Day 3, new temp setup. Pointers?

Discussion in 'First Time Marijuana Growers' started by Dubya, Jul 14, 2010.

  1. #1 Dubya, Jul 14, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 14, 2010
    so heres my grow setup so far, its slightly temporary because we move next tuesday then Ill spend more time putting something together, but until then I'll describe it.

    I have a medium sized box in my closet that is lined with white paper with 2 holes. one for the light to come in, the other to look through and provide ventilation. the plant itself is 1-2 inches tall, and I cant believe how fast its grown!

    anyway any tips/pointers are welcome and I'll post a pic shortly but I have to go to work, I have a ph testing kit and it appears to be slightly acidic. the stalk also has a purple tint to it, Ive heard this could be a big problem, also Ive heard some plants like white widow DO grow like this. I'm using a fluorescent floodlight with 8000 lumens

    thanks for checking this out guys.

    *edit* pic coming soon, it may look yellow, but thats just the camera i believe because its looking through a little crack in the paper
     

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  2. I'd get rid of the floodlight because i heard they don't support plant growth. Go pick up a couple 100w (23w) CFL 6500k (colour temperature) lights. Good thing with CFLs is that they fit into pretty much any lighting system, so the possibilities for fixtures are endless.

    Also, do you have a pH meter or just pH test strips/drops? Do you have a thermometer and if so whats the temperature of your grow space?

    Purple stems are fine, they're not a big problem. All strains are different, some have purple stems, some don't. I have read though that purple stems mean that a plant is hungry, but I wouldn't worry about feeding your plant for at least another couple weeks.

    Good luck!
     

  3. Duly noted, I'll pick up some next time I'm out


    I have a pH testing kit with the vials and powders and liquids and stuff, I'm no chemist so my roomie is in charge of that until I find an actual meter. Thermometer reads high 80s, humidity is about 65%

    We got wal mart soil that has an NPK rating I think at 7-12-8(off the top of my head could be inaccurate) but my room mate bought plant food that evens out the npk ratio to as close to 20-20-20 as we could, but after he bought it I told him we shouldnt feed it. So should I worry about npk ratio later?



    Yeah, I was lucky enough to find this in a bag, so specific species is unknown, I believe its indica because of the short/fat nugs but I could be wrong

    anyways. SUPER excited to be doing this and all input is welcome

    for my more final setup, I plan on buying a cheap cabinet from goodwill and cutting some holes in it and lining it with mylar, then creating ventilation with a fan and just having all my tools stowed away there to avoid losing things/things being discovered by people that shouldnt have seen it.

    If everything goes perfectly, it will just look like an old storage closet in a basement.

    one more question(sorry for all the reading)

    Should I worry about smells with a 1-3 plant op? I havent decided if I'm just going to flip it all for extra cash or keep it for special occasions. How much product should I realistically expect?

    Thanks for reading once again, I know it was a lot this time
     
  4. Latest pic, growing real nicely, every time I look at it its grown a little bit. I'm calling it....GARY!
     

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  5. If i'm not mistaken it sounds like you have a pH up and down kit, the same one i have. Make sure you give your plants 6.5 pH balenced water. My tap water is 7.0 so i have to give it 1mL of pH down (acid) to bring it down to 6.5. Its also good to test the run off of your plants, that way you'll know they're always pH balenced and you don't develop any nutrient deficiencies.


    That sounds good. Check the bag quick and make sure it doesn't have any time release fertilizers in, because that stuff will be a nightmare to deal with. If its anything MG other than organic it most likely has them. Either flush the soil out with tons of water before you use it, to flush out all the nutrients, or don't use it. I used a simply mix of perlite and peat moss (50-50) and you could probably use that for your grow if you couldn't afford FFOF or pro-mix.

    You also want a more potassium (K) and Nitrogen (N) based fertilizer during vegitative growth and a more phosphorous (P) based fertlizer for flowering. You should probably get something with a higher first number for veg, and Potassium is good for the whole grow, so having that high is beneficial.



    Sounds good man. You can buy extentions to CFLs (they sell them at home depot or lowes) and they plug into anything that has a socket. I like to plug mine into power outlets and tape them to the top of my grow "box." I'll stack them on magazines too and remove them as they grow bigger. its also important to have a fan or an oscalating fan in your room during your plant growth. Not only does it help keep them cool, blowing them constantly, irritates the stem and causes it to grow wider to compensate. The wider the stem, the bigger the buds.

    Don't expect a lot man, remember, this is a first grow and there has to be room for mistakes. A good goal is to have one successful female. Thats my goal for my first grow, just don't set the bar too high.
     
