First grow, help me do this right!

[gbf4ever]

In the process of starting up my first indoor grow. I've been around people that grow for a few years though, so I'm not a complete novice. My goal is to yield enough bud for personal use. My setup is a 6ft*3ft walk in closet. This will eventually be my flowering room but am using it to start the vegetative growth since it is already set up. I have some seeds i ordered from cannabisseeds.com. Supposed to be WW and Hindu Kush but ive heard some bad things about this site, so well see how they end up. At this point I'm not planning on taking a mother from these, unless they end up doing extremely well. Ordering some Satori and Kalichakra seeds from mandala, and plan to keep mothers from both when i get them up and running.

For vegetative growth I'm going to be running a 600w MH(air cooled 465 cfm fan) and a few cfls to suppliment. How long should I grow the seedlings until switching them over to the MH?
Have two 600w hps(also air cooled) ready for flowering(cant wait! :rastasmoke

This is my first grow so I plan on making mistakes. Hopefully you guys can keep me on the right track and make this a successful grow.


Eventually my goal is to keep mothers and grow sog. 18 plants or 1 per square foot with a perpetual harvest. Stay tuned pics will be up when I have something to show :jointsmile:

gbf4ever Reviewed by gbf4ever on 04-09-2008. First grow, help me do this right! In the process of starting up my first indoor grow. I've been around people that grow for a few years though, so I'm not a complete novice. My goal is to yield enough bud for personal use. My setup is a 6ft*3ft walk in closet. This will eventually be my flowering room but am using it to start the vegetative growth since it is already set up. I have some seeds i ordered from cannabisseeds.com. Supposed to be WW and Hindu Kush but ive heard some bad things about this site, so well see how Rating: 5

[gbf4ever]

Planted my seeds a few days ago. One broke the surface today. Threw it under the cfls. Camera to pc cord is MIA so I'll get pics of my setup tomorrow.

[Krimet]

sounds like some serious lighting for the space, cant wait to see some pics. :jointsmile:

[Jerry Garcia 2007]

I would plan on 1.5 weeks for the seedling stage. Then 6 to 7 weeks veg at 24/0 or 18/6, I use 24/0 for veg.

Get the Fox Farm family of nutes, follow the watering schedule closely that comes with the granular set of nutes. Do not feed your seedlings anything for 1.5 weeks.

With a 600w MH keep it 20'' or more from the tops of the plants not sure with air cooled though.

Kimit is right 2-600 watt HPS's in an 18 sq ft area is alot, I do see your situation with length though, maybe consider cutting it in half with a black out curtain, and have a veg and flower area. Just a sugestion on this.

Take cuttings of every plant and cloan before you flower because you may have a jem of a plant and won't know untill 8 or more weeks later and cloaning then is very difficult and a much longer time to get them to the veg stage. You can always toss the ones that are male and don't make the cut.

BOL on your grow and keep posting with your progress.

[gbf4ever]

Have another area i'm going to be setting up for my vegetative growth, just havnt made it to the store to buy materials, and I dont really need the second area until I have some close to the flowering stage. My biggest concern with the lighting is heat. But with my setup now I can always revert to one 600w for budding if needed, and reserve the other 600w with mh conversion bulb for vegetative growth. If all goes well with both 600's for flowering though I'm just going to order a 400w mh for my mother/clones. I suppose I will plan on keeping mothers, atleast until i get some clones to harvest and see how the quality is.

The temp around my one seedling is staying at around 75-80 degrees is that ok? Thanks in advanced for all the help.

[Jerry Garcia 2007]

Everything sound good except for the 400 watt for mothers. That is way to much, you want low lighting for them, I use a 2 bulb T-12 shop light for mine.

[Jerry Garcia 2007]

Another thing you mentioned heat if you are using air cooled light fixtures where are you going to put the exahust. And keep in mind odor control during flowering.

[hudson88]

Hey GBF, it all sounds good to me, you been doing your homework.
Temps are perfect at 75-80. I wouldn't worry too much about the heat when you go into flowering, you've got a good fan (although i can't be sure without doing a bit of research but it sounds about right) just remember to take into account the loss of power from your ducting and sucking air from the 2 cooltubes, are you using a Y connector for that? so you should have a fan that's rated higher than the room size and the cool tubes should help a lot too. When you switch to 12/12 depends on your height restrictions (how big can you physically let them grow to?) If when you take into account the height of the pots and room for your lights and distance from your lights to the tops of your plants (i'd guess you could get them to within 8" with the cooltubes) you've got say 3ft of height left to play with i'd start flowering when they reach about 12" high, (probably about 4 weeks old) they usually double or triple from then until harvest. (but it depends on the strain, an indica will be closer to doubling in height while a sativa will be closer to trebling.) You just have to practise till you get to know the strain and how much it will stretch so that you can grow them as large as your area allows. Hope that helps.

Good luck!

[gbf4ever]

Have just over 9 ft in height to work with. Using a seperate duct and fan for each light, and running them up to the attic for exhaust. I'm way out in the country, with no neighbors for miles so smell isnt too much of an issue. Still hope to get some carbon filters when I can, but low on funds atm all this stuff is expensive :jointsmile:. No real update for now, once I get my camera up and running Ill post pics a few times a week.

[gbf4ever]

So cfls are plenty for mothers/growing clones till their ready to flower? Or cfls for mothers and an MH for growing the clones(after they are established of course)? One more thing. When I set up my ducts, will I be ok just bringing in the intake air right from the grow room, or would it be necessary to run in intake ducts for cool air.