1st Time Learning Experience.

[DownSouth34]

Hello fellow MP'ers!

I know it has been a very long time since I have posted and probably people don't remember me (slowmo, Doms you guys out there!) but I finally went and became a father of 3 hopeful little girls.

I decided to do this in a journal because you don't really see too many very low budget 1st time grows. I don't know if people are embarrased with some of the amazing journals that are on here or are afraid for people to see them make mistakes...idk.

I want to have people follow this so that people who haven't attempted their 1st grow can learn from any mistakes I make and just see the whole process. Also for you veteran growers to pitch in your advice to see how good we can all make this grow. I'll be honest, I will not be producing any award winning MJ, but I love the challenge of making the absolute best end product out of maybe less than ideal starting materials.

Quick rundown:

The seeds are from a good sack that I got not too long ago.
I have 5 26w Daylight CFL's going for Veg right now.
I will add 2 65w 2700k and 1 26 2700k bulbs when I switch to flower
The soil is a good organic mix I got from my local nursery that has good drainage and has dolomite lime in it.
I mixed in a good amount of pearlite (probably 40% or a little more)
I have some miracle grow organic choice blood meal for a nitrogen booster in veg. I will add a little in the next week or so to give a little boost, and I mean a very little.

Hope you all enjoy and for the love, plz no one say..."Just go get you an HPS, MH, etc." All of this cost under 70 bucks and everything was acquired from Lowes or my local nursery.

Here are some pics, the one on the left and in the single picture is 2 weeks old today and the other 2 are 1 day behind.

 

[DownSouth34]

Oh and the goal of all this is to just get 1 female to go into flowering. I know the setup I have is pretty ghetto looking, but in a weird way I really like it, and if I get anything good out of this..GREAT! If i don't....I gained some valuable knowledge for the next time.


Oh and the CD is just for scale and was just ok.

 

[Alistair]

DownSouth, it looks like you're off to a good start.

Ok, you don't want to purchase an HID. Fine, but just make sure to get enough lumens.

It'll be interesting to see how it works out. Once I did an all fluoro grow and the buds were nice, dank, and dense. Some strains do well under fluoros. Good luck.

 

[HippyInEngland]

Hello DS, welcome back

Your last post was this ..

Seeds to the House

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So I'd like some peoples thoughts on this:

Would you have your seeds sent to your own house? With just about everyone sending seeds to other peoples houses with their names on it....has anyone heard of a house they had seeds sent to get raided or even have someone show up asking questions? I'm thinking about just having my beans sent to my own home (it'll be the 1st time ordering for me, having a hard time deciding between bcseedking WW or NL). All input is appreciated.

I see from above our using bagseed so you backed away from the idea

Your set up looks fine to me, lots of people grow ghetto with great results, why throw money away?

Healthy looking plants

 

[DownSouth34]

Thanks Hippy and Alistair! It's good to be back.

Alistair: It's not that I don't want to buy an HID, believe me in a perfect world I'd have a beautiful digi. lumatek 600 ballast with hortilux bulbs and a reflector that i could send signals to space with 8), the funds and grow room are just not available to me at this time, but in the future for sure. Given that I get 1 lady out of the 3, I will have 2 65w 2700's, 1 26w 2700, and 5-6 6500's for that one plant. Should be enough lumens for 1 lady and I'll arrange them all around to help with the penetration problems. See that Duct tape....yeah...that's all pro....wait 8(

Hippy: Yeah I backed away from the idea, just for the fact that my first grow I don't need to take a chance on killing some good beans and I just couldn't muster up enough stones to have em sent to my house. Not real sure on this strain, it was good smoke and whoever grew it initially did a terrible job taking care of it (no cure, had seeds obviously), so i'm hoping I can improve on it.

I plan to update this every week or so.

Burn one for me, cause i'm out till my B-day on the 26th. Laterz

DS

 

[MeNtAlPaTiEnT]

Ahah, crazy contraption you have set up there, DownSouth! As long as it works, it doesn't matter how it looks.

It looks like it's an unfinished growbox? I'd throw some plywood on the sides and make it completely enclosed.

Oh and Nick Swardson is fackin hillarious!

 

[docfishwrinkle]

DS34 looks like ur off 2 a good start! only thing i would do differently is get rid of that tin foil. creates hot spots which burn nice tender growth. other than that keep it up.

 

[DownSouth34]

Nick is pretty fackin funny!

The contraption scares me sometimes, all it is was a long sheet of paneling, cut in half and I screwed in the legs to just the top half of the panel board. I would rather not have the tin foil on there, but I really have nothing else available to use as a reflector. I would love to use an oil pan like i've seen in the DIY section but what do you do about the light escaping from the sides? Anyone know where I can get half of a keg shell, that would work with some flat white paint on the interior. Wish I had some sheet metal and the tools necessary for manipulating it. O'well I'll look around and see what I can come up with.

I'm going to have to build a new light fixture for flowering due to the added bulbs. Any suggestions on what I could build with 6 26w CFL's and 2 65w'ers as the center-piece bulbs?

 

[MeNtAlPaTiEnT]

Hey DownSouth, check out my CFL-reflector set-up I had.

These reflectors cost roughly 14 Canadian each and they came with the socket screw-in thing and the actual reflector. They seriously help massively and I will NEVER do a CFL grow without them until I find a better strategy.

The box I was using them was just a simple rectangle, almost like yours but with walls, lol. So if you can finish what you have right now, it will suit you well past harvest and into your next grow.

 

[DownSouth34]

Nice setup mental, I was going for something to that effect, but as you can see came up short. I will get some funds and see what I can do to upgrade in the next couple weeks. Thanks again all.