  6. The roomie is on the way to go pick up some of the final things we need for this grow, luckily we got a detailed list from one of the complete beginners guides here, props to the op

    8 days after first planting, growing very nicely, ph is perfect, lighting is bright and maintaining a nice 85 degrees F. were getting soft white and daylight cfl as well as some shop lights with a fan and hes also out getting a cupboard to do a PERMANENT grow space.

    anyway, heres "Gary" working on yet another set of leaves, he's growing so damn fast I dont wanna miss anything!

    *edit* and no, the tin foil in the background is not apart of the grow, dont worry
     

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  7. Hey this is Dubya's roommate just got done building our more permanent set up. This grow box took a long time and a few scratches on myself. I hope this setup really helps "Gary" flourish and thrive. The lights are kind of hard to see in this picture, but right now I have four 25W CFL bulbs about 2 inches above the plant. I am planning on transferring him to a larger pot sometime today or tomorrow so he has a little more room to grow his little roots. Thanks all. Keep smoking that good shit!
     
  8. Simple name for a plant although I never gave a plant a name before but we do have an American Bulldog named Bill Dog.
     

  9. Sounds like you're doing good, the seedling is looking great too. What're you gonna do with a plant named "Gary" when you get a female? :confused_2:
     
  10. lmao good point.
     

  11. When I first saw the name Gary on there, I was alarmed immediately. I thought.. "That plant's either going to be a male; or, if it is a female, it's going to have such a complex from being called Gary that it goes hermie."

    Get us some pics of the updated set up!
     
  12. OK! got a permanent seup now, its in our basement now. Glad you guys like the name "Gary", I dont know why were calling it that but its seemed to stick.

    So onto business. pH level is perfect, were nuting it every week or so with a very weak solution. Only issue i have is since its in the basement I worry about temp, the lights dont produce nearly enough heat so without the fans on its about 70 degrees fahrenheit. We plan on getting 1 more light but I have a feeling it wont keep it warm enough. Now, I was at a plant shop and saw this heated mat for about ten bucks, I was wondering if anyone has used one of these and if I should worry about keeping it on for extended periods of time in terms of fire safety.

    anyways, updated pics of day 15 (today) with a pic of the actual setup and the plant.
     

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  13. set up looks very nice man... massive improvement.

    if it's 70 degrees in there under the lights, whats the temp outside that area in the rest of the basement??
     
  14. Might want to pick up a plastic pot or one of those air pots and transplant it before it gets to much bigger, clay pots are a pain in the butt getting plants out of sometimes.
     
  15. Its looking good so far. I'd pick yourself up a bigger pot because what it's in is only going to last it another few days. I'd transplant after day 20.
     
  16. hey can you tell me a little about that cabinet you're using?
     
  17. Hey guys. We finally transplanted "Gary" earlier today. It was a little rough because it didn't want to come out of the pot very easily and we had to shake it a little bit which we didn't want to do. When we finally got Gary into the new pot it wouldn't stand up very well so we were a little worried. We repositioned it and now it stands up pretty well and is much closer to the lights. The pH in the new soil remains on the high side of 6, we plan on using some limestone to lower the pH for optimum grow potential. Here are some pics of the new pot, and another picture of our beautiful baby.
     

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  18. Yeah it was a run of the mill cabinet we picked up at Goodwill. It had a thick cardboard (don't know the technical term for it) back and the rest was wood. Ummm the top has a little area we use to put our soil, gloves, scissors, spray bottle, feed, etc. And there is a little crevasse on on the front we use to put the lights through. Other than that nothing really special about it lol. Any other questions feel free to ask.
     

  19. so you cut out the back bottom for that window fan? i'd be concerned about light leaks if you're going to flower in there... also judging by the pics, it doesn't look that tall, so you might want to kick it into flowering earlier than you would have planned, because they do give a height surge when flowering starts.
    also, i hate to feel like i'm criticizing, but I don't like Gary's new container, it will be even harder to remove him from that than the last one for next transplant.

    a tent isn't in my current budget, but my bagseed hydro grow thats currently in my flowering cabinet is cramped at the top of the cabinet at 42" tall, and it was put into the flowering cabinet at about 1.5feet. im def gonna start scoping goodwills for tall cabinets ;-) thanks for that idea. oh and i have the same exact window fan, may copy your set-up on that if i can figure out how to not let light in the back.
     
  20. Yeah I wish there was a way to prevent any light leaking through the fans ventilation, but unless I cover up the fan entirely (Which totally defeats it's purpose lol.) there is no way to prevent the light from leaking out. It doesn't seem to have caused that much problems for us so we are not too worried.

    I figured that this pot would be the last transplant we would have to do because the pot is quite deep and quite round. If we do eventually have to transfer it again (hopefully we don't need to) I figured that the stem would be quite thick and the would handle a transfer a little better.

    And if you want I could show ya the crude sketch I had for my grow box, but I doubt you'll need that haha. Well hopefully Gary starts budding by September.
     

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