry about them burning the plants. I don't like them to actually touch the leaves though. Since you're giving your plants roughly the amount of light that an overcast day delivers, the yield of bud won't be awesome. If you're a weekend warrior, it should be fine. But if you're like me and cant put down the pipe, you're still going to be buying it from time to time. But rest assured that what you produce will beat the hell out of what you can get off of the street, unless you have access to high quality bud. Mine was light and fluffy and covered with crystals. Smelled and tasted like lemons and when ground up was very sticky and clumpy. At least 3 times stronger than the mexican regs I'm used to from the dealer, so be careful until you know what potency you're dealing with.
By the way, I just used seeds I picked out of purchased bud. Nothing special. It was still better in every way.
You didn't ask, but this is worth mentioning. Give your plants 18 hours of light and 6 hours of dark until they get 6 inches tall. When they're big enough, switch to 12 on and 12 off. Then they'll start budding. Get the male plants out of there. Cut them down and smoke the leaf if you want, but you don't want your plants doing the nasty. You'll get seeds in the bud and the potency will suffer. Use a good potting soil and water them when the soil starts to dry. DO NOT over fertilize. So many people screw up and slam them with tons of miracle grow. Follow the directions. A little more is okay, but too much and you're going to have a bunch of dead plants to get rid of. Drying the ripe bud is a whole thing in itself and I suggest you look it up and read about it. DO NOT put it in the microwave unless you want to dramatically lower the potency. Your patience will be rewarded. Hope that helped.
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