New Grow in a Box!

[greenmonster]

ummmmm as far as my limited knowledge goes..... i have a mate who went to horticultural college and she says it is better to start with small pots but the reason she gave me didnt make much sense (to me). she said something about if the roots have too much space to grow into they get confused....!!!??? i think she is confused (hippychick, lol).
i wouldnt put my seeds straight into a 3 galloner for a couple of reasons: first when plants are young you have to be careful about how much water and how often. 2: its so much easier to manipulate little pots than great big uns but i guess this only matters if u ever have to move ur plants!
transplanting isnt hard though dude (not when the plant is small anyway).
check out the FAQ's and other threads for more info and maybe if ur lucky someone with more experience than me will tell ya the best ways of doing things and why also!
hope it all works out dude!

greenmonster Reviewed by greenmonster on 02-16-2006. New Grow in a Box! Peace to all. I wish the Dead would tour again-anyway I am transplanted to the great North West and I am looking to see if the following will be the best set up? This is also my first indoor crop. Grow Box 4x4x6-Air Cooled 430 with a SonAgro bulb,lined with mylar. 4" fresh air at the bottom of box(intake) and exhaust out the top. I am thinking of using just a 4" duct fan for the light and a circular house fan for inside the box. Will I need more suction to bring in fresh air? Do I Rating: 5

[jamstigator]

I don't think a 430 watt light is enough for that much space, personally. That's 16 square feet (assuming the 6' dimension is height). That light would cover a 3x3 area, but even then, the periphery would not get much light in comparison to the center. Light drops off proportionally to the square of distance, so double the distance, one FOURTH the light. Triple the distance, one ninth the light, etc. A 1k light would be ideal for a 4x4 area. What you could do, though, is section off your box for now and create two 2x4 areas, and use that light in one of those areas, and add a second light later to the other area. Or sell that 430 later and buy a 1k light, although I would personally just add a second 430, so that you have some equipment redundancy, and you're not totally screwed if one light fails.

For my (flower) box, I went a little overkill and got a 6" 440 CFM fan, which I have speed controlled down to where the noise level is tolerable. And this fan is up top, at the exhaust area. For the air input, I just left it passive, using two 8"x8" Doran darkroom filters. A 4" inline centrifugal fan would be enough though, even for your box (which is twice the volume of mine), but again, I'd use it for an exhaust fan and use passive intakes. I don't really see much reason to have active intakes - just complicates things, more stuff to fail, unnecessary expense, more lightproofing hassle.

It's better to graduate your pot size as the plants grow, which requires transplantation. I understand laziness though. What I do to maximize laziness is start with styrofoam 16 oz. cups (which are easy to razorblade down the side to extract the soil mass), then transplant to 1/2 gallon square containers, then one final transplant to 4 gallon square containers. So that keeps me to just one transplant that's in any way a hassle, and even so, it's not a major hassle. Ideally, it'd probably be better to have one extra round of transplantation in there between the 1/2 gallon and 4 gallon containers, but again, I'm lazy.