Grow Box Ideas, Please Help 1st Timer(:

Because of the space I would say its best you used CFL lights, computer fans are very good for airflow and and 4"exhaust fan for the medium I use 75% coco coir with 25% Perlite however most people use fox farm or all mix

 

if you were able to use the full height you would have many options. a 600w lamp being a favorite one. however if you sticking to that height you will probably be better off using big ass cfls in there

 

Here is a link to my personal grow that I just started but I have a 40x40x18 box. I go over a lot of my specs in the post and you can see if anything englightens you. Good luck friend! http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-grow-journals/1161848-white-widow-auto-cfl-custom-cabinet.html

 

may I ask why you are making a gro box inside of the closet instead of using the whole closet?
and yeah, Id say cfls or led, and computer fans. you should go see current grow journals and there are plenty of threads that answer every question you have.

 

Well it's good to keep the air well circulated in your grow room. You should use ethier CFL's (high output) or LED lighting(Because of low heat). For fertilizer mix you should use pretty much any mix that has the right nutritional factors, even then you can use soil from outside and add the nutrition in. When the plant is a seedling and just sprouting it's a good idea to keep it exposed to relativity high humidity always above 40%, I recommend around 60-70%. For watering unless you live near a spring or naturally flowing water you should either filter it, boil it down so contaminates are out or buy good water a the store. Also when just sprouting a regular CFL will be fine for a couple day since it does not need high light concentration when first sprouted.

 

Maybe I'm naive but this sounds like a colossally bad idea. You don't know what pests or pollutants are in your ground soil. You can get clean soil for only a few bucks at a gardening (not hydro... Just regular garden shop, or Lowe's/Home Depot) . Don't take a chance of bringing bad things into your garden and thereby into your house.

 

Agreed with ganjananda. Invest the little bit of money to ensure something doesn't seriously affect your plants. Cannabis needs a lot of love. The more love you give the better the rewards

 

CFLs are crap because the heat, and the spectrum isn't right.
Cool White is the worst, it will result in stretched plants. Later they will normalize somehow, but flowers will be smaller.

I have made seeds using a CFL system. They are viable, but I need to use a lot of seeds. Guess from 50 seeds, not more than 10 develope into plants.

The heat was ridiculous. I only use LED now.

 

Pests are not a problem. Neither pillbugs, centipedes, or worms and earpiercers. But, you have to be aware there can be small slugs, and even slug eggs. They will hatch from the heat within days. And they will love especially seedlings.

You will regularily loose some seedlings from these slugs, and you need to watch out for them to come to the surface.

Outdoors soil is not bad, because it is "alive". It will normally have trace elements, and organically available nutrients. Soil from a bag is more or less "dead", it will contain some fertilizer salts which will last about 2 months, but then growth will actually stop unless you add nutes.

 

You should use LEDs. CFLs have a wrong spectrum, and produce a lot of heat. Plants will grow, but not right. And they get so hot you need to cool them with fans if you use many. Fire hazard. Leaves can scorch so you need boxes or enclosures. So many disadvantages.

What I use for nutrition is a mix of chemical fertilizers I found in various shops. You need to take care of the NPK ratio.

High N is for growth, while high K is for flowering. A 7:7:7 mix is good for both. But if you use a high N, you will see plants will stretch a lot and grow big fan leaves. I use a mix of solid granules + liquids as well.

There are also many special Marijuana fertilizers. If you are willing to invest in them, they will do a good job.

Ventilation is totally unimportant. The small fans from the lamps will cause enough airflow. You only need to take care about overheating. You only really need ventilation if you have many plants. Same for the smell. A few small plants don't normally cause much odor.

If you use a big fan and exhaust, of course the odor will spread. Otherwise it will mostly remain inside the enclosure.

I had large plants about 1.30 metres without any ventilation, and they developed normally.

Inside the box, take care the surfaces are white. You don't need tinfoil and it even can cause problems. If the surfaces aren't white, you can use white paper (cheap), or paint them white.

 

Yeah that's what I use for regular growing. But for clones and sprouts I use CFL's because of their light sensitivity. Their growth is stunted with high powered bulbs for some reseason. So I alway start them off with CFLs. I have herd that CFLs are actually the right color spectrum since they offer full spectrum but Ive found LEDs are best because of being able to change spectrums with a click on the light in my grow room. And plus it sounds like your using regular CFLs instead of the high output of regular growing. It's fine when they are just barley sprouting or is a clone but you need a CFL that puts out around 600w-1000w. Which can usually be found at the homedepot or online for around $20-$30 at the highest. Also since they are CFLs they use only like 1/6 of their output so you save on electricity. I know plenty of successful grow ops using CFLs

 

you may of struggled to make seeds but I can guarantee the CFLs were not the problem. I have been breeding seeds for many years with CFLs and never had any problems

 

so your happy using random outside soil but not tap water? that sounds totally backwards to me. I have always used my tap water, of course I can't vouch for the quality of anyone else's but mine is great. using outdoor soil is simply gambling your whole grow to save £5.

 

it seems there are a a lot of noobs dishing out incorrect advice on this one. I can't be arsed to argue with them all so I will just say to the original poster, be skeptical of all the advice you get and research plenty before committing to anything

 

I will give you a background of me and where I live. I live in a rural town of farmers in America, we have pretty rocky soil but still has great nutrients and organic material in it. I take out all rocks I find and use that for my plants it's always done well I believe this is because what is already in the soil is the best ingredients you can use. Im an organic grower BTW so I don't use the chemical "junk" soil bought in stores with manily fillers and bearly any if any organic materials required for plant growth. If you don't have good soil where you live you can always buy fake soil. Or you can enrich it your self adding in the potassium, carbs, proteins needed for plant growth already found in the soil. You can do this by adding in food scraps. Peels of bananas apples potatos and fish scraps (just to name a few). Your not really saving anymoney do to the work you put into it and things you buy that your soil isn't rich of like worms. People say it's a waste of time, energy and is only good to save a couple bucks. I say it's being commited to growing organically and natural enrichment of vitamins and minerals.
For the water situation I have to say that water is the most important element to your crop, you don't even need soil technacically. Water with contaminates in it will never help your plants grow it may even stunt growth. Where I live I have cristal clear water by my house but you go to the town next to me it's gross with the water sometimes Turing a dark brown color just 1 town away if you live it that town good luck growing a good crop of your waters not even clean. In this situation you need to filter it out best you can and mabie even boil it down. Or you can buy great spring water at the store. If you choose not to you risk each and every one of your plants health.

 

saying your particular soil is good to use is one thing, advising someone else to use their soil without having the first clue of its quality is quite something else. someone's soil could be toxic, someone's tap water is very unlikely to be

 

Good point. Never thought of toxic soil because its such a common practice where I live to add ground soil in for your plants and enrich the soil further after digging it up or to use minure sitting somewhere for a few years after it turned into soil. But then again our soil is technically fine to just plant into even with all the rocks. It's also not uncommon to see plants growing on people front porches here, back yard or even anywhere else. You make a good point on soil toxicity and you don't want to use toxic soil it would be detrimental to a grow op.

 

the soil in my area is great too, lots of well rotted organic matter in it. but some parts of the world people's soil is more like sand than soil, loose dry gritty. other soil can be full of clay. marijuana would struggle with bad soil. any store bought compost would beat it