Hey, I'm new to growing and am finishing up on my first go around. It's been about an 11 week process and I'm gonna let it flower probably until early January before finishing up. Since I'm almost done with the 1st batch I'm thinking about starting a 2nd. For the first batch I just used some seeds I found in some crap bud I got last year. The set up was just in my small closet, 2 plants under 4 CFL bulbs with a small fan to help circulate air (generally just leave the closet door open to let the air out). Obviously I like to do things as cheaply as possible and am not too concerned if I don't end up with world class bud. The main things I wanted help on is if there is any way to speed up the process and induce flowering earlier (I'm not too concerned about how large the plants get either). The other thing I wanted to see was if there are any small improvements I could make or things I could add on with little or no cost. Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks
You can start to flower them whenever you want, even from the minute they pop through the soil. Obviously they aren't going to get all that big, so the yield isn't going to be massive. Molasses(unsulphured blackstrap) is pretty cheap and can be used during or at the end of flowering to plump up the buds. Tablespoon or two per gallon should do it. Pictures would help for advice on your setup.
As you can see it's a really low budget project, just something fun to do on the side. Any help would be great thanks. Aside from the 2 lights you can see hanging above, I had 2 more on the side and once the seedlings grew a little we chose the 2 best to fully mature.
Looks pretty good to start. Once the seedlings pop through the soil you'll want to get the lights as close to them as possible without burning them (hard to tell the distance from your picture). But you may want a few more lights in there. the Y splitters are a couple bucks from Lowes or HD.
Thanks for the advice man, I definitely want to add more lights, and hopefully get better and better systems. I'm also not sure exactly what to do about fertilizing and what the best inexpensive fertilizers are. For the plant I have now I only ever fertilized it once but it's been doing fine so I haven't added anything since.