Standard Questions on Indoor Growing

Hi all,

For a while now I have been looking through this forum's many threads and decided to post my own as I felt my questions were not answered. I have decided to grow three auto flowering strains (Sweet Dwarf , Cristal Storm, and the 60 Day Wonder) indoors. I chose these three strains as they are well reviewed and can all be harvested in 65 days! for me, outdoors was not a choice, and auto flowering, well for a first time grower I think it would be best. I have set up a grow area for these three plants, but I want to make sure that I don't mess up, that's where you guys come in, im no expert on growing. My first question, the lighting, I have read that 4,000 lumens per plant will provide a good yield, so I have 8 23W CFL's producing 12,000 lumens, each one hanging from a different cord about 10-20cm apart with lifting and lowering being possible. Is this amount of lumens good enough? and I realize the grow space matters of course, I have about 3 giant cardboard walls making a semi-rectangle , with the other half being the wall with a white paint and the top touching the roof, so barely any light gets out. The inside facing part of the cardboard "walls" are taped with aluminum foil, the only possibility i had ( no paint ) for ventilation, i have a standard 30cm diameter fan. Oh, and I forgot to mention, several of the CFL's have high quality reflectors. My second question is, the pot size, I bought 3 pots that are about 1.5-2 liters in volume, is this big enough for these small plants or do I need larger ones? My third and final questions is about the fertilizer, I bought a standard fertilizer for all plants since special ones were not available at my local store, about how often of this standard fertilizer ( no big difference with standard fertilizers from around the world i presume) should I add with the water, 20%?60%? and just about how often.

Thanks in advance,
Sir.SmokeAlot

The short answer would be to tell you you're quite wrong, all of your questions have been answered.
You just haven't looked in the right spot.
I'm not sure if you've checked the sub forum of the indoor forum; The CFL forum. A wealth of knowledge exists in the stickys alone.
Even the grow faq (good luck finding it, lol)
Seriously, any question you might think of asking, it's probably been answered, in numerous different ways here.
The key is figuring out which answer or answers are either right, or work for you.
When I grew with cfls i also used T5, but cfls surrounding plants, as many as possible is a pretty standard answer.
I'd grow in at least one gallon pots (3.7L? I think) 1.5 gal. even better. Oh, lst your plants for some surprisingly fat buds.
Actually i still use cfls for veg, here's my latest four cuttings and the plant i took them from.
These y adaptors are available at home depot, these are 5 27w cfls. I veg plants under these lights for two months. The larger plant is two months old and going into flower when this pic was taken.
Happy growing.

Thanks probo,

I realize now that most of my questions are fairly standard and have been answered like you said, a bunch of times in this forum. My only real concern was the size of the pots, now that i got that figured out I think I might be able to pull this off, especially with the help of this forum. Those are some good looking plants there, hope mine will succeed as well.

yeah Sir careful with the fertilizer you dont need much for the first few weeks if any and the cfls work great for veg and also for flower thats all i use just make sure they are the right spectrum 6500k for veg and 2700k for flower im sure you already know that... stop by my link below if you ever have any questions just ask there are lots of people willing to help including myself!! and for the tin foil i would try and pick up some white bristle board or whatever its called like we would use at a science fair in school or whatever thats what i am using now tin foil is not very good, i got my bristle board for $1 a sheet pretty cheap!! good luck!!

4000 lumens per plant???? most people only recommend 4-6 plants under a 600w HPS, which is 15,000-22,000 lumens per plant. as far as how much fertilizer to mix with the water (I assume the question is what concentration to mix it to), one fertilizer can vary from the one next to it on the shelf, nevermind around the world, so READ the instructions on the packaging

cfh1985 said:

4000 lumens per plant???? most people only recommend 4-6 plants under a 600w HPS, which is 15,000-22,000 lumens per plant. as far as how much fertilizer to mix with the water (I assume the question is what concentration to mix it to), one fertilizer can vary from the one next to it on the shelf, nevermind around the world, so READ the instructions on the packaging

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From what i have read on cfl growing on this forum and several others, 12,000 lumens per sq foot is better than the suns natural output (10,000), and that will only theoretically be 4000 lumens per plant, as the amount will not divide perfectly, I have lights that will be on the sides, top etc. i have not researced HID's as it was not a option for me. I know that on the fertilizer bottle it says how much, but I live in a country where I do not speak the language and i have no idea what the back of the bottle says, the shopkeeper spoke some english and said it was just a standard fertilizer, which is why i said " no big difference with standard fertilizers from around the world i presume", i dont mean to sound obtrusive,its just that being a growing foreigner can be a little difficult
greennewfie,thanks, ill try to find some of that bristle board

yeah no problem man, keep us posted you should start a grow journal for us to follow and watch as you go give you some pointers i know i could have used lots of help before i started i just went with the flow learning from my own mistakes which was a few lol

thats a pretty good idea, i doubt if I will have time for it though, but at least now i know where to ask