First time grow, Hindu Kush

Hi Ladies and Gentlemen,

This grow has been eye opening for me. I've had these Hindu Kush seeds for a little while now and finally decided tackle growing them. The bud was always super amazing, extremely dark, potent, sticky, purply, hashy (enough descriptive words?). Buds also had a very earthy and licorice type smell to them. Got you really stoned and tired. Beautiful weed, and I smoked it for so long I collected a few seeds that once in a while were in her buds. All seeds looked healthy and equal. Who knows about sex of the plants, it's a luck of the draw.

So when out and about I bought three products on a whim:







I mixed the bag of Soilution with the FoxFarm equally, and added some perlite to the mix. I then placed the seeds inside the pots. I didn't plan on using cups, I just thought it would be smarter to just put the seed in the pot it's going to live in. I then threw the pots up in my hidden "grow space". I forgot about them for a few days, maybe 3 days. Out of nowhere I remembered them and climbed up and discovered baby plants.





Well, I was astonished to say the least. Some part of me really didn't believe they'd be here, but like how parents talk about a baby...it came soon and then the responsibility becomes real. All of a sudden I was bitten with the paternal bug and decided they needed better lighting. So I rigged the room up to let there be one light per plant...I noticed they were stretching before. I also added more reflective stuff.





To my amazement, they grew up over the next few days. My mind is bursting with 8 million questions!! What are the yellow specs on the leaf edge? What's this, what's that? All sorts of fun, and lots of reading and searching.

Although I don't know how old they are, this is how they look now. I think they are maybe 7-8 days old. Next time I'll be sure to write down the date I put the seed in.













So here I am, basically confused about what the future holds. I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. For one thing, I need to vent out heat like no one's business, but thankfully for now things have been okay. But once it gets warmer, I'll need to vent out and vent in cool air from below. The space is about 10-11 feet long, 44" across, and about 38" height in the middle and 24" height on the very angled ends.

A few questions that come to my mind.

-What CFM fan to get air out of here, and what cfm to bring air in given the dimensions?
-How to duct air out? The way the dryer is rigged in a house? Most dryer vents are 4". Is this adequate venting space? 4" fans seem to be 200 cfm max...?
-As you can see, I'm extremely inexperienced; I placed plants in various sized pots. Have I messed up considering the size of the space vs. the large pots? Can I train the plants to grow sideways considering most of the space in there is in the length?


I can bring the plants outside, but my friend did this once and they got attacked by bugs so I'm not inclined to do that. I know this is a lot to ask, but these are just some of my basic questions, and if anyone has any advice I'll gladly take it! Just go easy on me as I'm entirely new to the game. The seeds were free, no sweat here. Just trying to have fun growing plants and quite a bit over my head....
Thanks again.

First off congrats on what's probably a new addiction, it's hard to stop once ya get hooked on growing.

A couple quick comments;
-good to see you have a fan circulating air around the leaves, if you switch to an oscillating fan there's less chance of getting wind burned leaves (hot air constantly blowing on leaves can dry them)
-with the way your bulbs are hanging most of your light is reflected & losing intensity since it's mostly projected from the sides. Getting them horizontal helps for seedlings, if you're using them for the whole grow they can hang between plants for better efficiency/ease.

To answer your question; those dimensions work out to around 110-120ft3, without any resistance a 4" 200cfm fan should work. Once you start adding carbon filters or long duct runs that'll cut down on the actual cfm's, in which case a 6" fan would be needed. The other advantage with a bigger fan is you can always run it slower to keep the noise down.

You can train plants to grow sideways but in the future you may want to look at auto's, which are quicker & smaller.

Definitely, without doubt even with a carbon filter , a four inch will work for extraction

Wow, thank you guys so much! I was afraid because I had a little inline fan here, only 65 cfm. It was so weak that I figured even times by 4, over 200 cfm would be too weak. I need serious suction, that little space gets hot.

So, it won't hurt to go up to 600 cfm and a 6" opening. However, my question is can I adapt this 6 inch down to 4 inch? Should be fine right? Reason being is the only way I can think to vent OUT of my building is by installing a dryer vent! Dryer vents don't seem to come in 6 inch variety, at least not at Home Depot....

Thanks for all the tips about the lights. I had no idea. I thought the plants were happy, but upon further review it does seem like an incredible amount of light is being wasted. Thanks a lot. All the help means something. I promise to keep this thread updated. Even if the plants die and turn to dust, I'll be sure to keep the update.

Pentawater said:

Wow, thank you guys so much! I was afraid because I had a little inline fan here, only 65 cfm. It was so weak that I figured even times by 4, over 200 cfm would be too weak. I need serious suction, that little space gets hot.

