REFLECTION: the foil is good, but use the dull side as the shiny side displaces the light spectrum too much. or just paint it white and not worry about replacing torn foil lining.

POTTING: paint contents sound harmless enough, but you might clean them again with bleach. unexpected chemicals could kill a plant. poke holes in the bottom for drainage

LIGHTING: fluoros are good, but people usually have them horizontal over the canopy so they can be kept within an inch which is ideal with fluoros, so if vertical mounting along the lengths of the plants is close enough it would work, but you might have to do crazy pruning to get the lamps close enough to the stalks of your plants

ORGANIC MEDIUM: you should prolly spring for potting soil; I haven't found any bugs using it. it's like 6 bucks a bag. using ordinary free soil might introduce bugs and you would have to fertilize the soil from day one (with the store-bought soil you can wait 3 months before feeding your plants). with backyard dirt you'll have to bake it to cook out harmful bacteria and shit. that stinks up one's kitchen. Plus the growing medium is one of just 4 most important cultivation factors in addition to air, water, and light. so for the love of pot just buy the soil

TEMP: I like mine between 77 and 80 F. It depends on the strain and where it originally came from. but it sounds like you have bagseed, so just remember that above 90 for long will kill the plants, below 70 will stunt growth. When in doubt, i just put my face under the lamp and if it feels like the sun in summer, it's a good growing condition. just keep fresh air moving through. in darkness, the plants like it around sixty. I hope you're considering humidity, as it will influence resin production and flowering. during vegetation humidity between 40 and 70 percent is good. during flowering try for between 30 and 50. keeping a barometer in your grow vault will be beneficial. you have to convince the plant it's a dry climate so that it will produce luxuriant, glossy leaves to prevent itself from drying out.

VENTILATIOn: is pretty fookin important. you have a pretty small operation, so you don't need to worry as much about your plants breathing. even if you checked on them every couple of hours, which is hard not to do, you'll stimulate enough air movement to get all their CO2, plus you breath it out. if you are going away for a while, mix up some baking soda and vinegar in a 2-liter bottle. the gas expelled is CO2 and you can fill up a balloon with it and release it into your grow chamber. these options I suggest because I assume you want to seal up your cabinet so it's lightproof and therefor airproof. if you don't need to keep it sealed up don't, and blow a gentle fan through it. mounted computer fans inside would be great.

growing your own is very therepeutic and everyone who smokes it should grow it I believe. If you need a stress outlet, just go tend to your plants. who needs to deal with black market thugs whose herb exists only to earn profits, when you can produce it in your closet and concentrate on quality.
the first plants i grew I let nature take it's course on the windowsill. without having educated myself, the plants were co-ed, and the female flowers got fertilized. so I guess I had schwag, and it was seedy, but man alive I was old-school ripped when I smoked it! I learned then that freshness and quality were neglected when I bought pot from my friends.
anyway, good luck. remember that growing should never be stressful. you'll probably not nail every factor down the first time u grow, but whatever you do harvest will be transcendent of anything on the street
burnable Reviewed by burnable on . 1st Try, but have a few questions Last week, a friend of mine dumped of a trash bag of leaves that he didnt want. I like smoking weed just as much as the next guy, but if leaves is all i have to work with... I just use em for cooking. After rummaging through the bag, I discovered a ton of seeds. This gave me the idea to try to grow a couple. I have no idea the strain, but I will ask my friend for the info later. All I know, is that the buds were wicked sticky when I havested some of his plants and the potency was the Rating: 5