Hypothetically speaking, if you could start all over what would you do differently???

Let's all look back at our first grow and look at the things we would change to be more successful...

I would...invest in proper lighting. I believe you can't go wrong with PROPER artificial sun.

Anyone? Anyone?

Let's see...What would I change about my first grow?

Hmmmm...For starters...Everything. Lol Maaaaan, what a disaster that was! Lol

I would of saved up my money a bit more and got a good setup right away and been more careful with what i all bought. if something says it ships from china dont buy it, i learned that the hard way and it also kind of guilt tripped me i was buying chinese instead of american. in the end i dont think ive even got any of the chinese crap left, its all broke or not worked at all so i ended up having to spend more than if i'd went with good quality american products.

that's good to know, so i'm not the only one that wishes i would've just got the proper set-up from the start. this is great info for the first time grower, let everyone learn from our mistakes, Bob man so sorry to hear it was a big clusterfuck, but you learned alot right???
happy grown friends

the more you know the more you will grow

reps to you both btw, our mistakes are painful but only for a short while

I would have grown ... somewhere else.
cheers 'neer

i would have bought the 600 hps first! instead of buying the 400 thinking it would be good enough, all i could think about was i wonder how big they would be with the 600 and how much more yeild would i have got with the 600, well now ive got the 600 and the answer to both my questions is twice as much and twice as big.

I cheaped out on my vent fan. Lucky for me though, I had 9 air conditioners at the time. I would've kept my 15k btu a/c as well, for future upgrades. (gave it to a family member)

excellent advice my friends, reps to you all

so far we have more, powerful lights, grow somewhere else, don't go for the cheap stuff buy american, ventilation, and do everything differently lol

For me, I would have bought a bigger tent than the 3x3x5 that I still have and a better light. I want to get a DR120 II with a 600w light that has a digital ballast. More room for growing and more light for a better yield....

Nothing too bad, though I did learn that 2x4's will bend under the weight of an ebb and flow table, which makes the middle trays have higher water levels. Trick is using landscaping timbers on their sides -- holds 800+ pounds (100 gallons) without any sag.

i would deff add lime to every grow due to fluctiations in ph and the problem of mixing calc mag into my water..pfff

I would have put my flower room behind my veg room, not vice-versa. I can't get to the veg room when flower room is dark.

I would have used coolers instead of buckets in my rdwc.

I wouldn't have tried Babylonia Fruit strain.

I would have kept it simple with nutes until I had a better understanding of them. I would have started with Lucas.

I would not have bought slickly labeled Advanced Nutes until I had a reason and knew exactly what they did.

ROBSTERB said:

i would have bought the 600 hps first! instead of buying the 400 thinking it would be good enough, all i could think about was i wonder how big they would be with the 600 and how much more yeild would i have got with the 600, well now ive got the 600 and the answer to both my questions is twice as much and twice as big.

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My problem is I wish I never had gotten a HPS-this POS Sucks!

I have a 600 HPS and damn way tooooo hot, LED tho is super nice, but currently for this grow-fuck hps its toooooooooooooooo hot!

What would I have done differently? I wouldn't have lied to my wife about my first grow lol. It's been seven years ago and every once in a while she STILL brings up how I lied. She's somewhat against MJ, but would rather me smoke than drink. Needless to say ever since then I've never lied to her. . . about a grow.

Now that I have a medical card she could care less. I think she was just afraid of me getting caught before.

I would have read less about growing it and simply used my own gardening skills. I over thought it and made it to hard, instead of relying on my own 30+ years of gardening experience.
When i stopped reading so much and started trusting myself more, I started growing better plants.

rep to you and thanks for the advice on your look back, things like this are great to know

i wanted to revisit this. there's always new growers, thank God, and i think learning by other peoples mistakes is a great way to learn. i would have gotten to know my environment and grown the strain that can tolerate it, instead of trying to grow the top shelf strain and create an environment for it. that's just me.
i never knew that these plants smell during veg. and my God do they smell when in flower wow idk how people get away with being stealthy with that smell
i would have never started out with expensive seeds that have weak genetics. my bagseed plants look and smell wonderful and are COVERED with trics.
i would NEVER use cheap soil, top soil, compost again.
i would have put my flowering plants outside sooner, you just can't beat sunshine IMO.
i am so glad i did not start out with HPS lights. it would have been a major headache to keep cool. i will invest in HPS now that i have figured out how to control temps.
I AM NOT AN EXPERT. nor do i claim to be. i am an intelligent stoner who had to learn all of this the hard way. THANK ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE HELPED ME Madonna is gonna be some tasty smoke.

My first grow was as a kid in a closet with a regular light bulb. It was about 3' tall with no nodes, then it fell over. I tied it back up and it kept going, it was seriously 5 feet tall and about the same size as the string that held it up, good times!

supchaka said:

My first grow was as a kid in a closet with a regular light bulb. It was about 3' tall with no nodes, then it fell over. I tied it back up and it kept going, it was seriously 5 feet tall and about the same size as the string that held it up, good times!

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Now that is a great story I bet brings back similar memories for many of us......