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growing & light arrays

shotgunsinthehall

Bluelighter
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
Messages
166
Location
cheaspeake, va
suppose someone were growing marijuana for their own personal usage, and thus would need not a large crop, more or less 3-5 plants, what would be the best way to accomplish this?

i hear that hps(high-pressure sodium)lamps work well to provide light, much better than mh(metal hallide)or flourescent. i plan on getting some of these, however, i also hear that light in the red spectrum(red light)is the most responsive to marijuana, and the best for facilitating photosynthesis. do hps lamps come in red? what is the going price for an hps lamp per wattage?

also i wonder what is the best way to germinate seeds...i do know that the direction of the sprout from the seed is a sure-fire way to determine sex early on. if the sprout comes out on the top or either end it will be a chick, if it comes out on the side it will be a dude.
 
Metal Halide or HPS will both be fine.

A 1000W MH will run you about $250-$350, and a 1000W HPS will run you about $300-$500.

Either one would be plenty to grow 3-5 plants.

You can also go with 600W models, they are cheaper, but not much cheaper.

HPS is good for budding, MH is good for growth, but it is no big deal, people grow plants out from start to finish with just MH all the time, or just HPS.

Germinate seeds by soaking a paper towel in water, fold it in half, and stick your seeds in.

Next put the paper towel in a ziplock bag somewhere warm.

Check it every 12 hours until you see a little white root come out of the seeds.

Once you see the root on a seed, plant it in some quality soil about 1/4" down.

You can't tell the sex of a plant until you flower it, how the seed sprouts has nothing to do with it.
 
With only a light you're not going to manage, you will have to invest in fans, carbon filter and a lot more equipment to make an adequate growing space. I suggest you go for the HPS, a 250, a 400 or a 600 W, it's for personal use after all. The 600 is the most efficient out of the whole bunch; the amount of lumens produced compared to the wattage they're pulling. Around here those will go for 80-200 euro's, it varies, just search for the best price a bit. HPS does best IMO, while MH is slightly better for vegging, the MH's won't do as good in flowering as the HPS will.

What lurker said is true, you can't tell sex by the way a seeds sprouts. You'll see what it is after a couple of weeks on 12/12, either that, or in veg if it's a strain which shows sex early on. I germinate pretty simple, I've tried it 3 different ways and this is the most succesful, for me anyways. I simply take a cup, put some water in and throw the seeds in. After a couple of hours they'll start to sink if you swoosh it around a bit and after 1-2 days they'll sprout, then put them in the earth, 1-2 days later you'll have little seedlings.
 
Yeah totally submersing them in water works as well.

You just have to make sure you get them out of the water ASAP after the root pops out.

Fans are very important, that is hard to get into, depends on how you are growing, in a closet, bedroom etc.

Ventilation is very situation dependent.

All I can say in general terms is you want and exhaust fan to suck old hot air out, and bring new cool air in, and you need an intake.

If you are serious about it you can research, the info is out there.

Also, head to your local hydro shop and the owner will help you out with all you need to know, just tell him your growing tomatoes he will steer you right.
 
thanks for the info. i am aware about the ventilation situation and also that the soil should be nitrogen rich. now i have a better idea about lighting costs and two germination techniques so far.

however, i wasn't asking about the sex determination...i was sharing useful knowledge with you all, sounds like you needed it. it really does work, try it out and see for yourself. i've grown in the past but never had much success yielding decent budding plants and i also never had good lighting. good thread so far, keep the info coming fellow cannbinoids ;)

what about red spectrum hps or mh???
 
Never heard of it before in my life, can you back it up with literature? I'm pretty skeptical regarding such claims.

I do know that it's hypothesized that certain circumstances in the first few weeks can be of influence on the sex of the plant, such as lighting, temperature, ph, etc.. There's some literature on this though. I've also seen a claim that you could predict the sex of the plant by calculating the leaf mass index, has something to do with the leaves and the amount of serrations on them, less typically means it's male, more means it's female, but I can't find any support for that theory either.

You'll know for certain when something is male or female when they'll start to show sex. I'm not gonna bother checking every seed I sprout, or count all the leaves and serrations, I'll see what they are during flowering, much easier.
 
