First Time Grower! CFL's, Soil and Mother Nature. 56K Stay Away!

So for my first grow I decided to keep it simple to make things easier. I simply used CFL's on a timer with plants in soil and no nute's or ferts, just water. Comments are welcome!

11/8/11
This was my first day when I got my clones. I just simply clamped the lights to the boards in the ceiling (floor boards of the house). I only had four 23W CFL's and they were far away from the plants.


11/9/11
The next day I potted them in 3 gallon pots with Miracle-Gro Organic Potting Mix and rearranged the lights.


This next pic is of my crawl into my grow.


11/12/11
I got some panda film to wrap around the grow to keep light and warmth in.


Small Blue Dream break (personal favorite).


12/21/11
I got some splitters so I can run two bulbs in each of my clamp lights and learned how important it is to have your light source close to the plant. I hung the clamp lights with zip ties so I can just tighten the zip ties to raise the lights as the plant grows.


I thought these Sour Diesel's were going to yield well. Boy was I in for a surprise.


2/9/12
Getting close to harvesting time, many of the leaves are starting to turn orange. I can't figure it out, maybe they're too cold? It's about 60° in there.


What I earlier thought would be my good yielding Sour D. Did they just not get enough light?



Here are my 10 new clones. A bunch of Great White Shark, some Afghan and some White Widow. I have a 400W HPS coming for them that I will use for flowering. I'm about to put them in 3 gallon pots. I want a higher yield this time. Ideally, I would love to have one of those 1lb single plant grows. I've already FIM'd these and I'm not sure if I got it right or not. Should I use nutes? Which ones?


This is what I use for odor control. I'm worried it's not going to be enough come harvesting time.


2/17/12
Here are close ups of the buds on my 4 plants that are almost ready for harvest.
Sour Diesel





Pineapple Kush



Purple Kush





I went into this really hoping I would get close to half an ounce per plant so I would have enough to last me for a while. It's looking like I'd be lucky if I got a half ounce TOTAL right now! I need to do something to up the yield next time, I really hope my 400watter will help.

they were too far from lights. cfl's are efficient only at close range

scroglodyte said:

they were too far from lights. cfl's are efficient only at close range

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So you think if I had the lights hung close to the plants the whole time they would have yielded more? I'm really excited to compare my yield/plant in my following grows as I learn more and get better at this. Could I build a scrog in an open space like this? Would that be a good way to get a high yielding single plant?

you could have really increased the yield, even working with what you had, if you had closed in the space with that white mylar more. you're taking up about 30sq.ft. when you should have been taking up about 9sq.ft. There's no reason to have so much space between the plants, especially if they aren't filling it.
Try to maximize the potential of your reflective surface by getting all of those plants into a circular pattern and bringing the film in as close to them as possible while giving them maybe 6 inches of grow room all around.

NnthStTrls said:

you could have really increased the yield, even working with what you had, if you had closed in the space with that white mylar more. you're taking up about 30sq.ft. when you should have been taking up about 9sq.ft. There's no reason to have so much space between the plants, especially if they aren't filling it.
Try to maximize the potential of your reflective surface by getting all of those plants into a circular pattern and bringing the film in as close to them as possible while giving them maybe 6 inches of grow room all around.

Click to expand...

Good to know, so I should scoot my new clones closer together. The only problem I have when I bunch them together is watering/trimming the plants in the back. I also try not to have them too close together so they don't fight for light.

scroglodyte said:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-Energy-...s-2pk/17203795

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My current CFL's are just as strong as those and I'm running a mixture of Daylight color and Soft White.

dontstop said:

My current CFL's are just as strong as those and I'm running a mixture of Daylight color and Soft White.

Click to expand...

wrong color tho. not blue enough. need 6500K

For flowering? I thought you wanted warmer colored light for flowering. I'll look into those.

sorry.....thought you were in veg......never mind....lol. reading dyslexia.

Well I've got 4 plants in their last days of flowering and 10 clones in veg.

well..........veg benefits most from 6500K. ergo........http://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-Energy-...s-2pk/17203795......lol

I think I'm going to try to turn my veg room into a tent tomorrow. Will update with pics.

I just put all of my clones in a little tray, rearranged the lights and brought the panda film in close in my veg room. I'll post pics when the lights come on.

I'm probably going to have to rearrange the room again to make more room when I transplant all these babies into 3 gallon pots. I was thinking of doing two plants per pot to save space and make things easier but I've heard a lot of bad things about it. I was hoping they would kind of entwine and become one super plant if I put two in each pot

Otherwise with 10 pots and only one 400w HPS for flowering it's gonna be awfully tight in there! I'd much rather have 5 pots for the single light.

So this is what my veg room looks like now. I want to get them transplanted ASAP so input on the two plants per pot idea is much needed! As soon as I transplant them I will start LST.

I think I would cover the black plastic on the bottom with the white mylar as well. Won't get much reflected light from the CFLs but you may get a little.

So today I transplanted 5 of my plants, my 3 White Widows and 2 Afghani. I'll transplant the other 5 Great White Shark tomorrow.
I've been having this odd issue with my CFL's recently where they're just burning out a few days after I throw them in. All the lights from the same batch ( 8 ) have burnt out and they haven't even been in for two weeks. Has anyone else had this issue before?

Also, how long after transplanting should I wait to LST?

What the hell, the last month of my grow journal is gone! And guess what, someone has all the data from the website now, so the site got hacked by someone who was looking for that information. Who else do you think would want all that info with the IP addresses of all the members and their detailed grow journals and such? I'm leaving for a more secure website.