First Closet Grow

It's been one week since I set up my closet to grow my own bud. The reason I decided to produce my own smoke is mainly because I dislike buying weed from other people, and I'd much rather grow my own.

So after a couple weeks of research (ALOT of research from this site ), I started setting up my closet. I bought a 4 foot flourescent shoplight that contains 2 T8's. i have two fans, one oscillating and set at the plant's level, and the other one to circulate the air above the plants. I covered the window in the closet with black plastic that I made SURE was light proof. I didn't want anyone to see my light from the street at night. I chose to start my plants in small clear cups so I can see the roots hit the bottom or the side, letting me know when to transplant. I have about 10 of each kind of pot i have, the medium ones are 5 1/2 inches across, the largest is 8 inches. I realize I'm going to have to get bigger ones. The water i'm using is tap water, which Ig put chlorine drops in (the fishtank drops) and let sit for 24 hours. I keep a fishtank pump in there to keep the water moving. I have yet to been able to go to the local grow store to pick up a Ph meter or Ph up/down chemicals, but it's on my to-do list for this weekend. I added a digital thermometer yesterday, and with the door closet open the temp is usually around 78 and the humidity from 45-50. At night when I have it shut it has gone up to 82 and 54 though. Intake and exhaust is out of the question though. I can't cut holes into my wall or anything like that.

So one week ago after I set up everything, and my seeds had been germinated in a paper towel, I planted 12 seeds. Some have the little plants have become my favorite. In the end, I'm only hoping for about 2 or 3 female plants that i can clone.

well, here's some pictures. let me know what you think, or if you can suggest anything.

Pictures of the plants, the seeds are bagseed.













Here are the pots and the moisture/ph meters that i have. I don't think the ph part works though...

It gets over 80F with flueros? I noticed your fans are pretty far away from what I see. Your lights are really close which is alright, but I think if you bring the fans closer the temps will go down. Ive noticed my seedlings do the best at about 72F or so. Other than that, plan on getting some veg. nutes in a week or so if you dont already. Thats my amatuer opinion

Yeah i was going to get some grow nutes from the grow store. it's strange, they are only open on weekends. the fans are about 2.5 ft away from the plants. i think the reason it's so hot in there is because there is now vent in that closet and the wood floors only make it worse. It's alright though, leaving the door open seems to do the job.

keep it up, post in few days when they get bigger. Do you know what strain that is?

honestly, it's just some seeds i got from some shwag i bought here in texas. I didn't really have the money or the sources to buy seeds, also it's my first grow so i don't know what to expect.

Here are some more pictures..

It's been 11 days now. Yesterday I transplanted my plants after seeing that the roots were visible on the bottoms of their cups. The soil mix I used was 2 parts MG Organic (checked for gnats), 1 part perlite, and 1 part vermeculite. I also added a little tiny bit of blood and bone meal to the top of the soil. The transplant has been good so far. I was worried because some of the leaves were droppy but they look much better today.

I went to the hydro store today and got some mylar and fox farm grow big. I'm going to be using it at half-strength next watering.

For how young they are, it seems like you might have enough ferts in your soil already. Im not a soil guy, but I would take it easy on the nutes. If you do use them I want to see what happens in a few days.

yea dont use nutes when there so young. the whole point of transplanting is to give them fresh soil with fresh nutes, plus the MG stuff normally has so many nutes in it that it burns plants. Wait till there further along to feed.

the organic stuff didn't have any nutes in the soil from what i read. do you really think that the tiny bit of blood/bone meal i added will have that large of an effect on the plants? will half strength nutes give it nute burn at this stage?

two of my plants died overnight. the bottom leaves had turned lime green, yellow, then eventually brown. the leaves were very droppy and pointing directly down. this couldn't have been a watering problem, i check my soil moisture everyday. i'm thinking maybe it was heat stress because the temp went from about 78 to 83-85 for two days. it's back down now. the other plants are very healthy though, new growth everyday.

that sucks dude, I can relate with ya. I have one thats shriveling, while the others look f'n beutiful.

so i lost another one a couple days ago. i moved the fan too close and this one was warped and wilted by morning. oh well though, i expected some to die, it's my first time.

now i'm left with 7 very healthy (looking) plants. some have outgrown others. i have two bigger plants, four medium sized plants, and a baby that sprouted days after the others

last week i also added superthrive to the water (1 drop a gallon)

decided to start setting up my flowering area.

i built a CFL reflector that contains 6 sockets. i also plan to get some metal reflectors to point at the plants from the side. the bulbs in it right now are 26w and 1750 lumens a peice. i'm getting 3 biggers CFL's soon too.

All of this was really cheap but hopefully will be pretty effective. Let me know what your opinion is or if i could be doing anything better.

ps. sorry for the phone pics, my camera is being borrowed.

nice looking plants, good spacing. Do you plan on adding an hps bulb to your cfl's. that might cause heat problems with your setup though. keep it up.

i can't add any vents to my closet because a can't cut holes in the walls, so i know that HPS would be out of the question for this grow...which is said because my friend has a 1000w HPS he said he would lend me :/

one thing i might do is get 6 of those y connecters so i can upgrade from 6 bulbs to 12. do you think this would be a good idea?

i have a quick question for anyone who has been reading this...

should i move the plants that i am vegging under the cfl's, or keep vegging them under the flouresent that i have hanging? the meter i have tells me that i have more light witht he 6 cfl's then with the 2 4ft flourescent tubes.

i'd like to hear some opinions soon

yesterday was a real bad day for my plants.

i decided to transplant the two biggest plants and put them under the cfl hood i made. everything looked fine when the lights turned off that night, but when i woke up the light had fallen. one of the plant got burnt real bad, the top growth was burnt to a crisp, so i topped the plant. the other plants was bent a little bit but not damaged as bad as the other.

just when i thought it couldn't get any worse, i bumped into my shoplight and it fell on 3 plants, severly bending one and decapitating the other. i tried to mend the break in the stem but the leaves were dead in a matter of hours. do you guys think this plant will be ok? the growth below the snap is still green and healthy looking.

tomorrow i plan to transplant the other three and put them under the cfl lights with the others.

also noticed some fungus gnats (i think) a couple days ago. got some neem oil and i haven't seen any in about 3 days. i'll continue to spray though.

here are the pics (no more cell phone pics wooohooo!)

pic 1: 2 smaller plants, undamaged, one with red/purple stems (potassium def?)
pic 2: both big plants under the cfls
pic 3: undamaged bigger plant (my favorite so far)
pic 4: damaged bigger plant
pic 5: burnt leaves

here's the decapitated plant. any hope for it?

There's definitely hope for it, If you check out my journal the same thing happened to me (downed cfl onto plant). I topped it, cleared anything that was burned. I'm talking 2ft down to 6 inches. The plant recovered greatly, however it will be vegged alot longer as a result. Definitely keep it, because in my experience they grow back much stronger. Peace.