There's no perfect rule, everything depends on your environment. In no particular order, and before you buy anything you should: - Read all the info you can (forums, books, videos) so you'll see how many paradoxal and different techniques are used. It means you'll have to adapt your situation to your environment., based on other people's experience. - Observ your environment, think about what you want in terms of quality, quantity, strain, and face the reality: You'll never get to that result, no matter what you do. No, you'll get somewhere else but you'll be satisfied by your own growing methods, unless you are a scientist born in a country where Cannabis is legalized and you earn 20 000$ a week. Test the quality of your water, the average temperature of your location, inside and outside, check your security settings (are cops around, but also cats, pests and ugly neighbors). - Time to look for grow gear that fits your budget and needs. Again see what other people are buying into, are using, have tested, on forums, books and videos. Try to meet some growers and question them while having a look at their setup. Find the best price for your budget and build with your heroic hands the stuff that you find too expensive for your pockets. Make your list and ask peeps what they think about it. You'll end having more for less, which is an unusual thing to live. Important: don't forget to read about strains with close attetion, you could end up with hard to grow strains or with sativas knocking their heads on your ceiling or lights! - Buy your gear and build your setup. Don't forget to use all your brains and memory to think about the different stages of growing (seedling, vegetative, flowering, drying, curing and also cloning) and go for the best you can, cause you won't be able to dismount everything if all fails at first grow. - Test your hemp factory while it's not even there. Is your water good? Is the light giving you too much heat? Could someone enter your house or pass by it and smell anything? Did you feed your cat since you're on that project for 3 weeks now? - Better start with seeds cause your best friend clones could bring you the best disease, pests and insects you could nightmare of. - Ok, now start this mess. But why won't you start with 3 seeds before trying to get all the plants to grow together at once? Shit happens. Just imagine you thought you were all good but all your seedlings would burn under your HPS. Oh damn, you misread the height of this damn light and now you'll have to buy new seeds! Make a few seeds go for a week as test plants, and start the next ones when your first 3/5 seedlings seem to grow okay. - And now you're in deep trouble cause there are still many problems on your path to happen, too much nutes, too much heat, not enough space, you forgot something crucial, flowering doesn't start, plants are runnig too high, water is missing, pests are coming, etc, etc... I guess I'm not the best grower posting here. Well, I'm sure I'm absolutly not that one. But I guess this one particular grower would say the same as me: you learn from trial and error, and one of the biggest error we make is to never learn patience. Patience make the whole deal real. It's not going to happen like you thought, many obstacles will come across your road, but your next grow will always be better. The good grower, to me, is the one who shouldn't even use his stuff. Doing all that for the fun of the experiment. Have fun growing and I wish you luck cause we all need it sometimes! TBITH
What this doesn't say is, 'before you buy anything you should'.... -Make sure your gf isn't gonna pms at the idea of growing in your perfectly capable apartment. I thought buying seeds would be a great 3 year gift, I was wrong.