Well me and my friend moved into our new apartment about 2 weeks ago and we finally decided to start a little grow operation. Basically since this is our first time we decided to grab some seeds out of some pretty decent weed we bought earlier this week. I have a coupe seeds germinating in a closet at the moment, hopefully if they sprout we can plant them tomorrow or monday. Supplies We Have --------------------- 3 - 1.5 QT Green Pots 2 - 75W CFL (Light output (lumens) is 840 each) 1 - Fan 1 - Organic Choice Soil Supplies We Dont Have (Do we even need them?) --------------------------- Temperature Thing PH Meter More Lights Different Soil Anything else you can think of? I'll post more pics when we get the seedlings planted and the boxes moved into the closet room. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
I dont suggest using a cardboard box, just spend 70 bucks at lowes and get a nice cheap cabinet. Cardboard and heat dont mix well.
We where hoping that the fan would stop it from being to hot. When you say the dont mix well do you just mean that it will be really hot in there? Also thanks for the quick response!
You can use cardboard cfls dont put out very much heat, plus if you use a fan int he right spot you can keep the temps very low. but carboard isnt exactly reccommended, and if you plan on doing just one plant you will need about 100 watts and another 100 watts for another plant, soil looks alright.
I hope your right on the cardboard and heat problem, i dont think it should get to hot in there because that fan we have has a very nice speed adjustment knob on it so if it gets to hot i can just crank it or just leave it cranked at all times. Okay so i think we might just use 2 of the pots with one seed in each, how long do you think we could get away with just 150W from the 2 cfl's? Thanks again for the responses Edit: Quick update on the progress of our box building. The big one will be on the bottom and the tall one will sit on top.
Okay quick question: If we decide to use the 3 pots, we have with three seeds that might germinate do you think if we bought two more lights we could fit that many pots in there untill we figure out if they are any females. If we had three females from the three pots we would only use two and hopefully just two would fit. We plan on doing that LST stuff so they are nice and comfy but what do you guys think?
more lights walmart has the 3 pack of 26 watt 6500k lumen lights for 6.97 thats cheap spend the extra 8 bucks other than that have fun ill keep up with the progress here
Hmm well do i need like more lights in general or could i just get another one of my 75W lights? If you say get more lights like where should i position them in my box?
That box looks quite nice, you definitely put some time and effort into making a piece of cardboard look great... having said that, let me share some things that I am learning from my first grow: I started my current (and first) grow in a cardboard box of a similar size (moved to a cabinet i found for free about 5 weeks in). i ended up having to leave the door cracked to keep the temps down (i did 24/0 veg so that was annoying at night as its in my bedroom). you should get another fan, you need one to be blowing on the stems of the plants to strengthen them (this really works btw), and one to move warm air out of the box. I havent found a ph meter to be of any use. I suppose that if your plants are yellowing/drooping/showing weird symptoms, you would invest in one then to figure out the problem. The only other thing I can think of that you might want is a spray bottle. Misting the plants during veg seems to be quite good for them. Its particularly good when your temps are hot to keep the plants from drying out, and it also helped me from over watering, since I constantly want to be playing with the plants. misting is a harmless way to spend time with them (that sounds kind of weird). oh, and dont forget that you will need bigger pots eventually (2-3 gallon should be fine). the pots you have no are kind of useless i think, since you might as well just use plastic cups for the first week or two, and then transplant into the final pots (which you will need to buy anyway). I came up with a nifty solution for adjustable lights that you might consider: hang your fixture using a string that goes through a hole the ceiling of the box, and use some kind of a clip (i used one of those heavy duty black paper clips) on the outside top of the box (the electrial wire going to the light just stays inside the box and goes out through somewhere in the bottom). and you will definitely need more light. i ended up using 6 26 watt CFL's for 2 plants, though I had been expecting to germinate 3 or 4. i suggest you get 6 bulbs in there. a 3 pack of bulbs is like 10 bucks, and Y adapters are about a dollar. so you have no excuse. besides that, i cant recommend that soil. i used it at first, and when my seeds first sprouted they were barely growing and looking like shit. i posted on here asking for help, was told that the soil was the problem. transplanted and looked beautiful within a couple of days. since then, i transplanted again into bigger pots and ended up mixing some of that miracle gro organic in, and it worked fine. it seems that for some strains that soil is too harsh, at least early on. so in conclusion: cardboard is fine (though once you have real plants you will care about them enough to give them a better home)! more lights (if you plan on getting bud beore the year 2010)! consider a different soil (if you feel like being safe)! best of luck, saucerful ps heres my grow pps dont plan on all three of those seeds germinating, not that you have room in there for all three of them to get past veg.
