Ok, so our 3 White Berry and 1 Strawberry Haze seeds just finished germinating inside a wet paper towel. Roots and leaves are visible and they look pretty nice. Our setup is a bin lined with tin foil and we're going to hang 2 Helical 26 watt bulbs on top of the bin. We're doing this inside an apartment and smell is probably our biggest worry. I know we'll need a fan or a filtration system later on, but can anyone give me some recommendations to help us grow successfully? Any help will be greatly appreciated .
well usually the smell wont be THAT bad so you will need a filtration system for just 2 plants. as for the tip on succesfull growing: read, read, read, make mistakes, read, improve, read
Honestly, you aren't ready to grow yet. You need to do a lot more reading before you will be. The fact that you already germinated your seeds adds some urgency to this, provided that you want a reasonable chance of growing successfully. A germinated seed shouldn't have leaves. Tin foil is not a good reflective material for grows, because it can cause hot spots that burn plants without raising the temperature throughout the box enough to notice. 26 watts per plant is not really enough to grow them well. You should be concerned about smell, because it's an easy way to get busted if, say, your landlord stops by. Read guides and grow journals, expand your general knowledge on the topic. Then come back with some more specific questions. If you want some specific help right now, you can post some more details about your grow box and get some feedback.
Ok, 1st of all, tin foil is a great reflective material for grows, ive seen it done before with nice looking plants as the result, so idk what ur talking about there. 2nd off, 26 watts per plant is more than enough cuz again, ive talked to ppl growing who said it works well. And there isnt a landlord so to say, the only ppl that come around the apartment are maintenance workers, but they only come in if we allow them in. Anywyas, yeah im going to keep reading up and studying, but I am ready to grow, so don't tell me I'm not, I know a fair amount about budz, just gonna keep learning.
Not that old chestnut about ´hotspots´ again. I have used aluminium foil (nobody has made TIN foil for years) as reflectors for MJ and other plants with perfect success for many years. This hotspot stuff is just an Old Wives´ Tale - doesn´t happen.
As long the foil is straight (no wrinkles, etc.), then you'll probably be fine, but wrinkles can happen fairly easily so be careful. That's the risk with using tin foil (or aluminum foil, as Doris pointed out, as if there were a difference in this context). It's a higher risk, but as long as you're careful it can be fine. It won't necessarily hurt your grow, but the risk is higher. 26 watts isn't sufficient, especially because you're using CFL's. Your plants will grow, in the sense that they won't die from lack of light, but they won't grow anywhere near as well as if you had more light. A pair of CFL bulbs, 26 watts each, are unlikely to grow very robust plants or yield very much when you harvest. There are other factors, of course, but light is a major one that can limit your results. Apartments usually have landlords, but it doesn't really matter. What I was talking about was people who may come into your apartment. You may say that you just won't let maintenance workers in, but you can't predict something (like a pipe bursting, for example) which may require one to come in. In such a situation, you may not have time to set up something to deal with the smell in time, and can wind up in prison. And I don't understand why you decided to contest this point, as you yourself stated that you thought you'd need something like this. I agree, and gave an example of why. You didn't even address the fact that your germinated seeds have leaves, when they shouldn't. Maybe you used the term wrong, and meant a sprout, but it doesn't really matter. I've been growing for quite a while, and pulled in several harvests. I've grown with CFL's, and seen things that work and things that don't. I've been here at GC for a while as well, and seen lots of people jump into growing before they're ready, and kill their plants, waste their time and money, end up with a harvest barely worth the trouble of the grow, or wind up in prison. All of them thought that they were ready to grow. You resemble a lot of these people in your original post; there wasn't much detail on your grow, and you're using methods that have produced substandard results before. This gets old after a while, especially because we end up answering questions that are easily answered in stickies. And maybe you are more ready than these people, but historically I've been pretty accurate in guaging the likelihood of a person's setup to work well. This doesn't necessarily mean that your grow will fail in any way, you may be very successful. But don't come crying to me if you don't take my advice and it doesn't go well. Even if you don't like my tone, I did address each of the points that you listed in your original post, along with advice (which you asked for) on how to make your grow more successful. But hey, apparently you know everything about "budz" already, so what could my experience possibly add? Good luck with your grow, whatever you end up deciding to do. See my response to foil reflectors above. Using foil won't necesarily damage your plants, just like being driving drunk won't necessarily end up with you crashing your car. It's not guaranteed, but the chances are increased compared with the alternatives.