Hi. I am new to this but have been reading the forums for the last 4 days straight it seems. You guys know so much and so any thoughts, help and ideas would be greatly appreciated. Well in my town in Illinois there are no reliable dealers. So my friend and I want to bypass the dealers altogether and grow our own. We plan on doing it in his basement and set up a grow room. I plan on making some bubbler buckets like illustrated in the guides. I figure I will order all my supplies in order and start in a month or two. I was going to order my nutes, pH ups and downs, and a pH/TDS tester, and other parts for the hydro online and probably have them shipped home. If anyone asks I'll say I'm going to be growing flowers. I will try to get as much stuff from the local hardware store so I can buy it anonymously in cash. I'm going to go tomorrow to see if there's anywhere in town that would sell a HPS light set. If I can't find one it'll order that online too. I'll get all my supplies ordered and sit on them for a few months since we won't be able to grow until the end of May (long story). Then before we start to grow I'll order some seeds from a seed bank online and we'll get started. I plan on planting 3 or 4 that way odds will show we'll have probably 2 male and 2 female. Everything we get will just be split between me and 2 friends so we should be set for a while after harvest and curing. We'll have some fans set up in the room to keep the air circulating and to strengthen the stalks and I will get some intake/exhaust ventilation going to circulate as we will be growing in a small room in the basement. Note: There isn't a grow shop in my town. The closest thing is a few big hardware stores and a department store with gardening centers. My main questions are as follows: 1)How should I get my seeds in the US? How do they usually ship them. Is customs a real big issue when they're getting mailed in and is it a big deal for me to order them with my credit card? Where should I have them shipped? 2)How bad is it going to smell? How should/can I cover this up. We live in town so I don't know how well an exhaust fan will work for the smell. I heard about carbon filters but how easy are those to acquire and how well do they work? 3)Is it an issue ordering these growing materials off the internet and having them shipped to my house? 4) What should I grow? This is my first grow so i don't want it to be a really difficult strain but if I'm going to put all this work in I also don't want anything that will be disappointing. I was thinking something like some Blueberry but I simply haven't smoked enough strains to know what would be good. I want more of a head high but I don't have the time to grow a full Sativa plant. I'm sure my questions seem really simple to you guys but these are the few things that I have been thinking of the most the last few days. If anyone sees anything I missed or has any insight to this please let me know. Any thoughts/constructive criticism would be much appreciated. Thanks!
well this is what i would do if i was ordering seeds online - get a friend n tell him u need X amount of money on a visa card that says "A GIFT FOR YOU" then use a name of the previous owner or a friend or make one up. i would be concerned with growing stuff shipped to ur own house ask a friend if it can be sent there, dont wanna cause attention i live in illinois too n just get what you need n pay cash for the rest. smell could be an issue but i used apple cider viniger n it does cover up the smell pretty good. hope this helps
That's a really good idea. I'm definitely going to do the gift card idea and have it shipped somewhere besides my house. Then there will really be no trail. How do you use the apple cider vinegar? Do you just leave a tray of it out? Have you ever had seeds shipped in before? Is that a big deal? Thanks for the help.
i havent bought seeds yet i wanted to practice with bagseed first n see how it goes you could get a to-go container the one with the clear top at a cracker barrel, its pretty big n just pour the vinegar in that n place it in the grow area the fan would circulate the smell of it to cover up the MJ