My first grow. I've got 4 little guys going about 7 days from germing (9/26/07 start date). I'm not a huge bud smoker...but i have a lot of spare time and this is a fun little hobby. I'm planning on killing off any males and getting 1 solid female out of this for personal use. After reading losts of different articles online, i found GrassCity and decided to go by it's user's recommendations and forum postings of grow guides. What i've done is go cheap in setup supplies since I don't really care if the final product is to die for. Everything I bought was under $30. 2 - 24" fluorescent bulbs (sunshine, 6500k) $5 bulbs and $5 fixture from lowes on sale (both fixtures were returned items) = $20 total 3 - 10" plastic pots from walmart on sale = $4 Organic soil from lowes... =$6 I actually had a small amount of miracle grow that was left over from my outside garden. So i mixed it with the organic soil and i filtered out the "time release fertilizer" caps from the MG. It was just enough to fill these 3 - 10" pots. **edit** Added (4) CFL's - 26w 6500k x(2) and 23w 5000k x(2) You can view my cheezy little setup below. It takes up very minimal space, just a closet shelf. The 2 - 24" fluoro fixtures are on small chains connected to hooks on the ceiling. They are so easy when adjusting them to proper height. I'll add pictures as I go along and hopefully i'll get some advice on doing these "cheap grows" and then in the future other's can use this as a guide to growing while spending as little $ as possible! The following pictures in order from top to bottom: 1.) my setup. 3 -10" pots with organic soil. 2 -24" fluorescents, 6500k sunshine rated 2.) my lil guy. he won't be replanted due to lack of space. he'll get extra care 3.) my big guy. originally he sprouted to tall too fast...i replanted him and covered up his stem with 2" of soil and he's recovered nicely 4.) my retarded guy. This guys been a slower grower. From germination on... 5.) my monster. This guy's stem is 1.5x as thick as the other's. he just got planted yesterday and i gave him a hand getting his seed shell off his initial flowers. 6.) my petey heads. hopefully they won't eat my stash. i'll give them some leaves to chew on. they love to chew on stuff. aren't they funny lookin? ( i just doused all these lil guys with water before i took the pictures. I'm being careful not to burn them and was just cooling them off with the spray bottle a tad )
I am definitely going to watch this grow! That is exactly what I am thinking for my first indoor grow! Keep Updating!! I also like those little animals in the last pic, Ive seen them before but for some reason I cant come up with a name what are they?
thanks frozen.... the animals are my 2 ferrets. pete and sammy. they are hilarous! they sleep 17hrs a day curled up in little balls together. As for the grow, glad your going fluoro and watching my journal. Think i saw yours as well! I read Kamel's guide and why not go fluoro! I don't want to spend tons of money on lighting and cooling and electric bills. I don't need a huge grow either. Just hoping to get 1 quality plant out of it! Growth of retard and big-guy has been slow the last 2 days after I transplanted out of some bad soil. Took them the full 48hrs to recover...and they've grown nicely the last 6hrs now. below - lil guy big guy retard monster
retard, the third one down in the pictures, is actually appearing to be the healthiest out of all of them. Monster actually got a cut in one of his leaves from the seperation of the seed shell process and big-guy is too tall too fast. What I'm planning on doing is LST - low stress training - with retard. He's already planted towards the side of the pot and he's just sprouting his 3rd set of leaves now. I'm thinking about pinning him down and starting the LST soon. Actually, not him...hoping it's a "HER"...!!! haha...*she* is looking the most promising so far
I was bored and made a few quick changes and 1 bad mistake.... I increased the soil amounts in all of the pots. The plants were each a little too tall and had too much space from the soil to the top of the pot. i think they'll like this better. Somehow I screwed up lilguy...you can see his stem is bent in half... it didn't look busted however. Since he might not make it I went ahead and added 1/8" of perlite just for experimentation as you can see below: top to bottom: lilguy big guy retard monster ferrets
no updates yet today. Very slow growth at the moment. I've added a small fan to keep everything cool and to strengthen the stems. "lilguy", the one who's stem got bent, seems to be trying his best to recover. pete says " grrrrr grow u stupid plants "
i might be paranoid, but my plants aren't growing very much. I replanted them into organic soil 5 days ago and i've had minimal growth since. They do look healthy however. Good color and standing up straight. Stems are horribly weak however and not filling out. I wonder if it's a rooting issue and the transplant affected that? Or maybe these 20w fluoro's aren't enough even though they're 6500k's
Dont worry about the slowed growth, when you transplant plants, especially to different soils it will take a while for the roots to get comfortable in their new home. After the roots are settled they will shoot up!
