Trying indoor CFL and dirt. Great Googly Moogly. Pics from the first week.

I haven't grown in almost 20 years. Last time it turned out poorly. I waited till I could do a good job to try again. The way I'm doing it will no doubt piss someone off, so neener neener I made you mad. This is a legal medical grow, like anyone cares.

So, I have 2 chem-4 (oaksterdam) clones. They're doing ok so far. I've had them about 1 week so far. Good growth lots of new leaves at the lower levels and good vertical growth. They're in refrigerator boxes lined with aluminum and lit by 3 CFL's (soon to double to 6) in 5.5" cans. 3sqft is covered by the box. I'll put each in its own box when flowering starts so they'll have enough room to eat all the light they want.

I'm using a generic 10-8-6 feed right now on a 20/4 light schedule. The plants are in OSH potting soil and coco and perlite. The clones came in the coco in small 4" cubes so I dropped them into potting soil in larger containers after a couple days.

I'm guessing I'll need 3-5 more weeks of veg before it'll be a good idea to switch the lights over to 12/12.

I'll be tracking progress throughout the process. Taking advice from those with the skills.

Here's a slideshow of the first week.

Am I using enough light? It seems bright as hell inside the box to me.

First of all good luck with your grow! You will only learn by your own mistakes most of the time but take some advice along the way.

Do you have a fan in your grow cab your stems need to thicken up to support those buds during flowering and to ensure you have good air flow.

Also have a look into LST so that you can keep 10-15 budsites around .5-1 inch from the bulb. Remember CFL's don't penetrate so you need to get those bulbs as close as you can get them to every site. LST helps you achieve this and its real easy to do!

I've been doing some LST. Pretty sure what I'm doing would be called super cropping. Pinching the branch between nodes and laying it over so it grows out then up. That's really seeming like a great way to coerce them.

Stack some books or get a wire rack and throw those pots as close to your CFL's as possible. Looks good, keep it up.

Working on a fan. Trying to find one that's just the right size is fun.

what watt cfl's r u using. lookin good so far, but bring the light down or raise the plants. my cfls are about 2 inches off top of plants.

3x 40w. They're about a foot and a half off the plants.

you could do with more lights but as you said your getting more. i would bring them a lot closer. my 2x125watt cfls are 2-3 inches away from the lights, as long as you point the fan at the light it dosent burn the plant, not for me anyway. its only my first grow , i also have a grow under a 400 watt hps going, but the plant is growing fast with the light close. im moving it up an inch or 2 every other day by keepin it close to the plants

now at 6x 40w CFL in 3sqft. The plants have also been moved about 1ft closer to the lights. They're about 6-8" off the lights now. I could tell the difference in brightness in the box with more lights. Here's this morning's shot (note: I had to move the box a bit to get both plants in frame, they're not that close to the sides):




On a side note, I did some reading and it appears that a 24/0 schedule could be worthwhile so I've started cutting the dark period back. Yesterday they only got 3 hours. Today they'll get 2. Tomorrow 1, and then I'll hold the 24/0 light for a couple weeks.

Anyway, by my math I'm at about 34000 Lux which should be right in the gravy zone. Was in theory at 8500 before which would explain what I think is fairly slow growth till now.

Your plants are looking solid so far, you might want to be thinking about transplanting soon and adding more lights if possible.

that has been a looming concern (transplanting). I get conflicting info about that though. Realizing that root volume is directly related to the ability of the plant to uptake nutrients (the more = better rule for root volume would seem to apply) and related to the overall above ground mass I'm a little confuzzed about exactly how big a container I need for each. I have height restrictions and area restrictions (2 large U-haul wardrobe boxes) so I don't want to encourage the plant to get too bloody big and overrun my foliage volume capacity but I sure don't want to end up with minimal or poor quality yield either.

I figured I'd watch the bottom of the pots for root penetration and then as soon as I see some stick them into 7 gallon pots. Thoughts?

EDIT: much of the advice I'm getting is to take them through flower in the pots they're in given my size constraints.

the roots are astablished at flower time. I would encourage at least 3 gallon minimum for a decent yield. Remember half of your plant is roots, (which is easy to do, you dont see them!) dont neglect the roots or you will be unhappy with the end result. Just look at all these party cup grows, you know the red cups you see everyone growing in? sure they are tall but a few popcorn buds are shit when its smoke time...lol

roger that SS. Looks like all that time playing with dwarf citrus will pay off. They seem to follow a lot of the same rules.

Operational news: went to add a fan to my setup and noticed that 4 of my brand new bulbs were dead. Replaced all of them anyway. 6 new 2100 lumen bulbs humming away. I see what you guys are talking about with the poor penetration too.

Pics from the last couple days. They're not in any real order and show different setups as I was working on the habitat.


The fan cut the temps by about 25 degrees and dropped the humidity from just way to damned much (I won't embarrass myself with the number) to ambient RH as of this morning. A little foil and some packing tape made a nice little forcing cone for the fan. You can see it in a couple of the pics.

How large is you growing space and how large are the plants? Have you taken into consideration that when you go into 12/12 that the plants can double or more in size?

it's 2ft x 1.5ft x 5ft right now. I'll be splitting them up into separate boxes when their size dictates so they'll each have the same basic setup. The plants are almost a foot tall now.

Yep I have considered it heavily. That is the source of most of my engineering hassles. They're on top of a 1' tall box right now which I'll remove as they get a bit taller. I have about 6" at the top of the box I can reclaim as well. Still going to be tight for space but I have to deal with that for now.

Will you be topping them or leaving them alone? I'd induce flowering with the deminsions you speak of...You have a good eight-nine weeks left of growth.

I only say this because my first grow was done in a small CFL cab set-up with 3' of grow space having 12" plants and they easily outgrew it in the fifth week of flowering. Never underestimate what these plants can and will do.

I planned to top them. Been doing LST as well to coax them toward breadth over height. I can always increase the height of the box if needed.

I had planned on about 2 months of veg. You think I need the extra 2 weeks? Not like it'll hurt anything.

I don't see a point in it unless you have the lighting. If you can incase the plants in lighting by all means go for it.

encasing them in lights today. Also transplanting to a 25 gallon bin. Time to let those roots go wild.

in case = in the event of.
encase = to surround as in a case.