Encouragement for Newbies! - w/ PICS

This thread is designed to encourage newbies and ease any worries you may have as a first-time herb grower.

I am about to harvest my first grow ever!
I planted 5 seeds in soil, in my closet 3 months ago, and OMG they are looking so good.(imo)

But since there are so many little things Ive learned in the past 3 months...I wanted to give a little back to the community and share my grow story with you new-comers. (since it's probably not going to encourage or impress all you seasoned pro's)

A Note for the Newbs: Everything I did during this grow, I learned from this website! It's ALL here.

I hope I teach newcomers a few things they should and shouldn't worry much about. Cause I worried alot about some trivial things, and ignored bigger issues.

The Grow: (summarized)

I took 5 seeds out of some crappy Mexican brick weed. I chose the 5 biggest, darkest and hardest seeds out of the bunch. I planted them in a 70% soil, 30% perlite mixture. (fox farm ocean forest soil) Used 6-8 CFL bulbs (46watt I think)...and a fluorescent tube (T5HO 2" tube = 5000 lumens) with a ballast. Put it all in my closet with a fan on it. Cost maybe $100 for all the lights, plugs, splitters, etc....
Now it's been a few months and I have never smelled such yummy sticky fresh buds!!!

here's a pic or two of the set-up:
and the seedlings

Glad a veteran of growing is showing the way

Now that is exciting because I've just started my first grow. My grow area is also a closet space. So, please keep posting what you've discovered. It will help all us newbies with a better product

T6

tree fitty said:

This thread is designed to encourage newbies and ease any worries you may have as a first-time herb grower.

I am about to harvest my first grow ever!
I planted 5 seeds in soil, in my closet 3 months ago, and OMG they are looking so good.(imo)

But since there are so many little things Ive learned in the past 3 months...I wanted to give a little back to the community and share my grow story with you new-comers. (since it's probably not going to encourage or impress all you seasoned pro's)

A Note for the Newbs: Everything I did during this grow, I learned from this website! It's ALL here.

I hope I teach newcomers a few things they should and shouldn't worry much about. Cause I worried alot about some trivial things, and ignored bigger issues.

The Grow: (summarized)

I took 5 seeds out of some crappy Mexican brick weed. I chose the 5 biggest, darkest and hardest seeds out of the bunch. I planted them in a 70% soil, 30% perlite mixture. (fox farm ocean forest soil) Used 6-8 CFL bulbs (46watt I think)...and a fluorescent tube (T5HO 2" tube = 5000 lumens) with a ballast. Put it all in my closet with a fan on it. Cost maybe $100 for all the lights, plugs, splitters, etc....
Now it's been a few months and I have never smelled such yummy sticky fresh buds!!!

here's a pic or two of the set-up:
and the seedlings

Click to expand...

GET A $8 soil moisture/Ph/light meter from Home Depot. it will tell you the Ph and soil moisture under the soil...it's a good buy, and quite necessary. Also get a $10 digital thermometer with humidity gauge.
also, necessary!

Once you have planted the seeds, the most important thing I learned to do is NOT OVER WATER.

It takes time to get it perfect, but basically I only watered once every 5 days or so. Once it dries out thoroughly, water again. Don't water when it's already moist.

If your seedlings are droopy, they could be either OVER or UNDER watered.
so drooping does not = "need water"

Remember, your roots are probably as big as the plant itself, so they're growing too! so don't worry if it seems like it's taking forever to grow. I Vegged my plants for 2 months and they went from seeds to 2" tall...

So just water and watch em!
Instead of obsessing over your little plants, spend your efforts on this website, learning about your next steps...which at this point for me was probably finding out how long to veg...what to look for to know when to change the lighting and start flowering.
etc.

pSome concerns I had with my CLOSET grow:

1. I did nothing to ventilate the closet. It was too expensive for me, so all I did was keep the closet door closed when I was gone, and open when I was home. My babies were fine.

2. My plant started turning yellow in the lower leaves and stem before I ever added nutes to it....after alot of research I found out that I needed to buy Cal/Mag and put a few tablespoons in my water. It helped.

