My First Grow Ever

Hello everyone, This is my first grow. I've read sooo much on growing lately and decided to definitely try one plant myself. While reading, I came across a lot of "its easy to grow, its a weed" so I decided for my first try, to see just how easy it is. With next to NO budget, resorting to DIY methods of EVERYTHING I decided to give it a try with only what i already have in my house, so please, keep the comments of me buying all this stuff, because in this case im not going to, but in the future, for sure. I mean hey, I have a lot of time, why not experiment.

Now, for my setup.. I have two 23w CFLs (spiral). I am using a bag of $1 sterilized soil I got from a local store containing vermiculite, sand, perlite and sterilized soil (or at least thats what the bag said). I also have miracle grow all purpose but have not used it. I have an additional 2 CFLS that i have not installed yet. ( i am attaching a picture of my VERY HUMBLE grow closet)

Ive been using tap water that ive kept in the light room with an open top. Tried collecting rain water, but the only way i can get a good amount is to catch it from my gutters on the roof, but that will contain all kinds of tar shingle debris, so i figured tap would be better.

Here are my pics, about maybe, 3 weeks in and I just bent for LST. Shes about 7inches tall/long thus far and I was thinking of starting to flower when she is 12-15 inches... is this good, or should i wait till shes longer? (I will be taking clones before flowering in hopes its a female).

Anything anyone can advise on my DYI setup that will not cost me more than a few bucks please give your 2 cents, i am very welcoming.


my humble grow room



The Plant



Original Primary Apical

Cant see any pics man.If ur gonna take clones u may as well keep vegging and just sex the clones,longer u veg the more bud ull get.

sounds like a sweet start to growing!

That looks exactly like the setup I would want to create for my first grow. Maybe can you go more into how you got to this point? What size is that pot? thanks
edit: sorry for being a noob

2, 23 WATTS, what are you thinking? Add like 3 more of those.

Wow, your first setup is definitely more cost efficient than mine was! I would put in those new cfls asap, you will really see a difference when you do.

Thank you for your advice so far, Ill finish building my home (DIY) light setup and reflector, i appreciate it..

rosie o'donnel said:

That looks exactly like the setup I would want to create for my first grow. Maybe can you go more into how you got to this point? What size is that pot? thanks
edit: sorry for being a noob

Click to expand...

To get this far, I started by picking 5 random bag seeds and germinating them. 4 out of 5 germinated fine and i planted the healthiest looking 2.

I planted the seeds straight from germination into pots that had a 1 foot diameter and were one foot deep.

After about 2 weeks of growing the 2nd plant had been showing significant signs of "HOLY SHIT IM FUCKED UP LOOKIN". I dont know what i did, perhaps it was the strain and my conditions werent suitable, but after to long the plant basically wilted and i pulled it before it died.. it seemed like it was light years behind this plant, and well, its an experiment, so I pulled it and flushed the soil well....

About 3 nights ago i transplanted into a a pot that is roughly 2 feet across and 1.5 feet deep... Which may be a little small??? But im running LST on this, and i intend to flower them asap, so im trying to get with a quick setup, probably eventually turning into a SOG, whenever i get a MH 400w light.

which basically brings me to the present.

Seeing as (as far a i can tell) my plants do not show any deficiency (of course im probably wrong)..... but i've read about spent coffee grounds to increase nitrogen food for the plant, would that be a bad idea at this point?

I just googled it real quick and it looks like coffee grounds will make your soil more acidic. Yahoo answers says if you mix a little lime in it will counter the acidic effect. I personally wouldn't do it because I don't like messin with my pH, but maybe someone with more experience can chime in.

A good setup consists of a few basic things. Never go light-headed on either of them.

