Quote Originally Posted by Storm Crow
OK, I live on a rather small budget and I can tell you from experience, that you can grow on a budget! You do not need to get a HPS and all that jazz right off the bat! Go with soil and fluoros!

I started out with a single shop light with cool white tubes (on sale- $10). Kept the seedlings about one inch from the tube. Had to raise it ever day or two, which was a pain, but the plants grew quite well. I then had the hubby make a frame and mounted the light and added another shop light when I got my paycheck. CFLs also work quite well, but are a tad hotter and can burn your plants if they are too close. With the tube type of fluoros, the leaf has to actually touch the tube to be damaged. .

Eventually, I had 5 shop lights (10 tubes at 40 watts x 10 lights = 400 watts) and some CFLs (4 at 26 watts each = 104 watts) over my plants. I switched from cool white tubes (good for vegging) to GE's "Bath and Kitchen" tubes, since they were warm colored (better for budding). My plants budded up and I got enough pot to last me through the next harvest (and I toke daily as a MMJ user, as does the hubby).

My whole set-up cost less than $100 and I did it one shop light at a time. My pots were- paper drink cups to 1 gallon pots (left over from other gardening) and then to 5 gallon pots (50 cents at the local market) and a couple of 5 gallon pails (scavenged). I grew in some good garden soil cut with some Walmart potting soil and vermiculite (less than $15, total). Some cheap-o steer manure and some epsom salts were my ferts (about a buck each).

Put your babies on the window sill, by all means! Natural sunlight is better for them than even a HPS! Plants have grown for millions of years under the sun and have evolved to use its spectrum of light (which we try to fake with our lights).

You just hang in there and get some fluoros- they will work just fine! And remember, cannabis is a weed- it's tough and given half a chance, it will live!- Granny:hippy:
Hey Crow - Good advice!!!

I must lack a "scrounger" gene 'cuz scrounging for stuff never even occurs to me. In any event, I think a person in krazyWIS420's position needs to go into this with his/her eye's open and know what they may need to spend to get started. That's why I recommended checking out what others in his/her position have done.

If you look around at everything you have spent money on, and count every penny, it adds up pretty quick - particularly if you count everything you buy.

Here's what I was thinking krazyWIS420 would need, at a minimum:

Lights - These will be the most expensive item. Even going with cfl's or flouro's, and even buying the lights as your grow grows, to get enough lumens to flower is going to cost, what, at least $80.

Timer - $8

Fan(s) - circulation $15; extraction (well, if s/he needs an extraction fan that's a whole 'nother can of worms requiring "stuff" that will cost anywhere $50 to several hundred $ depending upon requirements.)

Growing medium - krazyWIS420 doesn't want to be one of the poor souls who buys Miracle Grow, so let's say s/he realizes the importance of a good grow medium, $15 - $20 is about the minimum one can get by on.

And then you have nutes along the way. Maybe there are nutes available free, I don't know. But if one has to pay for the nutes, $50 - $100 is not out of line. (Of course there will be plenty left over for future grows. But the initial expenditure will still be there.)

pH test kit - $9

Then there's the materials need to make some kind of enclosure to grow the plants in...

krazyWIS420 - I didn't mean to discourage you from growing. I hope my post didn't come across that way. Quite honestly, it seems to me that, to an mj smoker, a couple hundred dollars shouldn't be that much money. We spend it to buy weed; why not spend it to grow weed? But that's just my way of thinking.

One great thing that Strom Crow pointed out is that you don't need to run out and buy a bunch of crap all at once. All you need at the moment is one light and some water. Anyway, Crow has a low figure and I have a high one and probably somewhere in between will lie the truth of your particular situation. Whatever you do, I wish you the best of luck.

PC :thumbsup:
PharmaCan Reviewed by PharmaCan on . problem? this is how far i am in my first grow, i know its only one plant so far but i have a couple more greminating. but i'm asking because i dont have any lights right now what should i do, i probably wont get any lights fora day or 2 is this bad or what? i mean i can put it on my window sill,but thats not a long time with the sunlight. and advise? june 29th july 2nd Rating: 5