Hello Fellow Farmers…
I am in search of some Experienced Guidance with Closet Grows
In the interest of a quick turn over during the off season.
Outdoor Growing is where my experience lies.
Looking for:
Specifically: The appropriate Lighting to purchase…
And: Wall Covering
Any Tips are welcome as I have never grown indoors…
Thx Community… SadieMae
The biggest thing here is how much room do you have to work with. For lights you want at least 45 watts per square foot of space. So figure out how big your footprint is going to be then multiply it by 40 an that should give you the approx light needed for the room then find lights that will be suffice for the space. For the walls a FLAT white paint is best or even some mylar or panda film would work. Make sure you have a pH pen and a temp an humidity gage. Also a fan that occilates uld be good to keep air moving to help fight off pests. Ummm if I forgot anything the guys here will add to what is needed, but this is most of the basic stuff you need.
Flat paint White Walls work really good, for veg a t 5 ho lighting is cheap to run and I get 4 foot long , 4 bulb set ups from home depot for $80 you just have to put a whip on it and for flower it’s really up to you whether you want to go MH , HPS or LED just make sure to do a lot of research and there’s a lot of great information on this site that can help you , hope that gets you started good luck… others will chime in with a lot of good info also…
I use LED (I’m a new grower, working on my 2nd harvest), and love the results and energy savings! I use 2 MarsHydro 300s for a 4’x2’ tent. All my research and results so far show 25W LED (TRUE wattage, for example, a MarsHydro “300W” only has 130 TRUE watts) per square foot. 100W/sq-ft for CFL (50-75W minimum). I have no experience on HPS or MV. I keep the MarsHydros 18-20" away from the plants, and have good growth with no light burn.
I also have a solo plant chamber with a TaoTronics 24W LED, which I’m pretty happy with, but they have a new 36W that’s a LOT better (better angle) for about $35 or so. And I use 2700K and 6500K CFLs for my incubation chamber, which give good results.
Those are the cheap-but-good LED lighting options I can vouch for. Several folks here have a lot more experience with different kinds of lights.
if you are looking for a quick harvest you probably want to start with an auto. They harvest in about 10 weeks or so,…but you get less smoke.
flat white walls is the most cost effective plan for a closet…and you can get a 300 watt Mars hydro LED on amazon or ebay for 70-80 bucks… if the budget is tight go to home depot and get a few light socket splitters and a cheap drop light… this way you can get 4 CFL’s over your plant giving you 92 actual watts… I can only ever find the 6500K cfl’s at home depot as the local lowes or walmart does not ever have them in stock.
you will probably want to vent into the attic to get rid of smell… if smell gets real bad you will need a carbon filter, they are 70-80 bucks on amazon, the inline fan for them is another 80 bucks or so,…sometimes you can find a package deal for as low as 75 bucks that has both the fan and the filter… you will need a small oscillating desk fan to keep air moving also,…it strengthens the stalks and helps prevent fungus gnats and molds… a mechanical timer is available at wal mart for about 7 bucks( for your lights)
smart pots you can get singles on ebay from 3-5 dollars each…and an 11 inch plastic paint tray at HD is about 5 bucks… place the pot in the paint tray so your runoff does not get all over the floor…also makes it easy to collect some if you need to test the PH or PPM