First time grow, need help choosing which seeds to start

Hey guys!! First grow, first thread, first post. However, Im no newb to forums and consider myself quite the connoisseur when it comes to bud, however am absolutely a newb in these parts.

I've been doing toooooons of research. I'm a biochem major at an east coast university, and really plan on doing everything I can to give my little girls the best chance they can have. I can't believe I haven't thought of coming here before, BC from the threads I've read and seen so far there seem to be plenty of people around here with the know how and experience I hope to one day achieve. I definitely plan on milking as many of you as I can in the next few months, lol.

Anyways, I was gonna post this in the newb section but really I wanted general information about growing certain strains in particular (unique needs or differences) based on my setup, and figured it would be better suited here.

Let me start out by saying I am going to be vegging my seedlings under a 400 watt metal halide, and once my plants get a little bigger probably add another 400 watt and switch over to HPS for flowering. The space is about 5' long, 30" (2 1/2') deep, and about 8' tall. I'm hoping on having 4 plants grow to moderately decent sizes.

Which leads me to the main point of my thread: I've recently ordered 8 different seeds and don't want to start them all at once, especially being my first grow, especially considering the fact that I would rather have two or 4 big plants than 8 tiny ones. These are the strains that I purchased:

Blue Dream
OG Kush
Sour Diesel
White Widow
Train wreck
Bubba Kush. And my two freebie seeds,
Northern Lights X Skunk &
Critical Super Silver Haze.

I know its a mostly sativa list, which might not have been a good idea considering I'm learning, but I have faith in my patience and my ability to take good advice, lol. I really want to get the blue dream going, but thats one of my faves and I'd like a little practice before I get her going. I was thinking of starting with the Bubba kush (pretty pure indica strain) BC the bushy indica size would be easier to deal with, and I've heard its not as temperamental or picky as some of my other strains.

I was also thinking of starting the white widow as well. I've heard its a fairly resilient plant that a lot of growers consider overrated, but for the most part pleases people with its resin production and decent yield. I've also heard that if you don't mind being patient and giving her a couple extra weeks to flower that it generally does really well.

If I do these two mostly indica plants then I'll probably start at least a third (if not a 4th) seed. I've always loved super silver haze, and have the freeby seed that's crossed with critical mass so I might give her a go. I love love love sativas (plus they take a while) so I'd like to at least get one started, but when that blue dream or that sour diesel comes up, I want them beautiful lol.

If anyone has hung in there through my ridiculously long thread then I really appreciate it. I hope to start getting pics up soon, just made my order from attitudes seeds a day or so ago so I still have a little time for prep work. I've got 5 bag seeds going now to make sure I knew what to expect with germination and the seedlings responding to light, but honestly they'll probably wind up given back to mother nature when my primo seeds come in.

So any advice from people who have experience with these strains would be greatly appreciated. I am kind of hesitant to start out with some of my really good ones BC I don't want to mess them up, but if I have to I could always take a clone and keep the strain, but again my space is fairly limited. I'm just really hopeful that I can produce some really quality nugs; I consider myself a bit of a perfectionist and am sick and tired of seeing weed that comes from neglected plants floating around, and have decided to take action and start producing something beautiful myself. I look forward to getting to know some of you, and again, thanks for any insight you could offer.

Hmmmm, Trainwreck, excellent choice, White Widow and NLXSkunk good choices for beginners while you tweak your grow room. Critical SSH, best left till you have a grow or two under your belt. You are obviously of a scientific thinking type so growing should come naturally to you as its basically creating a scientific environment in which to conduct an experiment. Would be interested in seeing how you progress once you get started. PS you grow in the same space as far as dimensions go as me and I find its suitable for four plants max, it may seem when they are little that you could do a lot more but this is an illusion. good luck mate, once you get started do a grow thread with pics and all and folk will get into it and help you out.

Sounds like you know what you're doing, a couple things: dont try to overfeed your plants it happens faster then starving them, also if you arent the patient type you might want to use 8 week flowering strains only but that depends on you space mainly.

Good luck you're going to have a BLAST!!!
Peace

Awesome, yeah I was thinking of doing the northern lights/skunk cross, too. I've never had northern lights but I know its a good one. Plus, I wouldn't mind if one of the crosses didn't turn out perfect. I want the purebred strains to turn out amazing, and true to their traits.

As far as space, I know what you mean. I hear about some beginners starting with 8 female seeds and plan on keeping them in the closet and I'm like holy sheesh. My buddy in Colorado has a reallllly nice setup; I'm basically trying mimic his setup, but with a tenth of the budget it won't be easy. My main concerns right now are ventilation and smell. I can run as many exhaust ducts as I need to into the attic above, but fresh air comes via a duct running behind my furniture to the window, plus I have a Co2 tank and regulator and I need to figure out a nice cross between pumping fresh air into the closet but also not wasting Co2.

