First Time Grower, Fems, Regs, or Autos?

Planning my first home grow and looking to get some seeds from a seed bank. I'm really conflicted about what's best to buy. Regular landrace type seeds, popular feminized strain seeds, or some autos?

All options have their pros and cons, I understand all that. But what do you think the best choice would be for a total noob with no experience beyond growing tomatoes and cucumbers once 6 years ago.

I am a very detail oriented person, so I think I would be able to handle the extra work and attention of growing Regs, but at the same time maybe going with Autos my first time would make life easier.

What do you all think?

I have never grown autos before, but they seem they would be tricky to me. I don't like the thought of not knowing when my plant has made the switch to develop flowers. With photo strains you flip the lights and you know how to taper from veg to bloom nutrients. From a genetic standpoint I have heard a few times that regular seeds typically have more stable phenotypes than feminized.

I am a bit biased as I started with bag seeds, which were photos. Then I moved on to the good seed stock, which were also photos. I have learned a good deal from growing what I've grown. Plus I like to have control over the size and shape of my plants so I can work on fully utilizing my grow space, filling every empty spot with a flower site. I have heard autos shouldn't be topped/trained, but the genetics of autos seem to have been changing over the past few years.

Would you rather have one or 2 big plants, or several smaller ones? What is your grow space going to be like? What kind of lights are you going to run, and in what medium?

I've never grown fem auto's, but I see the attraction to them. You start them in the pot they will finish in, you use just one light cycle, you don't have to sex them, and you don't have to decide when to flip them. All you have to worry about is killing them, and not killing plants is the most important skill.

If it's your first grow, stay away from regular photo's. You don't need males and there is a lot of choice in both fems and fem auto's.

Just one opinion......

Hey guys, thanks for the input. My grow will be pretty basic and small. Just a closet, no more than 4 plants. Its still illegal where I live, but the police won't usually press charges as long as you have 5 or less plants first time they catch you. They just force you to destroy them. I'll most likely be using a bunch of 100w LED bulbs with the domes popped off, or maybe an LED grow light off Amazon in a month or two when I save up enough. Viparspectra 600w has caught my eye. Potting soil as a medium, and my closet space could hold larger size plants. there is 5 feet of clearance space.

Stay away from the blurple LED lights on Amazon. They ok for veg but will leave you disapointed in flower. Instead check out the LED section and take a look into the strides they making with Quantium Boards and Strip lighting. You can do a few days reading and see they not that hard to set up and operate.

Go auto's first time so you can get a feel///

blake9999 said:

Stay away from the blurple LED lights on Amazon. They ok for veg but will leave you disapointed in flower. Instead check out the LED section and take a look into the strides they making with Quantium Boards and Strip lighting. You can do a few days reading and see they not that hard to set up and operate.

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This is really good advice, especially to someone who hasn't grown anything My hydro LED "blurb" happens to be true to I s word and has a 5 year warranty plus the store I bought the from is actually only an hour away aha but most time youll end up with a light that says 800w when really its 400w or some bull that isn't true to its word.

I might even go with t5s as I know they work and you can get them at any hydroponic store I know of I buy all my stuff from a plant store now lol they know what they are doing and have proof it works

As for seeds, have you bought seeds yet?

If not I would highly recommend seedsman as they have many promos that you always get free seeds when ordering over 25$
Plus their shipping is always stealth if you are in a country that is illegal to *collect* seeds.

If you're not looking to buy and just want to use a bag seed, man that's cool took because some of my best weed has come from a bag seed. Ha, that rhymes

Anyeho, shoot me a message I found you ever want to talk strains, I love talking plants

MustardBottle said:

I'll most likely be using a bunch of 100w LED bulbs with the domes popped off

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In all likeliness, those are going to be about 13w bulbs and you've read the figure they say for 'equivalent in incandescant lighting'.

The blurple leds aren't bad for a first time grower on a budget. The first led I got was a cheap Chinese 400w cob (after dissecting it I found it was less than 200w), but it worked ok for one decent plant or 2 small plants.

If you're into diy stuff, build your own led!

GreenLogician said:

In all likeliness, those are going to be about 13w bulbs and you've read the figure they say for 'equivalent in incandescant lighting'.

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True, and I realize they aren't ideal. But I'm on a budget. They are 5000k and 1500 lumen cold white bulbs. Dollar store sells them for $3 each. I have a 7 socket adapter like this:

My first time growing I started my plants under 6 cfl 1100 lumen from the dollar store, 3 bulbs for 4$

I then planted them outdoors where they grew to trees ahah

Light is light, and as a beginner on a budget like I was, I wouldn't spend too much on lighting right away, and when you do; make sure to read read read

They are 16w bulbs (100w equivalent), just checked. Nice part is once you pop the domes off, the light focuses straight downward. Seven of them combined on one socket adapted makes for a heck of a lot of light. Think it will be decent for veg, and total cost is around $30.

Cool, I do a very similar thing for my veg closet
(cheap e27 socket cobs and blurples in splitters.)

It's hard to mess up an auto grow, especially if you just let them be. I'd at least make one of them an auto.

Even if you find you like growing autos, it won't be long before you cross over into the photo period plants. There's just so much you can do with them to get what YOU'RE looking for.

The more you spend before having one successful grow, the less fun it becomes. There's nothing wrong with starting off safe a cheap, and then improving little by little.