So, it won't hurt to go up to 600 cfm and a 6" opening. However, my question is can I adapt this 6 inch down to 4 inch? Should be fine right? Reason being is the only way I can think to vent OUT of my building is by installing a dryer vent! Dryer vents don't seem to come in 6 inch variety, at least not at Home Depot....

Thanks for all the tips about the lights. I had no idea. I thought the plants were happy, but upon further review it does seem like an incredible amount of light is being wasted. Thanks a lot. All the help means something. I promise to keep this thread updated. Even if the plants die and turn to dust, I'll be sure to keep the update.

Click to expand...

Using a 6" to 4" reductor will again just cut back on actual CFM by increasing the back pressure on the fan. The straighter & smoother the duct is the better, you should have a fair bit of leeway. Also don't forget that fans are much more effective at pulling air then pushing it.

Thanks a lot. Good information to have!

The plants keep getting bigger. I can't believe it.

Well, I've done loads and loads of reading since my last post and I'm frightened now! It seems I severely miscalculated the needs of 10 plants. Actually, make that 9. I forgot to mention that early on I accidentally snapped one of the plants. I know, really really dumb of me. I tried to revive it with a straw but I don't know folks. I think this plant is going to die. It sucks.

Anyhow, 9 plants is still a lot. I only have 314 watts of light among all of these plants! How terrible, how low. I really was blind. As you can see from the first photos I thought throwing up two lights would be enough for all these plants. Another major problem I've realized is I don't have hoods on any of these lights. A lot of lights is being lost.

The Tilted Bulbs...


The Snapped Victim plant..ugh....



Current Day Growth.





Well, given the parameters of what I have to work with, what would my fellow members here do in this situation? I'm prepared to improve the space, and willing to upgrade lighting, but to what? How can I manage 9 plants? Forgive my ignorance, I'm fervently reading every minute. Right now I have 8 bulbs at 23 watts each and and two bulbs @ 65 watts (the larger two). The lights are on 24/7 and, and at about 10 or 11 days old, maybe more, I'm not sure for how long I should run these lights for 24/7?

I'm worried that my growth is slow, but then again I've never grown one of these so I have no unit of measurement to compare against. I'm open to upgrading to better CFL devices, or LED; I could presumably even upgrade to HPS assuming my venting is going to be excellent.
I'd rather run a magnetic ballast as I find digital ballasts add a horrifying noise into my amplifiers and recording gear.

Well, anyway, apologies for the endless ramblings. Basically just curious what steps you ladies and gentlemen feel I should take in the care and nourishment of these plants. Thank you.

Well Ladied and gentlemen, complete change of plans. I walked in my building today and I couldn't TAKE the heat coming from the CFLS, and it wasn't even that hot of a day (although the sun was hitting the rood hard).

Since I didn't have the exhaust ready, I said F it, I need to take these plants outside. I can't deal with this heat. It was just horrible. But then again I've very sensitive/easily annoyed by heat.

So, I walked outside the building and looked around. To my surprise there seemed to be plenty of uncleared land I could use.



There seemed to be plenty of sunshine in the clearing of trees:



I then noticed section that I create a path in. At the time of the path creation, the sun was bright in all these spots all day. It only started dimming down when I took these photos:





This is the very end of the path I made, the deepest part of the overgrowth. The path goes down quite a ways. It's blocking both sides from the stupid neighbors! It gets sunnier here than it was at the time of shooting this picture.



The plants are all outside now:






Any thoughts? I'm sure these plants will be eaten by tomorrow with my luck. But I had no other options. I have deer netting. I suppose I could wrap em up.

That's really cool. Good luck

Thanks man! I sprayed deer spray all around the plants , not on them. But I sprayed like a madman last night...

To much shade where they are at now,i would get them in more sun soon.

Well, thankfully when the pictures were taken the sun was going away. In other words the pictrues were taken at around 5 or 6 pm. Even though the sun lookss high in the sky, the day was ending (although I think the first two pics might have been taken earlier). But for the whole day the sun was beating right where these plants are, and even if not, thems the breaks. I can't afford to clear cut my land lol

EDIT - with this in mind, I guess this goes to show why a newbie like me should plan well ahead in advance. If I had known what this was going to be, I would have bought a single COB, a single autoflower seed, and purchased an exhaust fan to get the heat out of the grow space i built. I was really disappointed, I spent a lot of time building this 'secret' spot.

Some updated pictures from today. I decided I needed to cut down some trees. I realize now I need to clear an F load of trees to get the sunshine in...

The plants seem healthy. They smell incredible, so stinky. I'm not sure about their watering schedule. I hope everything is okay with their roots. I added Perlite to the mix, but I'm not sure if I should have added more.

I spray a ton of Deer spray around the plants too. I wanna clear more trees for more light and so I can do deeper in and get even more privacy