I've thought about getting an agromax tent in order to help control the environment, but it would decrease size. I might turn the closet into mother/clone/veg and get a tent down the line for flowering.

TsmokeTrain said:

Sounds like you know what you're doing, a couple things: dont try to overfeed your plants it happens faster then starving them, also if you arent the patient type you might want to use 8 week flowering strains only but that depends on you space mainly.

Good luck you're going to have a BLAST!!!
Peace

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Yeah, definitely gonna try and avoid nute burn. In fact, probably just try and go with a nice healthy organic soil mix for the first half of veg. I'm still undecided on nutrients. I'd like a nice arsenal BC I know the chemistry is important, but I've seen some good results with simple grow and bloom formulas for the two stages of growth. I'm also interested in aeroponics but definitely gonna try and get my groove going with soil first.

See, I am just the opposite. I hit them with nutrients as hard as I possibly can UNTIL they SCREAM STOP!
I want to give the plant as much as it possibly can take.

Real White Widow is awesome, people that bash it usually ended up with questionable genetics, Or they didn't let it finish. It's not extra weeks, its proper weeks to finish. A very resilient strain that seems to love cal/mag. Good Luck and Hapy Growing.

Ww or bd or tw

althor said:

See, I am just the opposite. I hit them with nutrients as hard as I possibly can UNTIL they SCREAM STOP!
I want to give the plant as much as it possibly can take.

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How early do you start hitting the soil with nutrients? I've heard to at least leave them alone until the seedlings are bigger than clones, or to dilute down to a quarter of regular concentration and use it less often.

Timewasmoney1 said:

Ww or bd or tw

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. Honestly, those are probably my fave 3. The train wreck isn't a bad idea, anyone ever grown that one? How resilient is it?

I've got Trainwreck going from clones just now, only 10 days into the flip ( Switching lights to 12/12 ) so no spectacular bud pics just now I'm afraid, but I found it to be as tough as any during the veg process. I know from the person who gave me the clones that they respond well to as the commonly used methods to increase yield eh LST tying, Supercropping etc, heres a couple of pics showing there progress through veg. Its an old school American strain, still on sale in the Grey Area coffeeshop in Amsterdam and recently enjoying a bit of a comeback, its an excellent choice for cloning.

Nice, looking pretty good man. I'm kind of a little worries about what phenos my seeds wind up with, I'm hearing some stories about a lot of HSO seeds that should be sativa dominant, and popping a five pack and winding up with four indica plants and one hybrid pheno.

Also, I saw someone growing blue dream (think it was bag seed) and it looked a little indica, not sure ifd it came from hso but it was still pretty small.

Those train wrecks OK nice, I'd like to see how the flowers look so I can compare it to mine, lol. I bought a bunch of my favorite strains hoping to never have to buy seeds (at least not for a while) and just keep clones going. But with only 1 seed of each strain I can only hope to get some good phenos.

If you really want the plant you pay for and not end up with some funky phenotype try to avoid the Feminized seeds and try to use pure breeds, best would be to get a clone from someone whos growing that plant for atleast a couple years.
i grew 5 seeds of white widow from Spliff Seeds and i know for sure one was a Pure AK and i never grew a plant that was similar to another, all supposed to be white widow, also i grew 2 amnesia haze seeds from royal queen and ended up with an Indica Dominant non hazy plant, which pisses me off cause im not flowering 1 month longer for something i could get in 8-9 weeks.

Peace!

TsmokeTrain said:

If you really want the plant you pay for and not end up with some funky phenotype try to avoid the Feminized seeds and try to use pure breeds, best would be to get a clone from someone whos growing that plant for atleast a couple years.
i grew 5 seeds of white widow from Spliff Seeds and i know for sure one was a Pure AK and i never grew a plant that was similar to another, all supposed to be white widow, also i grew 2 amnesia haze seeds from royal queen and ended up with an Indica Dominant non hazy plant, which pisses me off cause im not flowering 1 month longer for something i could get in 8-9 weeks.

Peace!

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Okay, word. Yeah, the more I hear the more my suspicions are being confirmed about the phenos that come from a lot of these breeders packs. You'd think that buying something that official online (for such legal, official growers like ourselves) that the breeders would've had years to get the phenos pretty consistent.

That sucks about the amnesia haze. I've been dying to try that one out, actually almost threw it on there. I'm kind of wishing I wouldve just gone with some lowryder auto flowers or something for then first few times. Unfortunately where I live its hard...er, well pretty much imfuckinpossible to get any clones.

I'm gonna remember that about the regular seeds. They're cheaper anyways and plus if I am gonna get into growing might as well get into breeding, and start holding onto some good phenos.

I'm really hoping at least some of my seeds look like they should when they're done, but I guess we'll see.

