Hey guys, I did some indoor growing back in the late 90’s. Back then I had 2 100 or 150 watt lights, one mercury one sodium, supplemented with flourescent shop lights with grow tubes. In a separate closet I had a shop light on 24/7 about a foot above my clones. The seeds came from getting “Lucky” in bags of good weed, I had buddies who helped me with that. I ended up with tons of small plants that flowered nicely, and a couple 7 foot plants that were up to the ceiling in our garden apartment, but the weed was kind of airy and wasn’t up to par with the parent bags and I’m sure it’s because of the lighting as well as not having a nice forum like this to teach you about how to judge when to harvest based on the cloudiness of the trichromes (What? wish I knew that back then). So, I gave up on growing in favor of the professionals a long time ago.
But these days weed is legal, and insanely expensive - $85 for an eighth after tax. I suffered a spine injury in May (I’m doing much better now), and qualified for a medical card to reduce the taxes, but I’m also now able to grow up to 4 plants legally. I saw the LED “Grow lights” being sold at Home Depot months ago, and assumed if the big box stores were even selling them, LED’s must have come a long way in replacing sodium and mercury lamps. So I went on Amazon and found the best deal I could on lights similar to what I saw at Home Depot with much more “Wattage”. I ended up buying 4 lights from a company called “Bloomspect”. 3 “1200 Watt” with reflectors, and 1 “1000 Watt” that doesn’t have reflectors.
I found this site on accident in Aug and bought some seeds after getting an email from a new dispensary I tried that advertised this place, and didn’t find the forum until some time after. What I now know I actually have is 4 Burple lamps, 3 are 265 Watt and 1 is 180 Watt. I’m growing in a large closet, the room is probably 8 x 16 ft and the grow area I set up is about 6 x 3, right now there are only 2 plants, mainly because I’m having a hell of a time getting the seeds to work out. I’ve tried everything, and now I’m using Bobbydigital’s recipe with 50-1 water to peroxide (3/4 cup water, 2 tspn peroxide) on 2 Bruce banner seeds - they cracked overnight after 36 hours, but I’m going to wait for the tails to get a little longer - I put a cracked BB seed in dirt 10 days ago, and it never came up, so I’ll wait for 3/4 inch tail like Bobby. I got all autoflower seeds before I found out they can’t be cloned, I’m still itching to clone them mainly because people say not to do it, but I really don’t want to mess either of the first 2 that are currently close to flowering. Those are Zkittles and Gorilla Glue autoflowers. The Zkittles is doing great, the Gorilla Glue is stunted and about 1/3 the size of the other - they were started together and treated exactly the same so weird.
So for starters I’m looking for advice on lighting, I still have one of the 1200 watt bloomspect lights unopened that I think I can still return, it was $90 after tax with the discount code, so pretty cheap and maybe I will keep for now. I have 975 watts for an 18 sq ft grow area, so just over 50 Watts/sq ft. So what I have should work for my small indoor garden, but since I’m legal and doing this on the up and up I may as well do it as well as I can. I’ll have the set-up indefinitely, so a little extra front end investment is very worth it for me.
As it stands I have spent more on seeds than lights, and that seems a little backwards, but I spazzed on the seeds - i have Bruce Banner, Gorilla Glue, and ZKittles with White Widow on the way. All Autoflower, but I have a feeling I’m going to outgrow autoflowers. So, I’m going to need some time to work through my inventory of seeds, but I’m also open to recommendations on seeds as well.
For the rest of my set-up, I’m using 2 gallon pots currently, but bought 5 gallon bag/pots for going forward. I don’t think it’s worth the transplant shock to move the 2 plants that are close to flowering, but I think the 5 gallon pots will give me better outcomes. I’m using a mix of organic garden soil and organic mulch garden soil I am mixing in close to 20% perlite, and a couple tablespoons of “Garden Tone”. I am going out to buy peat today to add to the mix, but don’t know how much to put in. The first 2 plants didn’t get this proposed mix, I was going off 20 year old memory and bought vermiculite instead of perlite and didn’t put enough in anyway. I’m using chemical fertilizer.
Thanks for reading my manifesto.