Not only am I broke, I'm cheap. (Stupid too, but those are stories for another day.) So when I got fed up paying much coin for ditchweed I decided to take the bull by the tail and face the situation. I did research into indoor growing because I'm paralyzed from an accident. My problem is that I have quasi-official visitors from various agencies to "monitor" my care. (These people treat the physically handicapped like we're children, which is beaucoup annoying .) Whenever they come over, I feel like I'm running a garage sale because they look around as if they're shopping. Ipso facto - maybe even post hoc ergo propter hoc - only place it was practical for me to grow was in a closet, and since I own a house built in the 1930s when people didn't have as much crap as today the closet is tiny. I mean just that. It's 5' high, 3' deep and 2' across. I found the ideal system. It's a deep-water culture setup in a 5-gallon bucket. I dropped a yard and change on the equipment. It included the bucket, two CF lights with reflectors, a net pot, aquarium stones, rock wool, nutrients, air pump and air stone. The D-I-Y cost would have been lower, but since I'm a complete beginner I wanted to get everything at once. Skip to the present: I have a flowering female as my first test grow which should be ready to harvest soon. I got another rig and some lowryder fems from Attitude which will start as soon as I harvest so I'll have two plants going at once. I'm not that worried about a big harvest because this is strictly a head stash. I figure un-pollinated, properly harvested dried and cured weed will be a huge step up from the lousy crap I usually get. The last quarter I got had 54 seeds. The guy said it must have gotten pollinated by accident; I told him 54 seeds meant the plant didn't just get pollinated once, it was a whore. All of this is happening without a huge layout of cash or a sophisticated setup. I do use distilled water to give me a good baseline without any of the pollutants from the city system, even though our tap water comes from Skaneateles Lake in Upstate New York. So my point is that it doesn't require an insane investment or military precision to grow. My system is ideal for my situation. I'll just be happy with enough, which is as good as a feast, right?
Good luck Hope it works out for you And it is a great step up from any weed you may get with seeds all over it Plus it sounds like the person gave you a few extra seeds if ya know what I mean I went the passive hydro system way because, of low cost and zero moving parts Its working for me just fine
good for you and good luck sir. nothing wrong with being frugal.... a little Yankee intuition goes a long way if u know what you are doing.
Also, if u get ur distilled water from a dehumidifier, be careful. I surmise that the water from these can contain dangerous amounts of copper in some cases, from the coils used in the machine.
They sell miny r.o. systems on ebay and you could build a cheap drip system that wouldn't require as much water. Cheap drip system= $5 18 gallon tote for holding the plants, $3 5 gallon bucket, $10 ebay adjustable drip spikes, $20 submersible pump, then whatever you want to spend on net cups and medium(hydrotons better since it's reuseable). You"ll need something to test ph and ppms regularly, either cheap test strips or a meter(preferably a meter). General Hydroponic nutes are the best bang for your buck and with the "lucas formula" you only need to buy the micro and grow formulas.
And do you mean your only using 2 cfls? If so you can get light socket adaptors that split a socket 2 hold 2 bulbs and screw a couple together to turn 1 light into 4-6 lights(6 max for safety reasons). Adaptors are cheap you can get em for around 1-2 bucks on ebay or a hardware store.