1. Lights. Your lights are fine. they seem like 6500K, and thats what you should use for veg. For flowering you'll need 2700K, the red ones. If you can't get much light for flowering get to it ASAP. The plant will strech in the beginning of flowering and if you veg it too long your lights won't be able to penetrate deep enough leaving you with popcorn buds.
To maximize lightning use reflective material. You mentioned ultra-low budget so I guess mylar, astrofoil or even black\white poly would be too expensive, but just simple cardboard box lined with flat white papers should help a lot.

2. Air circulation. Beside helping maintaining proper temperatures its cruical that the plant get some air circulation. A leaf use its surrounding air in a pretty short time and if this air is not moving AT ALL the leaf won't be able to breathe. Even the slight movement of air will help.
If possible (you mentioned budget) get a small fan blowing on it. The DIY cheapo method is scavaging old computer fans. If the power supply works you can even use it as a transformer.

3. Proper soil and proper PH. Your soil seems to be fine. some cheapo PH adjusting kit will help quite a bit, specially if you use quick release fertilizers.

4. Fertilizers. As for under-budget grow I guess 100bucks worth of fetilizers are out of the question. The cheap way of doing that is either 20\20\20 slow release fert - the yellow balls usually mixed with bought soil. It hangs there for 2 months or so but its really a last resort.
I would much rather use the organic way - Humus. Its sold CHEAP in small bags and it does the trick during veg. I sometimes use only humus for up to 3 weeks of veg.
The cheapest fert for the veg period is urine. Delute 1 part urine with 9 parts of water and there you have a high N solution.


If you can, get some guano powder high in P for flowering. It WILL help.



GOOD LUCK.

Thank you for your advice Night Claptoman

I did up the lights, I have 6 23w CFL's now, I found a link using hvac as a backing reflector to the lights and putting the lights in that... Ill attach some pics tomorrow... I'll also be surrounding my plant(s) ...(i'm germinating more seeds for planting now) with pure white poster board.

I do actually have a fan on a shelf up and to the left there, couldnt fit it into the pic. Its a dual fan that blows decently. its about 1.5 FT about the plant, and circulates the air very very well.

I will look into the ph adjusters, but i would also need a ph tester as well tho eh?

also, the Miracle-Gro All Purpose Plant Food 15-30-15 is something i should avoid using then?


Reason: Just re-read what the people in the forums are saying, seems to be a mix opinion on the MG, but since i have it.....

killsteve said:

Thank you for your advice Night Claptoman

I did up the lights, I have 6 23w CFL's now, I found a link using hvac as a backing reflector to the lights and putting the lights in that... Ill attach some pics tomorrow... I'll also be surrounding my plant(s) ...(i'm germinating more seeds for planting now) with pure white poster board.

I do actually have a fan on a shelf up and to the left there, couldnt fit it into the pic. Its a dual fan that blows decently. its about 1.5 FT about the plant, and circulates the air very very well.

I will look into the ph adjusters, but i would also need a ph tester as well tho eh?

also, the Miracle-Gro All Purpose Plant Food 15-30-15 is something i should avoid using then?


Reason: Just re-read what the people in the forums are saying, seems to be a mix opinion on the MG, but since i have it.....

Click to expand...

If you can get one 45W its better than 2x23W CFL, lightwise. The light will penetrate much further with a stronger light. Plus its one fixture less.

You can just surround your plant with lights, but that requiers thought - if you hug it with lights it will grow much to the sides as much as he does horizonticaly resulting in a wide plant that you can't get light into.
If you want to veg with side lightning you need a one big stalk plant, veg for a few days with side lightning and flip to flowering. thats how you will have only a few colas and not a bush type plant.

If you'll use more plants you will need more than 6x23W CFLs. a single plant would be easier to manipulate and would yield pretty much the same as, lets say, 5 lanky plants if grown properly.


Phisics say that if you blow air downward it will be hotter than air blown upward because hot air normaly rises up.
If you have high temps you should use the fan from below the plants. If its too cold you should use it from above, usualy below the lights to add their heat as well.