Something else I just thought of about the feminized seeds. I was reading about how, in order to make the plant produce only female seeds, they'll spray it with whatever chemical mixed with silver, and it kills off the male chromosomes.

That has to have some kind of funky affect on the other genes as well, maybe wiping out alleles or who knows what, leading to genetics in the seeds they weren't really expecting.

If I had the choice to deal only with clones I totally would. Wish I could find a decent breeder who had solid fem seeds.

yeah i hear ya about the clones, i dont know anyone but me or people that start to grow due to me, so i cant get any clones either.

I dont know anything about chemicals used for hermies, i know for a fact that Cannabis tends to go hermy when stressing in order to survive, if a female turns hermy it will produce male pollen sacks but that does NOT make it a male because the plant still ONLY has female chromosomes, thats why they know for sure its a female, the 99% is because you can also have a hermy, its more or less 75% female 25% Hermaphrodite. my guess is they stress the females so bad that they turn almost full hermy, i accidentally stressed my White Widow too much and now got 130 very good seeds, i germinated 44 and ALL of them germinated within 2 days! tho im pretty sure my plants now have the genetics to go hermy and thats not really a good thing unless you want to make your own feminized seeds, after all hermaphrodism is a natural occurance.

just plant as many seeds you can and clone the best, and just flower the rest.

Also any Genetically Modified Organism shows traits that where not meant to be modified, thats an innevitable thing about Genetically Modifying anything, we can try to alter the cells but thats where you also alter things you didnt see coming, most of the time for the worst, like all those kids with severe stomach problems due to GMO Corn.

BTW are you going to post a journal? i might follow since your start looks quite superior to my own
peace

Bilbo Baggins said:

View attachment 2661958View attachment 2661959View attachment 2661960View attachment 2661961I've got Trainwreck going from clones just now, only 10 days into the flip ( Switching lights to 12/12 ) so no spectacular bud pics just now I'm afraid, but I found it to be as tough as any during the veg process. I know from the person who gave me the clones that they respond well to as the commonly used methods to increase yield eh LST tying, Supercropping etc, heres a couple of pics showing there progress through veg. Its an old school American strain, still on sale in the Grey Area coffeeshop in Amsterdam and recently enjoying a bit of a comeback, its an excellent choice for cloning.

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I know how you feel picking which strain 2 run! Lol.. that's why I couldn't stop at just one! I have around 30 some strains going now.. with over 200 or so to have to choose through! Lol.. it is nerve racking at times!! That's why I ask "good friends" on here to try & help me decide what to go with.. or as 1 friend said to me, put them(packs) into a hat, and have someone(family member) pick from the hat..

every thing , sounds good, you will get massive yields of the nl skunk, veg It for 2 months , expect, 4 to 8 , also I would use cfl at first , get those plants at least 6 inches tall them use that mh bulb, cfl or florescent allow the plant to make roots , mh bulb is a great for veg, but do not make roots, your main goal the first 6 inches in growth are roots. to get that plant hooked into the soil, you will not notice a faster growth any way until the plants get bigger then 6 inches , they always grow slow until they get that big then start takeing off. , all the info is form my 10 years experience, also , very hard to get clones to root under a mh bulb,

kinddiesel said:

every thing , sounds good, you will get massive yields of the nl skunk, veg It for 2 months , expect, 4 to 8 , also I would use cfl at first , get those plants at least 6 inches tall them use that mh bulb, cfl or florescent allow the plant to make roots , mh bulb is a great for veg, but do not make roots, your main goal the first 6 inches in growth are roots. to get that plant hooked into the soil, you will not notice a faster growth any way until the plants get bigger then 6 inches , they always grow slow until they get that big then start takeing off. , all the info is form my 10 years experience, also , very hard to get clones to root under a mh bulb,

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On this point I agree, I've noticed that when you pot up to a bigger pot size growth seems to slow, most obvious explanation which you hint at above is that the plant sees the opportunity to get a better root system because of the availability of more soil, and for a week or so puts more of its energy into root formation. Like you say after that there usually follows an upward growth spurt. I'm a bit of a NL affecianado, your comment also makes me want to give NL X Skunk 1 a try, but then ??? NL is a early variant of skunk itself I thought, so such a strain is kind of backcrossing NL back towards the skunk side of its ancestry. Confused.com---freaks me out trying to understand the minute detail of genetics.

That is a mostly indica list lol.

if yer a new grower, stick to skunks, nls and kush. it dosent take a genius to grow that shit.

depending on what seedbank you ordered from, i like green house ww and their kush.

sour diesel and haze are not new grower strains. sativa doms will be challenging to a inexperienced grower.

blue dream tastes nice. its also fun to grow. have fun, always pay attention to details.

you are best to stay with the eazy ones first and then pop your sativa plants after you get more growing experience.

good luck on your grow