these forums are an odd duck for sure. It's the same cycle time and again and none of us here are any different. I still have no idea who founded this site or who amongst them is a moderator or a contributing member. I dont think they exist. Oh well, no biggie. New guys come in ask a ton of questions, those get answered by the ones before them, who then answer the questions for the next group.

So here is what I would do if I were you:

go get a bag of good potting soil from home depot. Get a bag of perlite or vermiculite while your there. This will hold water to extend watering cycles. Make a mix of soil/perlite 70/30. Drop your seed into that about 2" down. Water lightly. Use 2 or 3 gallon pots for the first stage. Water the plant about twice a week as a general rule. The way to make doubly sure is to get a moisture meter and stick it into the soil. Get that at Home Depot too...about 10 bucks. The meter will tell you when to water but in general you want the soil to dry out before the next watering. When the top of the soil looks dry to you, it's still pretty comfortable down low and this is what the plant likes best anyway.

Let your pots sit for about a week and pretty soon you will start to see your shoots. Shoots dont need that much light. A single 23 watt cfl (stop calling them equivalents [everyone here already knows the difference anyway]) bulb will be sufficient for your shoots and be fine for the first week after you start to see real leaves, not the tiny little feed bags that you see when they first pop out of the shell. When you see 2 sets of leaves your ready for more light. Add another cfl into the mix. After 3 days under 2 x 23watt cfl's your ready to give them real light. In your case it will be the large cfl bulbs you mentioned earlier. The more light the better hommie. Most of us are using at a minimum of 250 watts and usually arent happy till we achieve 1000 watts across 6 plants. My grow space is 2'x3' and I use 600 watts across 7 plants. That's way more then your using that's for sure. The light cycle is simple. 18 hours on, 6 hours off. When your at Home Depot buy a timer. It wont matter which one as long as it's a daily timer that you can plug your lights into. Set the timer to come on at one time and shut off at another. You water every few days and that's it, ur done. This is called the veg stage. Let the plants grow in the veg state for about 4 or 5 weeks. Keep in mind that however tall you let the plant get too in this first stage, it will double in size by stage 2. Keep that in your head. When your ready to start flowering, I would recommend you do a transplant into a larger container with fresh soil. I wont get into the whole vitamins and minerals theory with you, but trust me, you will want fresh soil for this first grow. When your ready, change the timer to 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark. The dark has to be completely dark and there is just no wiggle room at all there. If your not keeping the plants in utter, total darkness during lights out, then you will be wasting your time. Watch your heat in the grow space. Temps above 85 will hurt your plant badly.


OK, fingers hurt....im done. This should get you started and as best as possible accounts for all variables that I can think of when dealing with soil. Once the plants start growing you can continue to read up on why people do one thing or another to increase yields. Your yields will be minimal with the setup I described but I'm pretty sure you will be plenty happy with the results. Good luck.