To adjust PH you need a test kit and adjusting kit. For testing you could use lacmos paper - they are fairly cheap.
I can't use anything but digital meters after getting used to them and they cost about 15 bucks a pop, but you mentioned ultra-tight budget so lets hang to lacmos paper.
You will also need a PH down solution sold pretty much everywhere for almost no money. You could use a ton of other things to lower the PH (adding acidity). Check the DIY section for more information.

I have no clue about miracle grow, they don't sell it around where i live. But 15/30/15 ferts should be fairly fine to the beginning of the flowering period.
The high P will be poison for small vegging plants and the high N won't do well with advanced flowering plants.

To start with you could use either Humus that is relatively cheap, or urine that is free usualy.
Don't start with a 15/30/15 fertilizer.



Good Luck

Dolomite lime shouldn't raise your ph above 7, so I doubt you'd throw off anything too bad if you just let the lime do its job. I don't have any experience with MG nutes and I'm kind of a newb when it comes to fertilizing (that's what I'm learning with my current project), so I couldn't tell you. If it's all you have I'd start with 1/4 dose or lighter and just see what happens. The n-p-k isn't ideal but it's better than nothing, just be careful not to burn your plant. I'm currently using schultz liquid fertilizer which many people here don't seem to like either, but I don't seem to be having any problems yet.

If it makes you feel any better, my last grow used the dreaded miracle grow soil and old water from my fish tank as fertilizer and my plants only showed water stress from my overattention. Luckily for me MJ is a hardy plant, and it still managed to thrive despite my 103942 mistakes.

Heres the pic of the grow room now, Puttin in more lights made my temp. go up to about 87, i dont have access to an ac, and i lowered my fan, how can i lower temp more?


so more plants directly under the lights would have less of an effect from the lights because the other plant are soaking it up? I didnt know light worked that way. i figured it would just use the tons of unused lights that not even touching the original pot..lol

Hey Legend! Those 23 watters give off 1600 lumens each. And yes, they are at 6500 kelvin. Good bang for the buck. Still $6.97 for two (2) at Wally world.

Hey Legend! Those 23 watters give off 1600 lumens each. And yes, they are at 6500 kelvin. Good bang for the buck. Still $6.97 for two (2) at Wally world.

Click to expand...

I got 4 in a pack for $3.97 at home depot

Here are some updated pics of my grow, just a few days later... I started using mg all purpose a day after my last post and its resulting in significant growth....

do not think i see any preflowers, fingers still crossed its a fem.

started germinating 10 more bag seeds, thinking of running those 12/12 pretty early not sure yet.

First signs of sexing sprouted today!!!

ladies and gentlemen, i am the proud father of a beautiful baby girl.

see photos here:

https://www.rollitup.org/attachments/newbie-central/601907d1256880161-id-help-male-female-dscf0625.jpg


https://www.rollitup.org/attachments/newbie-central/601906d1256880060-id-help-male-female-dscf0624.jpg


https://www.rollitup.org/attachments/newbie-central/601903d1256879926-id-help-male-female-dscf0623.jpg

Congrats,thats a sexy lil bitch,u might have the midas touch if ur first was a female,mine was too.
If ur on a mg budget u can pick up some 'Thrive' flower and fruit or sulphate of potash for just a few $,it will help u out.

I think ur biggest danger now will be choppin her too early coz trust me u'll want to.Resist and ull be rewarded.

So I used the miracle grow for one day and it burnt the shit out of my plants... I used 1/4 of the recommended dose... so it says 1 TBSP per gallon, i used 1/4 TBSP and it did this.....

NO ONE USE ALL PURPOSE MIRACLE GRO

Aside from that, once i saw the plants werent getting any worse, i started flowering on a 12/12 schedule... this is 3 days into it... No noticeable activity yet..seems to be growing faster already tho....


will be getting a 400w MH setup on my next grow, with fox farm nutes and sterilized water

21 days into flowering