First Grow Project

i am starting a somewhat new grow today. i'm starting off small: right now i have only 3 plants. one is quite large, and is at 5 weeks. i am going to leave this one outdoors. the other 2 are about 4 weeks, and fairly small. the best of these two are coming inside under the lights. i am going to be using CFL's and doing LST and fimming it. hopefully, with my limited funds and limited space, i will get a good yield. this is for my personal.

growspace:
i am using a bunch of CFL's on this indoor plant. i HAVE 4x 23w soft whites, 2x 26w 6500K sunlight, and 1x 27w 5500K daylight. pics below of the lighting setup i have devised using pics on here as a guide. IN my setup are going to be: 2x 23w softs, 2x 26w 6500K, 1x 27w 5500K - 125w for 1 plant. once i start flowering, i plan to swap out the 2 26w suns for 2 23w softs - 119w. i will be hanging my lights using hookeyes and hanging wire so that i can raise it up and down at will.

for the actual space, it is under a bathroom sink. space is 23"Wx20"Dx24"H, for a total of 6.389 cu ft. the pot i am using for the plant is a 1 gal. ice cream bucket. it measures 7" tall with an 8" inside diameter: 1.221 cu ft. i'll be drilling holes around the bottom and putting it in a tray so it drains well.

given that the height of the space is a enough to allow 24" of plant growth from floor to lights, take off 6.5" for the pot/soil, and we have a maximum plant height of 17.5". will this allow plenty of space for a good lst yield?

my soil is expert gardner's perfectmix, which is a pre fertilized soil, but very lightly - 0.1-0.08-0.06. this is what the bigger outdoor plant was started in. obviously it grew much faster than the 2 in the reg. potting soil. i will be transplanting the one that is coming indoors into the 1 gal bucket today - i'll be knockin off some of the reg. potting soil from the root ball and putting it in the perfect mix.

as far as food, i got some jobe's tomato spikes: 8-24-8. are these ok? should i go ahead and put one in with it when i transplant?

well, i think i got it covered. please, any suggestions or comment are welcome! i am a real newbie at this, but i have been reading these forums and guides for years.

pics below of lights, growspace cabinet, and the plant that is coming inside.

 

hmmm the miracle grow or any other all purpose indoor plant food is 24-8-16 and cheap, should i grab some of that for veg?

 

ok folks, here is shot of the completed cabinet. phoenix is recovering from transplant, i plan to give it 24hrs or so before making the first bend for LST. btw, all 3 of my plants are from bag seed, and it looks like the big one vs. the other two are different strains. i dunno, it was all cheap stuff.

 

Ok...so my nice little plant "Phoenix" is doing nicely in the new grow cab. I have already come to the realization that those CFLs do generate a lot of heat. In order to combat this, I have placed a small fan in the cabinet that blows upwards, if anything just to keep the still heat from sitting on the plant. Every now and then when I go in the bathroom I open the door a bit to let heat out. I don't see any signs of the plant drying out or anything else.

I went ahead and made the first bend for LST about 9 or so hours ago, and the top has already turned straight up again and is on it way. I have the lights about 10" or so away from the plant... should I move them closer?

 

Phoenix developed some new leaves, and they didn't seem to want to fold open. They were reaching straight up towards the light, even though the light was less than 3" away from them. I decided that since we have very nice sun here, I am going to keep it outside during the day and bring it in under the lights around dusk. In less than 2 hours after moving it outside in the sun, the leaves have fully opened. They had been folded closed for about 4 days.

Could this be caused by my lack of ventilation in the growspace? It has to remain sealed due to location and people-traffic, but I do have a small battery operated fan in there blowing from the bottom-upwards past the leaves and towards the lights to keep the brunt of the heat off the plant. Any suggestions?

I am looking at getting some plywood and building a REAL growbox up in the attic, where I can create proper ventilation: intake air from outdoors and exhaust into water vents for sewage or even the clothes dryer vent that happens to run up through the attic and out into the open air. The box is probably going to measure in at 4ft(L) x 4ft(W), and either 4ft or 6ft tall, depending on how much wood I can afford to buy. It may become a hydro setup as well, but that is undecided at the moment.