So I got some seeds from a friend of mine that came from some crap Mexican weed and I figured I'd give growing a try. So I started with a pot from the plants they sell at HEB . I took out the plant they had in it and popped in several seeds spread around. Most of them I was fairly sure they wouldn't do anything and I put the only one I thought had a chance in the center. I got the cabinet from a local goodwill store, cut out the insides of the drawers so that I can have my bucket inside and still slide them in and out. The bucket is the same as from the bubble bucket guide on the site here, just without any of the tubes or anything. I put the tape on the outside and got lazy . The black thing is the top I put on for "night time" I turned the light on so you could actually see the inside. It's normally hanging into the bucket through a plate (see plate picture below). This is with the bottom drawer removed and my thumb over the light. The bottom drawer or what's left of it lol. It's just enough so that it sits in the normal spot without moving. The whole thing with the drawers closed, that's a power strip I have velcroed to the outside. The cable for the light is run through a hole in the back and around to the power strip. Just a better shot of the front with the "American and Proud" sticker Just thought I'd add this one. It's the cover I use when running the light. I run the cable through the little slit and it sits in the open space near the center. The squarish shape is where I cut a slot for a large computer fan I use to cool it. The fan is a salvaged one from an old printer, runs on 24v so I'm currently running it at half speed (if I use it at all). If your a computer nerd like me I'm using the battery pack for an arduino to power it (9v battery) I know it's not the best setup but this whole project is mainly to see if I can get a plant out of it without putting any sort of massive effort into it. Not counting the tools I've bought because I can use them on other projects for school I'm at about $15 in parts so far, at most $20. So here's the plant. the under view, mainly cause I still have no idea if it's male or not. The light I'm using is a cfl light, 13w 6500k "daylight". If it get's big enough I have a second one to stick in there so I can cover it with light. I know I could put better lights or other better stuff in there and get it to grow faster or whatnot but I'm honestly not in any hurry. I still have to build a air filter system so that if it gets stinky the smell won't alert the other people in my apt building Also I haven't fed it with anything, just been using tap water every other day or so. I'm just going by if the soil starts getting a little dry I will drip some water in it. Not a crazy amount just enough to keep the soil moist. I been thinking of getting some sort of feed for it that I can squirt in the soil but haven't really had time with school to troll around the forums to see what I should use. So what do you guys think? Any suggestions or idea's or just wanna tell me how sucky it is? p.s. wasn't sure if imageshack was the best site to use, may switch them over to another site if they suck too much.
You don't want to keep the soil moist all of the time. Watering cycles (with a good soil mix) should range from saturated all the way through to nearly dry. As the soil dries, more air is able to get to the roots and the plants go through a small growth spurt. It also helps to prevent things like mold from becoming a problem. The surface and as much as the top half of the soil should be bone dry when you water them. For a good, easy-to-use liquid fertilizer, look for organic solutions like Fox Farms' Grow Big & Tiger Bloom or Biobizz's Biogrow & Biobloom. The best food for your plants would be freshly made nutrient teas, but premade tea mixtures like these require less effort and can still grow excellent plants.
A 13w light will never be enough. Good rule of thumb is 50watts per light. You'll want to drill a hole or something on the side maybe put a PC fan to exhaust heat and moisture...you can get mold real fast. Depending on the plant it will out grow that area real fast so do some training on it as it gets bigger. Also on your CFLs...im sure there close as its a small space but 2-4 inches from the plant is optimal for CFls. After about 4-6 inches all grow spectrum is gone. How you will know your plant is not close enough is your plant will start to stretch to the light and eventually get so flimsy it will fall over. Having them close solves that issue should it happen.
two things: it is a 13w cfl so really a 60 watt bulb. also I have several others, in total there will be 2 13 watt and 1 26 watt cfl's. I started with the 13 watt because I figured it would be best for the small plant until it gets bigger (and I built a proper housing for the fan). training = forming the branches to grow down or out? I been trying to go through the forums to learn but there's so many crap posts to sort through even in the guide threads. yea, you can't really tell from the picture but it did stretch before I learned that mistake. You can see the top of a quetip I used to prop it up, it's about 4 or 5 in. tall from stretching but I've since moved the light much closer to stop that (which it has). Right now I'm taking a second lid I have and cutting out slots so I can put in 2 lights and my fan in the middle. The fan is rather large so not too worried about moving enough air, just gotta get it built.
