I am planning on doing a grow but i have alot of questions: 1. What is a good strain for a first grow? What can i expexted to yield? Where can i purchase this strain from a company that ships to the U.S.? 2. Where can i get the HPS lights, and how much am i going to pay for them? 3. Does two 150w hps lights equall one 300w hps light? 4. How do you know when to switch from VEG to Flower, can you induce flowering earlier if you don't want your plants to grow to large? 5. What are the best economical lights to purchase for a grow? 6. How soon can i tell if there male/female? and is there a method to tell early in the grow wether there male or female? 7. I want to end up with about three females at harvest, whats a safe number of seeds to start growing to achieve this? I know this is a lot of question, so thanx to all that help, any other good info for a first grower would be greatly apreaciated!
1.go to the seedbank forum.. 2.in these forum theres a sticky by vatoloco, go in it and check out the sites. 3. in vatoloco sticky, theres some growing guides, read them all, when u done read them aging... 4. Use the search buttom ob the right top...
1. Northern Lights, Skunk #1, White Widow.. These are some of the more common strains people begin with. All are available through numerous online seedbanks. Like Shade said, check out the Seedbank forum. 2. HPS lights are found easiest with online grow shops. http://www.insidesun.com/ isn't a bad one, with http://www.e-conolight.com/ having the cheapest setups around. HPS systems range from $120-300 usually, the main factors being the wattage and the reflector type. 3. Yes, but then again, you will be paying twice as much. It may be easier to settle for a single 250w system. 4. Whenever you want the plants to begin flowering. Know that plants still grow vertically after switching to flowering, sometimes doubling or rarely even tripling in height. 5. Fluorescent lighting is the cheapest way to go, not to mention the most accessable lights in existance. 6. The earliest I've ever had sex show was 5 days after 12/12. A typical waiting time is 1-2 weeks after being put into 12/12. There are no ways to show sex earlier than flowering. 7. Here's how it goes with seeds: I wanted to have three females my first time around, too. So I planted 6, in hopes of getting a 1:1 female/male ratio. Technically, this is the best one can hope for. The first time, I had 2 females and 4 males. The second time around, 4 females, one male, and one never sprouted. Get used to the guessing game. ~Lycanthropy
Thanx for the answers, i've read alot of grow manuals, all pretty much of them are base of erowids, but anyways these are some questions that were never really answered by the manuals
the answers are there, jus spread out in different section. a lot of your questions are talked about or even mentioned in a lot of grow journal threads. they dont answer your questions directly, but you can get an idea of what people are using. about vegging and flowering, you can veg your plant to a certain height before flowering or go by the amount of weeks. since i mostly lst, its a little harder for me to measure a plants height to see if its close to 12inches, which is the recommended plant height before going 12/12. i usually jus start flowering after 5 weeks of veg. this is from seed. i spend the next 8-10 weeks flowering. the plants. like Lycan said will normally double in size during flowering. and it happens quite quickly the plant will put on some size the first couple weeks of flowering, so prepare for vertical height limitation in your chosen spot. to beable to determine sex can take up to 3 weeks when going 12/12. some plants will auto-flower even before being sexed. happened to me in my current grow. one of my plants showed sex a little after 6 weeks, this was a day or 2 before going 12/12. also, male plants will grow much faster than females. i read it, didnt quite believe it but, after my biggest and best plants have turned out to be males twice, i completely believe it. so if you grow and you have one plant taking off in growth, doubling in growth everyday, be expecting he will be a male. okay kinda going backwards here, didnt really have intentions on answer your light question, but i seem to be on a roll lol... anyways, when you start off vegn. it would probably be easier on you to look into a floro setup. i would suggest you use at least 5 compact twistie floros. 26 watts should be good. they emit about 1700lumens each and they dont run too hot. i used them as an experiment on my last grow. i was impressed, they really got the job done and i will be using them in the future to veg any other plants. the shop lights work equally as well, but my closet length limited me to using the cfl's. while vegn under these lights, the 5-6 weeks should give you plenty of enough time to secure an hps. do what you have to do. you could go with a cheapo from inside sun. ive heard terrible things about how slow he is about getting lights out and sometimes orders completely mixed up. if you decided to not go with him, you could get a light from practically any hydro shop online. be prepared to spend around 250.00usd. youll see a lot of lights cost close to the same, no matter what wattage. last bit of advice, read read read and read some more. the more you know, the easier it will be for you to identify possible issues before they become unfixable problems.