Think I'm gonna try growing my own

Alright check it out, I've decided it's time to start growing my own plants. Problem is, I know nothing about growing my own plants. See where this is going? I figured since I have no idea what I'm doing, what better place to come than here. I've got a short list of questions so please bear with me. Thanks in advance.

Question#1:How do you tell male/female apart?

#2:I will be growing indoors in a closet, what is a good temp to keep the room at?

#3:Can I use ordinary fluorescent lights, or do I need to buy some grow lights.

#4:Should I use miracle grow, or something on that line, or just some good potting soil.

And las but not least...
#5:How long should I wait to harvest the plant once it has sprouted? (on average anyway)

Again thanks in advance for any help.

Tim
Legalize it, it's only natural.

Dude I'm a first time grower myself and the best thing I can say is just to cruise the forums read threads you'll find pics of males and what they look like no worries same for the other questions you have just do alot of reading on here and other sites. First get an idea of what kind of plant you wanna grow and get your seeds ordered so they can get here can take awhile.

Like mrlazybones said, the best thing to do is read stuff on the net or better still buy a grow book from Amazon or somewhere. There are two books in particular which are aimed at the new grower, I bought them a couple of years ago when I first started. They are called "Closet cultivator" and "Easy marijuana Gardening" (see pics) They are really easy to understand and follow and have lots of colour photos which I think are very important when you're learning something.

1- male/female (see pics)

2- temperature- try and aim for about 75°F. In summer my grow-room reached about 80 ° F max. And at night when the lights were off it went down to about 65° F.

3-You can use fluorescents, lots of people use fluorescents with amazing results. I'm using fluorescents at the moment but they're proper plant growing lights, not shoplights (although they can be used). Look for "cool-white" and/or "warm-white" tubes. High intensity discharge lamps (HID) are far better but cost more to buy and operate, and require more ventilation because of their heat.

4-soil- Use the most suitable stuff that's available to you. I use regular compost from the garden store. It lasts about 4 weeks before I have to use fertilizer. You can use chemical fertilizer if you wish, I've used it before (miracle-gro 15-30-15) but you've got to be careful you don't use too much. At the moment I have an organic feed called "Bio-gro".

5- There are two main stages of growth. Vegetative growth- when the plant grows all its leaves/stems; The lights are either left on 24/7 or for 18 hours a day. Indoors, plants are usually grown for 1 to 2 months in the vegetative stage before being induced to flower.
And there's the flowering stage. Flowering begins when the hours of light the plant receives are reduced. Indoors you just set the lights to be on for 12 hours a day and the plant thinks the days are getting shorter so it starts producing bud. From the day it starts flowering to the day you harvest is usually about 9 weeks for indica varieties, other varieties (sativa, or sativa dominant) take far longer to mature. This is a really vague answer, there's a bit more to it than this but I don't want to chocker your head with loads of info in one go, so I kept it as short as possible. The best thing to do is buy a book.

good luck,

GC

Just check out www.overgrow.com

read books, read the forums, read overgrow.com faqs....