yea, sorry if I said it a strange way. I been doing the trick I kept reading on here about looking an inch or two into the soil to see if it's wet or not. I've only watered it heavly once at the very start and that was only to the point where water was very lightly dripping out of the bottom, since then it's been dipping my fingers in water and letting the run off coat the top part of the soil. haven't seen any yellowing or anything so think I'm doing ok on watering, just getting a little nervous about when I should add some food to it. Like i said I got the pot w/ soil from the HEB plant department so not sure how long the soil will be good for. lol can you get the teas from any garden center or does it need to be specific for these plants? I'm trying to not have to get anything shipped in and buy everything locally if at all possible. On another note I think I picked the wrong name for my thread lol, I think I shoulda added something about being a girl (which i'm not). My goal is to show that you can do an indoor grow without having to spend more than like $50 or $100 bucks at most. I don't want to buy any premade containers and am making everything from scratch from things that can be gotten in any standard store and modified without any sort of technical knowledge. Also only growing for myself so if I get an ounce out of it I will be extremely happy.
Rhapsody speaks the truth on that cfl, it is a 13w. The equivelant number is not any accurate measurement. Equivelant wattage is a marketing tool so that your every day shopper will feel more confortable buying cfls because they see numbers that they recognize. Actuall wattage and lumen output are measurements that more precisely define the light.
ok so other than the lights? not really much I can do about them now. I'll check the stores to see if they have any but when I got the one's I have now the highest I saw were 26 watt ones (which I have). The do have flood light style ones that I'm sure were in the 100watt range but that would kinda defeat the point of being a stealth grow. I live in an apt where they do come in and make repairs and such so having flood lights and fans running would kinda give it away. The overall point is I'm trying to keep it as small and lowkey as possible. maybe I should have put this in the micro grow section instead.
even if your growing micro .. you need more then 13w of light. AT LEAST 50.... theres no getting around it
Thats nice and dandy but your trying to bypass the order of things. Your basically trying to replicate the sun right? You can't but you want to. 13w doesn't even come close. 26 watt ones are fine. Rule of thumb is 50watts per plant. So 2 or 3 of those if its one plant you should be ok. What will happen if you just used the 13w one is your plant will grow and just sorta run outta steam. You'll wonder what happened and it'll be your light. Plants use light for energy. No energy no growth. I also live in a one bedroom apartment. Got a 4x4x7 tent in my walk in closet...lol and a 2x2x4 tent. Both have inline fans. I grow with LED though.
how many times do i need to say it, i understand about the lights. I have 1 plant 3 lights total all together yes I have more than 50 watts (65 total if I put all in at once). I get what your saying and I will fix it when I can but until then it is growing fine and I'm fairly sure I will need to feed it before I will have to worry about getting better lights. can we talk about fertilizer now or should I just stop trying to ask?
You want ferts higher in N for veg, and higher in P & K for flower. I wouldnt recomend anything they sell at box stores, but if you cant order anything just stay away from anything time released. You shouldnt need to feed anything until they are two to four weeks old depending on your soil quality.
I thought it was 100 watts for the first plant and an additional 50 watts for each plant after that. So say someone is growing two plants, they would need 150 watts or whatever the cfl equivalent is of that.
^^ with cfls i say 100w per plant only cuz cfls arnt as good as HIDs. with HIDs i would say 100w plus 50 per add plant
Some new pictures. These are after I have gone from the 13 watt cfl just above it to the new setup with a 26 watt cfl on the side of it with the 13 watt just above it. As to the reply's I've gotten so far, think of this thread as showing what you will get with under the 50 watts most say you need per plant. It's not a special breed and this is currently about 3 weeks into growth (from planting seed till now). It's fairly obvious with these pictures that the 50 watt limit is an obvious barrier. Not that anyone really questioned it here but you don't really see any threads here of the "what if" style. So if your thinking of starting a grow, let this serve as an example of if you try to walk the bare minimum that people say here in the guides. I can't help but ask or try out what would happen if... Top view. You can see some new leaf growth. new growth on underside, this view is looking from the top of the above picture (looking at the side that is facing the top of the picture above). same as above just out a little farther. you can see where I have bent the stem to try and get the plant a little shorter in height. That was from leaving the light too far in distance (stretching) from the plant. other side from the first picture, sorry this one is so dark. Haven't figured out a good way to take pictures with my iphone yet. The cut leaves are because I had a light fall a little and get too close to them so I cut them just above the bad spots. From what it looks like I'm about at the max I can get without adding any fertilizer to the soil. There is a very noticeable difference in growth of the leaves from the start to adding the second light. They are much slower to form and expand. The addition of the second light has sped it up some but I think adding food will help (plan on finding some tomorrow and will start adding it). I also built an array of fans to help cooling because with the two lights the bucket would get very hot. I will post a picture of the fans later (currently on night time) but it's 3 12v computer fans connected to a power supply from an old external hard drive power cable. I have 2 going one direction and 1 in the other to cause as much stirring as possible (because they don't oscillate) and I will say that it's made a very notable difference. If you go to a goodwill store, find a computer case with as many fans as you can, they are the same that I used. Not sure if it matters because I'm using such weak lights but I have been trying to keep it on a 12/12 scheduled. I honestly haven't been too accurate on it and gone over by an hour or three at the most but I've generally been as close as I can while going to classes for school lol. Also still not sure if it's male or female.
