Quote Originally Posted by Darinmb
Ok, here is what you do. First off, you are only going to get 1..... maybe 2 plants under each light. Second, you need a hood big enough to give light to the entire plant (Magnum XXXL or bigger). Third, COCO FIBER is the medium you grow in!!!!!!!!! Weather it is House and Garden (Expensive), Botanicare's Ready Grow (Medium and really good), or Botanicare's COCOGRO, that cheap compressed brick.... Grow in COCO FIBER!!!! Fourth, feed every day. Unless you are flushing your plants at the end of the cycle, you shouldn't ever give strait water. Get a TDS (total dissolved solids) meter, that way, after you go to the website of the fertilizer you are using and find out how rich to make your nutrient solution, you can measure your solution and make sure you are not going to burn your plants. Now your nutrient solution, you need a base. Your base is your core fertilizer, and most all of them are pretty good. Personally I use Supernatural's Bloom Terra because it is pretty cheap and PH buffered so when I add amendments to my solution my PH doesn't go crazy. You should experiment a little and find what works best for you. Then you need a PK booster. Fertilizers are rated for NPK(N=nitrogen, P=phosphorous, K=potassium). In the veg cycle plants need more nitrogen for vigorous stem and node growth, the node is your bud site. In the bloom cycle plants need more phosphorous and potassium for flower growth, buds are flowers. Again, I use Supernatural's Bud Blaster, for the same reason as before. Then a nice calcium/magnesium supplement should be added, Botanicare makes a good one called CalMag, it also has an iron supplement in it too. Take it or leave it, but I add a silica supplement too. The silica can give some added stem strength to help hold up those heavy flowers, but mostly it adds a little bit of insurance for you. If you do something to stress out your plants, the silica will help to buffer that so the affects of the stress are not so bad. Since COCO is so very sterile you need to add some beneficial bacteria and fungus to the mix too. The Piranha and Tarantula products from Advanced Nutrients are amazing but very expensive (around $200/lb). Great White Shark is a really good beneficial blend too, House and Garden recommends you use it with their products. A pretty good bang for your buck is OregonIZM, at around $40/lb and still has many beneficial bacteria and fungus strains. Finally add some sugar, your plants need carbohydrates. Alot of people use a sweetener like Bud Candy, or Superlicious, or Sweet, or BananaRama, etc. and they are all good products. Something as simple as Carboload from Advanced Nutrients works great. Keep in mind, this nutrient solution that I've described here is for the bloom cycle. For the veg cycle all you really need is a good veg base nutrient, the beneficial bacteria and fungus, and maybe some silica. Again measuring your TDS to make sure your solution is not too rich (HOT). Getting a big reservoir to mix enough nutrients for a week or more is a pretty good idea too as long as you don't let evaporation make your solution to rich. Also setting up an auto watering system is a really great idea too because letting your plants get thirsty can be very detrimental.

Now that you have your light, hood, COCO, and your nutrient solution, you need some techniques to try. First, when you plants are about 6 to 8 inches tall and have at least 4 good branches at least an inch long it is time to top them. Topping is simply cutting off the very top of your plant. I like to make my cut about half way in between two branches, about an inch down from the top of the plant, that way your new top two branches will not try to dominate one an other too much. Now veg under a Metal Halide light for as long as it take to get you plant to the height you want. Depending on your ceiling height, 4 to 6 feet tall from the floor is pretty good. As your plants are growing, you should bend the main branches over some what... get them used to growing out, not just up because when they get to the bloom cycle they are going to get tied down. Now that your plants are tall enough and you are ready to switch to bloom there are some things to know. The main top of the plant, known as the kola, does not need to be at the top of the plant. Let your plants grow in the bloom cycle for a week or two then you are going to pull the top of the top branches off the the side, letting light down into the middle of the plant. This will cause your lower branches, that would normally grow out to the side, to start growing up toward the light. You will still get a nice kola, but all of those satellite branches will now also have nice kola sized tops to them too.

That should get you by for now. Good luck.
Complete and utter bullshit...