Okay we just decided that we will get another fan, we are making a hole in the bottom side to put the fan we already have in. The second fan we get will be put in a hole me make on the second box. Hows this sound? Yea we will def get a spray bottle, thanks for the advice. Do you guys think we can just put 3 seeds from germination into the three pots we have? If so how long can we store them in there before upgrading our pots? Okay we are gonna go to walmart and get a 3 pack and probably figure out a way to hang those from the top, then with the two bulbs we already have i think we want to cut a hole out on two of the sides and have them sitting in there that way? What do you guys think of that? Okay well we will try the soil we have for the time being but when we transfer them up to the bigger pots we will some other soil to mix in. What kind of soil should we get to mix in with the organic choice? Thanks for the help guys, those seeds still arent done germinating, its the second day and one, maybe two look like they might be sprouting a tail soon.
by second box do you mean top or bottom? i would put it toward the middle of the top box and have it blow air out (that kept temps cooler for me than blowing air in). no problem with putting them in those pots... i cant tell exactly how big they are but probably about 4 weeks. eventually you will see the roots coming through the drain holes in the bottoms; at that point you definitely need to transplant. the sides are okay, but i dont know how you would decide where to make the hole. the problem is that it wont be adjustable at all (unless you have some mechanism). I believe that the CFL bulbs emit equal intensity in all directions, so if you want to hit the plants with light from the sides, i would suggest hanging a single bulb all the way to the side of the box and lowering it so that it is adjacent to the plant... (btw, you didnt use aluminum foil to line the box did you? if you did, search this forum for a million threads about why not to use that, and what to use instead) i am not that experienced in this, but if you are waiting until transplanting to mix a new soil in, there is no reason... the plants are most sensitive to those nutes in the first couple weeks, so if they survive that in there, i see no reason to change soils... No problem. and good luck.
Quick Update: We went to walmart and got the 3 pack of 26W CFL and a couple plugs so they light up. We bought another fan for like 2 bucks that we will use to send air out and we are gonna put that up on the second level of box. We already have a fan on the bottom level bringing air in. Should we even make air holes and if we do where should we put the holes? We couldnt find any of that mylar stuff or the reflective blankets at walmart so are there any other ways we can counter the foil? We thought we read somewhere if we taped some white pieces of paper over a couple spots we could reduce the amount of damage but we arent sure. Any other ideas on something we can do that doesnt involve buying the reflective sheets? Thanks saucerful for the help! Anyone else got something they wanna throw out? +1 rep saucerful if i can figure out how ....
bump sort of, i guess i can give you guys a quick update: we are gonna put some white paper in the box to cover most of the foil. Any other suggestions? Edit: Pictures, two fans are installed one in and one out.
The box is looking nice, fans seem too be in a good place, except with the bottem one. it will constantly be blowing in colder air and it will be hitting the pots cooling the roots its not good will slow growth a little but will be fine. now the lights you will need more and very soon at least try too get 2 cfls per plant that will sustain them for the first say 3 weeks or so then upgrade cfls arnt too expensive and try too keep them as close as possiable!
Thanks for the help and suggestions guys! We had one of our seeds spout a tail so we planted that sucka and it grew.. last night we put it in our box with two of the cfl's on it, when i woke up it was the same height so is that good or bad or normal? We have 3 25W cfls and i think 2 75W cfls Ohh yea should our box be warm or cool? Because we had the intake and outtake fans on low and it was pretty cool feeling in the box this morning.. is that okay? I'll post pics when i get home in about an hour after a quick smoke session
Generally you wanna keep the temps around 71 80 degrees F, and if your seed hasnt brokent he soil yet keep the soil moist and some kind aplastic crap covering the top of the cup or pot that its it. at least until it breaks surface.