I would leave the CFLs on 24/7, then when time comes for flowering buy a 5 dollar timer from Wal-Mart (since your only running CFLs) because you want that to be consistent. As far as nutes, i tried the Organic Choice Miracle Gro which works fine for the price. You will want something else for flowering though, I don't know of any cheap nutes for that. Also I would recommend picking up a PH meter, if that's in your budget. If your PH is off it doesn't really matter what kind of nutes you throw at it. Finally with your space limitations I wouldn't let that thing grow much more than 8 inches or so, i couldn't really tell how much height you have.
Argggg, no Miracle Grow. Cheap? Yes. Good. No. Definitely check out Jungle Juice from AN when you're worried about price since it's the same thing as GH, but WAY cheaper. Or I would suggest you bite the bullet and get a lineup of nutrients like the Hobbyist bundle from Advanced Nutrients. Sensi Grow A&B Sensi Bloom A&B Voodoo Juice Big Bud B-52 Overdrive Yes, it's a lot, but really, when you're growing, you don't want to F around.
a cheap nute is black strap molasses. you make a tea with it . about half a tablespoon to your regular watering amount at first then increase after a couple feeding see how it reacts. you could even combine MG
yea I hit a wall with the growth. I went and got the Fox Farm feeds for both stages and some Miracle Grow soil (not the time release stuff). I might have waited too long to move it to a larger pot though. Was getting a fair amount of yellow leaves and some curling. Also it's fairly obvious at this point that it's much smaller than most plants following the 50 watt min. per plant. So I moved it to a taller pot with new soil and fed it some FF. I've had the 26 watt cfl lighting the bottom side of it to try and get some leaves lower down to keep the height down (because I stretched it quite a bit in the beginning). I'll try and toss some pictures up tomorrow but you will really be able to see the effect of the low power lights now, it's not much bigger than before but more smaller leaves that are all clumped together. When I bought the lights I actually bought desk/living room lighting fixtures. Imagine something like http://www1.macys.com/shop/product/royce-pendant-carlton-1-light-mini?ID=656023&cm_mmc=Google_Feed772MP772 this but reversed so it's standing rather than hanging down. Anyways I chopped the cords out and I used the reflective tape that is in the bubble bucket guide and taped up the inside of the cover for the light. It makes for a fairly good focus for the cfl's although now my problem is I'm limited because I'm keeping it in the bucket. I'm thinking I will go try and find some cheap mylar somewhere so I can cover the inside of the cabinet and ditch the bucket. It was good for when it was smaller but now it's getting harder to put things how I would like them. I think I got overly excited about the bubble bucket idea and then didn't want to have deal with the pumps and such. I really should have just started with covering the inside of the cabinet instead. Ah well, that's why I used a seed from some shit weed I got instead of starting off with bought ones There's a guide in the micro grow section that they have almost the same cabinet I have and will probably use that to fix mine up. It looked pretty good and mine definitely could use some fixing up. As for cost so far, the soil and FF's maybe doubled what I've spent so far but I'm still at or about $100 or so. Definitely need to go get some higher power bulbs though, I'll be lucky to get anything out of where I'm at right now. Anyhow, I will post pictures of all this stuff tomorrow.
Hey thunder, I woulden't advise miracle grow. I know your being cheap but I invested $400 into my first grow but needed a weaker soil for seedlings (my ORMI was too rich for seedlings). I got miracle grow, BIG MITSKE. If you google it this happened to many others but there were FUNGUS GNAT EGGS in my soil that hatched and killed my plants. Also, your plant looks really weak, it is because lack of light. Your plant also has a deficiency (i think u noticed though). Honestly man, if you harvest and get through it without it dieing good for you. It will be small though, maybe 10 grams? That's still an achievement though. If your this tight for money you really really need to get a job or your underage without a lot of savings. If you want to grow you should atleast have $200-$300 for a decent setup. I invested $1000 but still don't have everything I need for an optimal grow, I am scared my plants wont get as big as I wanted them to be.