EDIT: I'm not sure why my photos are crooked, but I swear they were right side up on my computer....sorry! Hello everybody from beautiful Southeast Alaska! I've been a lurker here for a while, picking up some good advice for my first legal grow up here. Thanks to everybody here for all the helpful information that helped my humble grow along the way. I started out with four cuttings I purchased locally here on the island, two Lost Coast Hash and two Cotton Candy. The person who sold them to me did not use any rooting hormone, and basically just stuck them in dirt in plastic cups. After a couple weeks, only one Lost Coast cutting showed any root development, so this one was placed under my high tech grow light setup (clamp on shop light with a four-way splitter with four 23 watt daylight CFL bulbs) and placed inside my grow cabinet (actually just a cabinet in the kitchen): The foil you see in the background is just a plastic milk crate lined with Reynold's Wrap, but that was cooking the plant so I did away with that system. The other three never took off, so I focused on keeping the one healthy so I could take clones further down the line. I transplanted her in to a larger pot with some Carpinito brand organic soil. As the weeks went on, my little gal (Rootie) kept on creeping up and up: As you can see, I added another four bulb shop light to the cabinet, bringing the total up to 12,800 lumens for the one plant. My shop lights are held up by a doorframe pull-up bar, which makes for an EXCELLENT light bracket. I run the bar through the loop on the clamp, which makes zero risk of the lights slipping off and crushing/burning my plant to death. In addition I hung a small fan on a screw inside the cabinet to dissipate the heat a bit and strengthen the stalks. I also began to feed her with Fox Farms nutrients, just the Grow Big and Big Bloom for now. Now my veg cabinet is only maybe 2 1/2 feet tall, and the lights have a fairly deep profile, so once it reached about 1 foot in height I began to FIM the plant every week or two to keep it short and bushy. After several weeks of this, instead of one main branch, Rootie had about 13 spread out at approximately the same height. Now that she had outgrown the veg cabinet, it was time to take it to the next step. I topped 11 out of the 13 main branches, and hit them with some Clonex and stuck them in to regular peat pods from the hardware store. Those I put inside a regular clone dome and misted daily. After a few days recovery time, I moved my shop lights and pull-up bar to a light-tight closet downstairs, and switched my daylight bulbs out for soft white. I also added one more four bulb shop light shining sideways on to the plant, bringing my total lumens for the flower stage to 19,200. So far, it has only been just over a week in to flowering and I've noticed some changes: Yesterday, when pulling her out to show my father-in-law, I saw that there were roots coming out of the bottom of the pot, and realized that she had outgrown her one-gallon planter. So today I picked up a 3-gallon bucket and gently transplanted her in to some Fox Farms Ocean Forest soil. And as for the cuttings...well after only one week, 8 out of the 11 have rooted, so those I placed in small pots with some Ocean Forest soil and put in my veg cabinet, along with my new veg light (a 2-foot, 4 tube EnviroGro fixture). So there you have it! That's where I am right now, one week in to flower on the first plant, and just starting to veg my second batch. My future plan is to have a 6 plant SOG grow once I get my system dialed in, because I have limited space and I just don't want to take four months between every harvest, but I'm pretty happy with the results of my super low-tech budget grow. I will be continuing to update this grow journal as my plants progress, and I cannot wait for harvest day come December! I've been out of grass for a while and the whole island is dry right now. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I would love any input or suggestions from the experienced growing community, as I am still just learning over here.
Started using a little Big Bloom and Tiger Bloom, seeing a little more development. Almost 2 weeks in to flowering now. Here's a look at my cheap-o lighting system.
Here's a couple photos after a good defoliation...the CFLs weren't penetrating through the canopy very well, so I cleared it out a bit: