Hi, well after finally making 17 round trips around my city to find everything I needed, I think i'm ready to start growing. Heres what i'm currently using: -Hyponex potting soil, was the only soil out of K-mart, Wal mart, Home depot, and Lowes that didn't have added or time released ferts. Ingredients on back read - regionally formulated from organic materials (primarily derived from one or more of the following: hypnum peat, forest products or compost), sand and perlite. The only thing i'm worried about is I can tell it is really generic, it was $1.09 for an 8lb bag, is that normal lol? -I'm going to be using CFL's and flouro tubes throughout the entire grow, since cutting holes in my wall for ventilation is not an option due to im renting the house I will be using for the grow. I currently have 180 watts of daylight flouro that im going to use for veg, I would of got more but wal mart/lowes didnt have anything other than 25 watt bulbs and I didn't feel like spending 80 dollars on lamps/fixtures. For flowering however lowes does have a variety of 40-60 watt cfls so im probably going to have around the 280-300 watt range for flowering. Since im only growing 2 plants I think the watts I have will be sufficient. -My actual closet is about 2x5 feet and around 9 or so feet high, will this be enough for 2 plants? If not its ok because I have 2 closets, the other one being around 3.5/5 feet and I can use that if they start getting too big. But I would prefer to use the 2x5 closet because I use the bigger one for clothes/storage. -Temperature in closet ranges from 67-75 degrees, with humidity at 25%. -The only thing I don't have right now is nutes, are these only sold at actual garden shops? I guess I could just order them online but would there be any I would be able to use at lowes/walmart? Also I can't seem to find a schedule of when to use the nutes, I've heard use 1/2 the dosage it says to use on the bottle once every 2 weeks, does that sound about right? Also when do I start actually giving the plant nutes? Ok so heres where I am now: Day 1: Put 2 Northern light seeds in wet paper towels in tupper wear containter. Day 2: No germination, was up till 7 a.m playing wow, checked them before I went to bed still no germination. Decided to just go ahead throw the other 2 seeds that I was planning to save for a summer outdoor grow in with them to increase my odds. One of the seeds had a slight crack in it so i was a bit worried. Day 3: Checked the seeds when I woke up and the seed that was slightly cracked had already geminated in mere hours... contemplated cracking the rest of them and decided that was a bad idea lol. Went out and bought my generic potting soil at K mart, filled a peat moss pot about the size of a party cup up with the soil and watered it with bottled watter until water came out the bottom, let it drain for 20 minutes. Heres where im a bit worried if I overwatered however. When I put the seed in the soil it had a sort of muddy texture. Im not talking about oozing liquid mud but it was definetly really wet. I don't plan on adding any water until it dries out or at least for the next few days. I guess it might just be the extremely shitty $1.09 soil that it is. I'm now just waiting until the sprout pops up to throw them under the flouros. So is there anything else I should do or am I on the right track? I'm not gonna put any pictures up yet because I know you don't want to see a pot with dirt in it, but when it sprouts ill start taking pictures.
Good luck man, I'll be looking out for ya during your grow =D, I've grown a few times indoors and a few outdoors myself, and im not an expert, but I can grow some nice nugs with 3 32w cfls and im telling ya, CFL's are the way to go. I've just done some research on it, but you can get Full spectrum CFL's online which are AWSOME for flowering.
Oh forgot, but you shouldnt have to nute for atleast a month. Go to home depot or lowes and get schults Plant food plus 10-15-10. It's a really nice nute for mj, I know my plants love it and it's like 7 dollars for a bottle that makes 200 gallons. Follow detailed directions it gives you for nuting.
Thanks for the help salvia. So far the only concern I have is my humidity. I'm not sure how much it will rise once all of the lights are on but as of now it is at 25%. I've heard anything lower than 40% is bad, and anything higher than 75% is bad. Is there anything I can buy that raises humidity, or will 25-30% not present me with any problems?
Hey Kyle! Good luck with your grow. We're growing NL too, in coco. We've made a few mistakes, but learnt from them, so we'll keep an eye on your journal, and help out any way we can. Check our thread Once again, good luck and enjoy your grow!
Humidity should never be a problem since its about the easiest thing to control. There should never be an open source of water left out for any long period of time near your grow area. You should only water your plants when you need to. I think if you have 25% now, it will be fine. Humidity can get up to 70% during vegitation so long as it doesnt stay at that humidity for any prolonged period. If all fails you can get a dehumidifyer.
another thing to consider about humidity... Once they are lit 24/7 you'll release more moisture from the pots and when you transplant into bigger pots you'll get even more And I am not sure about this as I am at the tail end of my first grow, but I think a bunch of CFLs dries the air out faster than a HPS (least thats what I saw switching from many cfls to small 400 watt hps during flowering) I also live in a low humidity region so I keep a big ole cup of salt slurry in the grow room and that keeps the relative humidity at about 55-60% and I have yet to have a problem with it. I have done the same thing for years with a humidor to keep cigars fresh and have never had a mold/mildew outbreak in it either, but again, I am a first timer myself and any/all comments I make should be treated as such (with a grain of salt, that is) Good Luck with your grow!
Day 4: Still no sprout, soil is really really hard, almost like a clay texture. Stuck finger about an inch down in the soil and it was a struggle. I didnt pack down the soil or anything when i was planting it, the water just compacted it all together. Am I going to have to order fox farm or another good soil or should the soil I have now work?
I just installed my HPS three days ago after using fluros. Watt-for-Watt humidity is affected by fluros or HPS just the same. People tend to think a HPS lowers the humidity a bit extra, but I think this is because of the radiation heat of the HPS, which can reach into every corner of your growbox as it's IR light, versus contact heat from fluros which is distributed through air movement. When considering humidity, please also consider wether or not your ventilate 24 hrs per day, for this will have a big impact too.
Well, I got some good news and some bad news. I finally got a seed to sprout, its currently under 120 watts of daylight cfl, its showing its first set of leaves. The bad news is is that its a seed from a crap bag of weed, all 4 of my feminised northern lights either failed to germinate, or didn't sprout. I find it funny that the only plant that is actually successfully growing is a seed that I found stuck in my carpet from an old bag of weed, yet the 35 dollar northern light seeds didn't do anything aside from waste my money.