Have a couple questions about my first set up, need advice

I'll try to answer each question:


\t\tThis will be my first grow. I dont have much time, so Ive decided to go with either lowryder 2 or masterlow.

All well and good, make sure you get your seeds from the company that patented the strain, otherwise you're getting shitty seeds. I'd recommend getting female CLONES, of any indica variety, as they are all small and grow just as well. Clones are more expensive, however guaranteed to be female and healthy, and you can also just buy as many as necessary, not have to double up.

I am thinking I will get about 40-50 seeds so after getting rid of the males I should have 16-25 or so females.

Seems a safe bet but realistically it's not; either you'll end up with a majority female or majority male. Rarely do things like this work out 'just so'. Jump ahead for my take on how many you really need.

Since lowryders show sex in about 2 weeks, do you think it would be possible to have 30-40 plants under a 600 until they show sex, then get rid of the males?

Let me say this without question or debate: ALL strains show sex within 2 weeks of their flowering period starting. Period. This is not strain-specific, it is plant-specific to marijuana.

30 plants is far too many, in my opinion, for a light as small as 600w. I wouldn't put more than NINE females under a 600w. Any more and the plants themselves just won't get enough energy to finish. But yes, your theory is sound here.

In fact if you want to VEG your plant longer, making it bigger, you can still clip a branch off, stick in a glass of water, and put it in 12/12 lighting somewhere else. In 2 weeks, that branch will show flowers (male or female). You can then assume the plant it came from is the same sex, as it will be, every time.

Or would that be sacrificing yield having too many plants under the 600 at once?

exactly.

I am hoping to end up with about 16-20 females under a 600 watt hps. What do you guys think?

Too many. Half as many will do twice as well.

Also, a question on lighting. Since they are autoflowing and I dont need to switch to 12/12 lighting, should I leave it on 24 or should I switch to 18/6? And if so, after how long of 24hr would I switch to 18/6? Will leaving the lights on 24 all through flowering incease yield? Or is there a more optimum ratio to maximize yield?

...Uh? What? Get this as a fact:
ALL Marijuana-strains (and many other plants) have two 'periods'. The first is the vegetative state, or 'veg', and the second is the flowering state or '12/12'. The state is determined by the light-times. In 24 hours, if you have 13+ hours of light, your plants will count it and just grow stems and leaves, no flowers. This is because according to the Earth's seasons, the plant has about 6-7 months before having to reproduce, as the plant is not 'dying' yet. Once, on Earth, the light ceases for 12 hours total at night, the plants begin seeing the seasons ending and they will die in the winter, so they produce flowers (sex-organs) to produce seeds. Each and every bud-pod is TRULY a seed-pod, just un-pollenated by a male. It should also be said that anything from 14 hours of sun to 24 hours of sun will be considered 'vegetative' to the plant, and they will not begin flowering.

Indoor growing you must FORCE your plants to flower by exposing them to a 12 hour dark period every night. And by dark I mean 'like a coffin'. ANY light during this dark period can cause plant stress, seeding, and other dangerous mishaps to ruin your precious crop.

To put it simply; there IS NO 'auto-flowering' marijuana plant. They must be given time to vegetate to a certain size, then switched to 12/12 to force the flowers to begin development. From there, depending on strain, you have 7-12 weeks before the buds are finished entirely. With an indica strain, bet 7-8 weeks to finish from Day 1 of 12on/12 off lighting.


Any other tips to maximize yield with this set up?

I said it once, but Clones work better, and trim branches off in the middle and bottom to allow as much energy to go only to the colas of each plant; you'll get more and better weight out of it. Also, do more strain-research. The ones your looking at are the kind of strain that people pass off as 'amazing' but they don't produce quality. Check out Kush strains, real Kush, and you can expect better buds.

What are most people getting off their lowryder 2/masterlow per plant?

Hard to answer, each strain does differently in any different environment. With the light available, don't expect more than half a pound of dried, trimmed, ready to consume bud. That estimate is based only on light, as light is the only means of energy the plant has at it's disposal. More light = More Bud. Simple.

What would be a good soil mix to use?

Fox-Farm. For soil...period.

Also, what size pots would be the best for most yield?

If you're only doing 9, like I recommend, you'd want nine 3-5 gallon buckets for each plant to give it the most root-space you can. More roots-per-bud on a plant = faster finishing time.




Feel free to PM me for more info if you need help.

 

I've been using Fox Farm's Ocean Forrest mix and I like it. I haven't used much else, but Ocean Forrest certainly will allow you to grow some killer bud.

 

Sorry to ask questions in your thread but where can i purchase Fox Farm soil?

 

Itty, I am very impressed with your response!

Guys, we all need to take a leaf (pun intended) from this persons book. Informative answers whilst still pushing the KISS prinicipal.

My hat goes off to you

-Milsy

 

Well, at least you were... If the dudewhodidstuff has chosen regular big/normal sized plants, his input might have been on the money, but in this case, it's far from that. no offense itty.

You can plant that many masterlows under a 600W, without any problems and wait for them to show sex, which will happen even with 24 hours of light each day. The males should have all outed themselves by day 17 from sprouts showing.

These autoflowering plants DO NOT VEG indoors, at all...
You CANNOT CLONE these plants, reasonably...

Because the 600W has so much light, and these plants are so small they'll all (the females) fit, if you have big, square containers, even better put them up to 6 x 6, in a big square. The containers should be at least 5 liters to 2 gallons. Anything bigger than 2 gallons won't increase the yield so much, but some people have done more than "ounces" with slightly bigger containers. Under such a light, in large buckets, you'll get at least 20 grams of great bud per plant.....at the very least if you know anything about what you're doing

These plants *might* get as high as 60 cm, probably no bigger than 50, not including container.

The best Lighting regimen is 20/4 from start to finish. While they are good to go in 10 weeks, 12 weeks will really add to them!

That's just the short of it. I don't think so many people know about these specific plants here, they're still kind of "new" and not-so popular.

If you can, get Masterlow, it's the best of the available like this. Get the actual seeds from Mdanzig, if you can. Other rip-off knockoffs have been showing hermies, and are truly inferior than the "real thing".

Oh yeah... Go register at highbred.net. That's where you can find +real authority+ on these strains, not, well... you know.

There's a guy here S @ H, who could tell you quite a bit. He'll recommend highbred, too.

Good luck, the Masterlow is awesome smoke, you won't be disappointed.