StagnantReaction said:
Compact flourescents will work if you're going small-scale and don't want anything fancy.

right on the money. not only can you save space while at the same time increasing light penetration to the level that HID bulbs offer (by simply moving the light close onto the plant) but you'll also find that rather than blowing away lots of cash on ventilation (a 600W for 3-5 plants? That's looking at a couple hundred bucks for adequate ventilation in a small space) you can keep a CFL environment cool enough with just a few inexpensive (AND QUIET) computer fans.

I wouldn't worry about the smell to begin with, you'll eventually start to smell when you need to solve the problem. Generally you can do pretty well with a loosely packed carbon filter flanked with high volume comp fans... also doesn't cost all that much.

All in all, you will get the same result mating good training techniques and daylight and warm light CFLs (spectrum difference, just like MH to HPS) with souped-up plant feed (i.e. healthy medium, carbo loader) than from blowing twice as much money as you would for the special supplements on a sophisticated vent system and the other complications you'd be dealing with for a HID setup. I have grown better nug (amazing nug, dense as balls from the carbo loader) by being a bit more fussy with my plants and training them right around the CFLs than friends who have run into nothing but problems trying to maintain their plants under an HID bulb.

The only advantage of HID is better light penetration, but if spend ten minutes a week training your plants well (and who doesn't wanna be around their precious plants? :) ) then honestly CFL is JUST AS GOOD
 
Ok for 3-5 plants maybe HPS and all that shit is the way to go.

But let me tell you what I do.

I have a closet. I lined the one side with tin foil, threw a normal lamp with a 75W light bulb in there for heat/light and hung a dangling radial fluorescent that's like 45W over my weed plants that are in cups you use for beer pong.

2 weeks later they're all growing extremely well and one is just monsterous. If you're only doing 2 or 3, do it my way. 5 or more, I'd say do it the normal/proper way.
 
Tin foil and incandescent bulbs. lol.. keep reading, son.

The only thing keeping those plants alive is the direct light from the flourescent.
 
The only advantage of HID is better light penetration, but if spend ten minutes a week training your plants well (and who doesn't wanna be around their precious plants? ) then honestly CFL is JUST AS GOOD

Try running 1000 watts of CFLs and tell me it is as good as a 1000W HID lamp.

You can grow 1 plant under a 600W, it all depends on how long you veg.

Huge plants is the way to go.
 
Panic Station said:
2 weeks later they're all growing extremely well and one is just monsterous. If you're only doing 2 or 3, do it my way.

I wouldn't even grow one plant your way. It's the wrong way. The 75W bulb is good for nothing. The tinfoil will create hotspots on your plant, it's reflective alright, but it acts like a magnifying glass. I can imagine what you mean with monstrous, tall and lanky, dropping over due to the weight of the leaves. I should start reading/asking questions before you proceed with growing.

Btw, I removed a post, please no posting of sources.
 
Ideally, I would use MH, HPS, and CFL all in one. The CFLs would be positioned all around the plants as close as possible, filling in all the gaps with a full spectrum, while the MH and HPS power the main source of light.

Both have their benefits for different situations.

For example, only CFLs let you create stealth boxes (an impossibility for HIDs due to temperature). However, only HIDs give you the best lumen per watt and penetration.
 
i'm just about to go shopping, now that i have a nice list to choose from. i'll make my final decisions based on my budget and all the info here. thanks a lot for all of it. i'll even start a new thread as an update for you guys that want to know about experimentations b/c i'll probably end up using a combination of all the suggestions here. btw, the literature i got the seed knowledge from was 'The Best of Ask Ed' by Ed Rosenthal. (should have some old balding guy on the front wearing a kick-ass weed/hawaiian shirt...god i want that shirt)
 
bumpin back to the gender discussion, what is the most precise traits to define gender on my plants, i think they`ve reached flowerin stage. One shows some kind of bud-like structure on the nodes, the other is less apparent.
 
cannabis_gender1.jpg
 
wow its pretty close... is there any complication having diff gender plants next to each other for a certain period of time until im assured of gender and ready to get rid of possible males?
 
As long as you have the males out within 3 weeks of switching to 12/12 you will be fine.

After 3 weeks it will be very obvious.

Do you see white hairs?
 
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