Here's my girlies (hopefully).... 1 week and 1 day old. May be a little hard to tell, but they are 3-4 inches long and sit 1-2 inches from the lights at all times. They've stretched a bit, the middle one even toppled over a couple days ago. (thus, the crookedness) I added some dirt to help it stand back up and it seems to be doing well. Temps range from 75 - 85, and using a fan regularly. (hopefully strengthens up the stems a bit too) Humidity between 40 and 50%. The lights you see total around 175 watts actual, and I keep two large windows open during the day for more sun. I've only watered them once so far. Certainly haven't used any nutes yet. They were planted in Scotts premium topsoil with perlite added, but I've had alot of folks tell me not to use it, so I traded up for some potting soil but haven't repotted them yet. Think I should now or wait till they grow up enough for the big pots? I don't have a pH meter yet, but will be getting a kit soon. This is my first grow.. Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Im also a noob and i cant help but notice how close the lights are and they still look like they're stretching. I wonder why....
Yes you need more light. There streching because there saying "more light more food more light". Go get a bunch of Daylight CFLs from lowes/home depot. What kind of lights are those anyhow. A standard Flourcense tube is no good and incadesent is not.
No soil with nutes in it and if your new soil has none then I would replant now and plant them down in the soil to about an inch or so from the 2 little round leaves. As for your light if you have heat under controll you can have it within several inches from the tops of the plant, thats why theire stretching the light is to far away for that type of light being used.
Yeah, this morning... another one had toppled over. I'm gonna replant today. So, after researching TONS, you're now telling me that standard Flourescent is not good? How is that any different than cfl, besides it's shape? If I had tons of money, sure I'd buy tons more light obviously.... but.. I don't.
They would work for getting a plant started but thats about it. Regular flourescent lights lack light intensity, their are T5 flourescent grow lights but those are HO lights (High Output). With CFL`s you can focus more light where the regular flourescent light tubes would miss on the plant. When using CFL`s you want 100 actual watts of light for the first plant and an additional 50 watts of light for each additional plant. I use a T5 HO light for short term vegging.
as rhapsody stated, they need more light, and more quality light. You can use flourescents, but youll want to buy the correct bulbs for it, and maybe even add 1 or 2 more fixtures. You can build a nice cfl light using 1 1/4" pvc pipe, and a few T's, & elbows. With the little rubber style light sockets you can get at most hardware stores, and you can build it to fit whatever space you need it to for pretty cheap. For flowering you can rewire a 150w HPS shoplight from the hardware store, and make it into a remote ballast setup real easy, and have a good light to flower a couple girls under. at a minimum, I would reccomend adding 2 more of the fixtures like you have, get both spectrums of lamps for em, and mix them while vegging. Keep em close, to help stretching stop. If you can afford it though, a nice 4-5 bulb CFL setup with mixed spectrum lamps, would help quite a bit. I know it did for me anyway. I noticed a difference in less than 2 days after installing it over my cloner/Light duty veg unit. Good luck, and keep at it, theres a ton of info on this site, and a few others out there that a person can really learn a bunch from. Just remember, growing is like most other hobbies, your only going to get out of it, what you put in. But its so worth it all. DIS
well said Tplat, I was trying to figure how to word it, and you nailed it.. I will get a pic of my small 2 light cfl fixture I made for my cloner, and put it on here so You can kind of see what Im talking about.. lol.. DIS
For my bubble cloner, small clones and small seedlings I use a 4 bulb bathroom vanity light with Y splitters in each light socket, it is screwed to a piece of wood with an eye bolt at each end to hook the light hangers onto. I just spliced a cheap $2.00 power cord into the vanity lights wires for pluggin it in.
OK, as promised heres some pics of my small 2 bulb light for my cloner, The bulbs are different spectrums, 1 daylight 2700k, & 1 soft 2300k, or whatever the hell it was lol, I cant read it anymore.. lol.. The nice part is you can build these to suit your needs, & or space. TPLAT, the bathroom vanity is a nice idea also, Ive even seen peeps use the plug-in style Y adapters just plugged into a power strip, 6 lamps per strip.. But heres the one I made anyway.. Hope it helps, DIS