Ok so I am a new member plus grower. Somewhat of a new grower. I’m having great difficulties as to how to grow the right way. And grow on my cheap budget.
Here are the things that I’m currently using so that way you experienced growers now a little of what I’m working with and maybe y’all can help me through out this process. I just want to say NOW thank you for all ur help. And sorry for my spelling.
Here we go.
I have 15 plants. 1 out of 15 is in a hydroponics as a an experiment. The one in the hydroponics is a sativa and it’s an unknown strain. The other 14 is I think India and it’s from a strain called Greyhound. By( mr.coteks.)
I’m about 2 or 3 weeks into my growing. I really wasn’t jotting notes down when I started which I should of. Sorry about that. But I’m going to say it looks like 2 weeks into veg. From seeds.
I have them in 1 gallon pots. Except for the hydroponics thata a 5gallon bucket.
I’m using 2 14 watt 800 lumens cfl bulbs. And one 65 watt 6500 lumens cfl bulb.
I also have a plastic netting on top as a few plants were way to taller than the others so I was told to do thijs and place the tall once under the netting so that they alk grow the same length.
I have no air circulating the room. I did but it’s getting cold outside and the cold is coming in so I closed the window. The humidity in the rookm is between 65 and 70%. The temp on topl of the plants are at 69°f. Oh I also have one T8 florescent lighht in the right hand corner u will c from pictures I’ll post up.
I’ll be posting pictures weekly so that way ya can see the progress from ya helping me out. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT ELSE I NEED AND THINK OF MY BUDGET AS I AM ON ONE. I WON’T BUY EXPENSIVE PRODUCTS.
I’m using technaflora for my nutrients since day one.
For soil I’m using half my own compost and half FoxFarm ocean forest soil… I have a receipt I’ve been using from technaflora they provided and I’ve been watering 2 cycles then in the 3rd I feed. So I water then water again then I feed. I will post up a pic of this recipe for success as they calll it litteraly. Ok here are the first pics please feel free to give me as much knowledge as ya can give me I do appreciate them . Thanx. Also let me know if I’m doing things wrong too.
Welcome to the forum! Everything looks pretty good. If you aren’t worried about smells, then you should be fine. Otherwise when in flower those girls will get smelly. I’m not certain of your grow space, or budget, but anyone will say that most of any growers budget goes to lighting. You’ll need more lighting as they get older. Fans are important to circulate air around, it prevents mold and helps the plants breath better. If you have any questions just use the @covertgrower and it’ll notify us. Happy growing! @Mr.Faceless
Thanx for the welcome. Love to be part of this forum. Now as for the lighting what will be a good amount of lighting . Like what type and how much of it. Again i can’t afford to buy them expensive mph or the other ones. I have tons of regular cfl light bulbs I can use just don’t know how much to put up?
You need larger pots. Im assuming theyre photos not autos. Most here use 5 gallon fabric pots for photos & 3 gall for autos. Are you checking your ph? Its very important & not expensive on amazon. Youve gotta get some type of air circulating in your tent or youll have all kinds of problems.
@Mr.Faceless photo period strains require a change in light schedule to go into flowering. Auto flowering strains the light schedule doesn’t matter they’ll flower anyways. What is your budget for light?
Your friend is correct. If you ran hps during veg your plants will stretch quite a bit. Where did you get your seeds? If they’re random bag seeds, chances are they are photoperiod strain. If you bought them, they should’ve specifically been labeled as autoflowering.
As far as the pots go, it really depends on what you’re trying to do here. 15 plants to flower with a single 150 watt hps doesn’t give you a whole lot of room to veg them much longer. In which case, 5 gallon pots will be a waste of time and money. One 150 will cover about 1 5 gallon pot as reasonable height. If that’s what you plan on working with, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to flip them soon.
To get the most out of the cfls, you need to try and get them horizontal and get some sort of reflector over them. But try and use household stuff, don’t go spending any cash on it. Any money spent would be better going towards a small led panel or another small hid light. If you’re going to do that, you can probably consider potting up one size and letting them veg a little more.
I would recommend that you look into getting some 85 watt photography studio CFL lights. They’re about $17 on Amazon. I used them on my first grow in vegetation and they made the plants really take off.
I got rid of a lot of the plants and kept 5 so that way I can grow them properly. I moved the lights so that they are side ways towards the plants and I put in a fan. All i need is more lights. Thanx for the advise
I don’t know much about HPS lighting, I use LED and CFL. For LED, you need about 25W/sq-ft, for CFL, 100W/sq-ft. Be aware, however, that CFL may be cheap to buy, but the electric bill will break the bank. It’ll take 500W CFL minimum for 5 plants, and even that’s pushing it. That’s a LOT of electricity to be burning 18 hours/day. On the other hand, this light (I have 2 of these, they work GREAT!) will do the same job (probably better) for just 130W: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00XC3LBI2/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?tag=greenrel-20
If you’re really strapped for cash, you can build up one light at a time in 24W increments:
You’re also definitely going to want a fan to circulate air. 3-gallon pots are fine. Also note that when measuring wattage, you count the actual watts pulled from the wall socket, not the “claimed” wattage. For example, that big MarsHydro claims to be a 300W light, but if you scroll down to see the specs, it says it only draws 132W of electricity. THAT’s the number you use for figuring out how much space it will illuminate. 25W x 5 sq-ft is 125W. One square foot per plant isn’t much, if you want to really grow them decent sized, you’ll want 1.5 to 2 sq-ft per plant. I use 2 of those 130W lights for an 8 sq-ft space, and can grow 6 plants of pretty decent size.
Let me bang my head. I know i know some growers here that did their grow on a shoestring budget. If you can get a successful grow then youll be saving cash by not having to purchase it. We all have tweaked our systems from their beginning.
