cfl closet grow

Hello all!

I have been a lurker of this website for a long time, i have finally got a hold of some seeds (don't know what strain) and planted them in a seedling container. At present i have two lovely, green seedings about 1" tall.

Im using a 23w CFL bulb at the moment, i am fully aware this is not enough for the grow and I am planning on using a t5 flourescent, to complete the grow.
I hope to post some pics very shortly of my grow box, and seedlings.
I am using black gold seed raising mix, all that was on hand but it seems to drain well and have reasonable water retention.
I will post pics asap still getting my head round the layout of this website.

Any input, recommendations etc is very welcome!

Shagg

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sorry for the poor quality, will use better camera next time..
so the first two photos are from last night, bout 22 hours ago, so a little progress i suppose.
Today was quite sunny so I figured id put my babys on the windowsill to get soe natural light, dont know whether this is a good idea or not but anywhoo, I forgot to mention this is my first grow ever so if you have any recommendations please let me know.

had a little drama earlier on today, was fiddling round with the light for some reason and knocked over the container with the seedlings in it D: needless to say soil went everywhere and my poor babys were temporarily uprooted.
As you can imagine I nearly went into cardiacarest.. but nevertheless I dug a little hole for the roots and replanted them as they were. 7 hours on i havent seen any drastic responses to what must be a highly stressful time for my wee ladys (they better be god damn females..) just goes to show how resilient cannabis is.

in my grow box I am using a computer fan to keep the air circulating, really don't know much about fans etc so if any one has any recommendations it would be greatly appreciated. I will post another update later on.

Shagg

Haha, how are you gonna get the soil out of the carpet

dimebong said:

Haha, how are you gonna get the soil out of the carpet

Click to expand...

deionized water takes stains out

oh yes that was from when i knocked the plants over thanks for the suggestion sabarius!

Shagg

Are you going to be putting them outside?

It's the start of the New Zealand growing season right about now.

really? I thought it started in october haha, yeah i probably will put them out side at some stage still a bit chilly in chch at the moment

Shagg

September should be fine. They'll be big enough by then, and it'll be warm enough

yeah that makes sense man, might not invest in lights after all
will post an update shortly

Shagg

Ok thought I better post an update, really needing someones advice on this one.
It may just be me but it seems as though the stem has stretched a little.
I thought I had them to close to the light but maybe I was wrong
Anyway quite exciting to see the first set of serrated leaves coming through! they seem to be looking ok i guess.

Tell me what you think RIU community!



Shagg

how much water should i be feeding them ?

Shagg

thought i had better update seen as they have made good progress.
ALTHOUGH
My seedlings have slightly stretched but I just put more soil in the pot and buried the stem.
Really needing to get more cfls. I just checked my bulb and its only 1250 lumens thought it was better than that. oh well.
Heres some pics of the new growth!
First set of leaves looking nice and green

That much lumens is fine for now get more though I grew a few decent sized plants with just an 1800 lumen bulb so it can be done just keep your lights close . Add more lights as soon as you can 6500 k for veg and 2700 k for flower you can mix the spectrums though . 4000 k from my experience just makes the stems strech out too much so stay away from the cool white colour bulbs and look for warm white and daylight or full spectrum bulbs , If you plan on using CFL for the rest of your grow . Some decent looking seedlings though just get some wire a socket go to a hardware store and ask them for porcelain sockets ( because these stay coolest ) then get some electrical wire and a plug and start adding more bulbs . It`s way easier than i thought and last grow i bought a whole lot of desklamps because i was lazy but it`s way cheaper to just do it yourself .
Sorry rant over goodluck peace

hey dude
Cheers for all the advice, im going to get some more cfls tomorrow.
Il be sure to check out your grow!

Respect

Shagg

All i have are 3x 23w (soon to be 5x once i get some more sockets) about 5cm away from the plants in my cfl veg box. You can see some stretching because i had heat issues after accidentally taping up the intake with mylar, and had to keep the lights far away so there would be no heat stress, but when i moved them down 2 days after sprouting the stretching stopped. You can keep them super close to the seedlings.

And keep an eye out for HPS on sella and trademe. I'm only gonna veg in this box cause i bought a 400w HPS setup for $75 on sella.

You missed out on a mean CFL special at countdown too. 2x 23w for $7

They are looking good man!
They havent stretched too bad. $75 bucks doesn't sound bad for a HPS set up, Il keep my eyes peeled.
by the way, where did you buy that quad socket for your cfls? Im wondering where to get cfl fittings.

Shagg

$75 is an unreal price for HPS, and he said i'd never find a deal like it again, but i saw a 600w on trademe for $100 just after i bought the 400w. I didn't buy anything in that grow box except the seeds, and the box itself which is just a computer desk that i tuned into a cupboard. The sockets are made from an old 2 way security light i found in an inorganic rubbish pile. I found the third little socket in the middle when i was cleaning out an old house so i widened the hole where the sensor used to screw into and jammed that socket in. The pots i took from some old gravesites (don't judge) because i live across the road from the waikumete cemetery. The fans are from old computers that i connected to a switch and resistor so the intake fan slows down when the lights are off, and the exhaust turns off. And the mylar is just a bunch of juice packets taped together. I have my eye on some more security lights attached to an abandoned, burnt out house up the road my house too. Better than paying $8 for 1 batten holder. Everything in this country has to be at least 2x more expensive than it is in the US, and harder to find.

Next challenge is hauling the HPS into the ceiling and setting up a flowering room because of inspections. We rent.

Good resourceful soloutions there man, Im gonna be a lazy prick and buy some sockets from mitre10 mega. Hopefully they stock them.
I live in my parents house so this grow is stealth as, makes it difficult to get HPS set ups running that are good and concealed.
i live right beside a river so I went and scouted some growing sites, will most likely grow amongst broom and gorse. Very inhospitable terrain
So the sockets for CFLs are called battenholders right? Don't really know all the terminology yet.

Shagg

Yea, batten holders. The bulbs where you screw them in are Edison screws, and the twist in ones are bayonet. Mitre10 mega sells them for $7 each, the type that you install on the ceiling and you have to wire them up yourself. If they don't come with instructions i could probably take a photo of how mine are hooked up.