3. It gets old to bend to the floor every time you want to inspect your plants, so i eventually put them on a little table.

4. I think the light ballast ($70 @ htgsupply.com) was worth every penny because I could clamp my CFL's to it, and it serves at a reflector. I only used one bulb in it, because the other bulb arrived in the mail broken. But if I had both lights going....damn! even better nugs.

hmm...I'm just winging it w/ this thread but I want to share my excitement..and tell you all not to worry! so, hope it helps a bit.

Okay, so I vegged for about a month and a half when I realized, damn these plants are getting tall! Only about a foot tall, but they were definitely PLANTS and not seedlings or sprouts any more!

At 1.5 months I started learning about topping, LSTing, and FIMing plants...all here at RIU.org. I decided that I would not top of FIM my plants (cut the tips off) but would intead use Low-Stress Training (LST) on them.

So I studied up, and LST'd them.
I bent them all over 90 degrees, and secured them to the side of my pot.
The plastic pots are cool, you just drill or poke a hole in the rim of the pot, and tie your stem over to it so the plant is bent.

IT'S SO COOL - cause after about 5-6 hours the top of the plant goes from horizontal back to vertical.

If I hadn't LST'd - I wouldn't have like, 40+ bud sites on my 3 plants right now. But I did, so I do!

OH - I ended up w/ 3 plants because one died early (the runt on the right). 2 ended up being male. 3 were female. Not bad for Mexibrick crap seeds. 3/6

(* I had to re-pot my plants twice for this grow, because I started in little pots. Just start in large pots and you won't have to re-pot them every time the roots fill up the pot.)

some pics from around this time: the LST and early flowering stage...

Thanks for the encouragement. I am on my first attempt as well.

UGH - sorry all I have are Iphone pics. Youre going to laugh at my high tech iphone zoom lens I'm using to photograph my buds.

Anyway, after 2 months, when the nodes began to alternate (learned that here...look it up) I switched the lighting from 24/7 ON to 12hrs on/ 12hrs off. And I light-proofed the closet by buying a roll-up shade from lowes home improvement store (which was suggested on here) for $15.

So after maybe a week, I saw little white hairs showing up everywhere on 3 plants. And 2 plants had balls growing...

if you look at enough pics ahead of time, you will know what to look for, and notice the balls easily. It sucks though, because you will SOO try to convince yourself they;re not balls and it's not male. But just keep an eye on them.

So I threw out the 2 males.
Also!

One of my females, on just one stem, grew a set of balls. I thought the whole plant would be hermie, but I just cut off that one developing bud-with-balls...and the rest of the plant has matured without another ball on it!

I prevented it from going all-out hermie.
but it def was a hermie, cause it was hairy and ball-y....

So now I'm about a month into flowering.
Some hairs are turning orange, most are white. The bud smells better than any bud I have smelled in about 2 years. probably because it's the freshest I've ever seen!

It just started getting it's crystals (trichomes. learn about these!)
and I just started inspecting the crystals under a microscope to see when they are ready!!!!

The trichomes are about 30% milky, 70% clear. So I probably have a few more weeks to go. But here's where I'm at after 3 months and 5 days!

Did I mention this stuff smells great?
If I pinch a bud, my fingers get so sticky I can pick up things just by pressing on them and letting them stick to my finger!

ok here's some high-tech iphone zoom pics:

by the way

this grow is 100% fluorescent.
I couldn't afford expensive things like HPS lights, ventilation, etc...so I decided I would VEg and Flower with fluoros.

I am convinced HPS lights work better for flowering, as that is the consensus here...but I also learned that you can mae it work with fluoros if you have to.

So I did.

I will definitely post updates when my buds are done, and I harvest them.

If you have any questions, I can try to answer. But I am after all, just as new to this as anyone.

Growing a good plant is hard.
But not because it's difficult to do.
It just requires you to learn a bunch of little, easy things...and be patient.

It's a LOT of fun, and it's very rewarding.
And that's coming from a guy who hasn't even smoked it yet!!!

Good Luck with your grows...and I'll be in touch.

Hope this was worth a look!

They are looking good subscribed