thanks doob3r. I highly recommend them as pets if you're a "pets kinda person" and you can't take care of a dog full time. They sleep 18 hours a day or more and are little balls of jumping energy when let loose. They get into everything which goes along with being a ferret owner. Oh yea, they take your stuff and hide it. Lighters, pens, keys, etc. I had a third ferret, an albino, pictured below. no longer watching her
ohhh my friend i have had many ferrets they make excellent pets. except all mine were clepto`s they would steal anything shiny and hide it in 1 of 5 places lol. i love it when they get all wild and just start flinging their heads around and jumpind side ways all fired up and shit. its amazing the personality they develope too, their wicked smart
Just updating some photos. Like I mentioned, not too much growth the last few days, but some. I'm hoping there's a lot of growing going on underneath the soil. Both big guy and retard are starting to sprout their secondary leaves. Below: lilguy - he's surviving his bent stem ordeal very nicely! bigguy - slow growth. secondary leaves just finally sprouting retard -coming along alright. He started slow but is the most active now monster - I had to trim one of his leaves off. It turned brown and had a cut in it pete - he's like whats up?
Nice grow, and nice ferrets, now I want to get one(ferret, I mean). I'm also just about to start my first grow. I've got all my components and I'm just waiting for my seeds to arrive in the mail. I thought my setup was cheap, but you've got me beat by at least 40 bucks(canadian). I was celebrating my two 24''(33W) fluoros for 19.99 each, but now it looks like I got ripped off bad. And I don't even wanna talk about the pots. I think its just the tax here. I don't really mind though. Beats spending 20 bucks on weed every weekend. Good luck with those babies. My grow journal will be up the day my seeds arrive.
thanks sky. The pots i have are just plastic, nothing special. They do have 6 holes in the bottom with one of those "false bottom" type deals for drainage. Yea i went as cheap as possible. I really hit the motherload with the returned fluoro fixtures from lowes. Those are normally about $10+ each i got them for $5/each. The bulbs were the most expensive thing i bought. Good luck with your grow. If i ever decided to do another grow in the future, i'd probably try ordering seeds. My seeds..who knows...just out of a random bag. Seem to be doing alright however. Where did you get your seeds from? I saw a sticky on these forums but couldn't find a reliable supplier that ships to US. My fluoro's are only 20w each also. That's why i'm semi-worried they're not enough.
I wanna watch and see this grow.Im doing a cheap one myself im using bag seed and 2 24" fluros and 1 CFL.I think with soil and all the lights and pots i spent about $40.Good luck with ya grow man
There are a bunch of good places online to get seeds. I know of DrChronic.com and one called nirvana, but I'm not sure about the url. You can use the searh bar on GC to find it, I'm feeling a bit lazy to do that. However... I wouldn't recommend ordering seeds online if you're in the US. From what I gather, seeds tend to get intercepted by US customs. I ordered mine from a-b-seeds.com based in montreal, so I don't have that problem. I don't think its a big deal to get intercepted, except for the fact that seeds generally cost around $50/set(of 10) and you never know what watchlist you might end up on. a-b-seeds has by far the best deal I've seen - $25 for 20 NL seeds (I'm a cheap bastard and proud of it), so I guess it's worth the risk.
I read the same thing, about customs getting the seeds but they still send the package w/o them inside to make you think you got ripped off and won't do it again. I wonder if a K-9 unit can smell seeds alone? I'm sure they can be trained to smell just about anything but that's pretty specific if so!
Small Update: Retard's leaves are coming in nicely although it's been slow since I transplanted into new soil. Other picture is my tail-less cat.
How many pets do you have? Two ferrets and a cat? It's a maaad house Retard isn't looking bad. How many days are you into the grow? I myself am sitting here in pure anguish waiting for my seeds. I'm sorely tempted to just go find some bagseed and get this damn show going.