My First Grow is Started!

On Monday I germinated 14 seeds (7 White Widow and 7 unknown) and by Tuesday afternoon 6 had sprouted so I planted them and got them under light. This morning 4 more sprouted and I planted them and when I went to put them under the lights I noticed 3 little sprouts breaking throught the dirt!!!

Attached are pictures of my veg chamber and my grow box. The last picture is a close up into my veg chamber through the fan hole. If you look closely you will see 2 little sprouts sticking up basking in the light.

The mix I planted them in is called Jungle Grow Professional Growers Mix. It is made up of the following (from the bag):

Sphagnum Canadian Peat Moss (60%) -Our triple screened, long-fibered Canadian cold climate peat provides better aeration in the soil then sedge peat.

Composted Aged Pine Bark - Naturally aged bark is ground to 0 - 1/8 inch consistency. The bark is non-compacting, with disease suppression properties, and will not harm the roots or burn up available nitrogen as non composted barks can.

Perlite
Vermaculite
Charcoal
Lime

Gauranteed Analysis:
Total Nitrogen: 0.16%
Total Phosphate 0.06%
Total Potash 0.08%

I'm just giving them filtered water and I use a spray bottle to get the soil good and wet in the morning and in the evening. I'm thinking I'll start using a veging fert in 10 - 14 days.

The lights I'm using are 6 20 watt flourescent T12 tubes (1,200 lumens each, 6,500K temp). The problem with these light fixtures is the ballist is wired and mounted into the fixture. I won't bore you with details, but trust me it was a pain in the butt removing the ballast and cutting wires and reattaching wires. Hopefully the end result will prove it was worth the effort.

I put a 6" 440CFM inline fan in my attic and attached venting to the top of my box. On the bottom I have a vent that leads into my office, which is under central a/c and always at 70 degrees. I've got the box air tight (except for the 2 vent holes) so I think I'm getting really good airflow (the thing is making almost as much noise as the A/C blower in my house).

I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking and decided I am going to go with flourescent lights for my flower chamber as well. I just hope I can keep this metal box cool with all those flourescent bulbs inside. I'm going to have a total of 20 2 foot light fixtures, each running two bulbs, inside the box. I'm hoping I can keep the temperature below 80.

Well this is it so far. I'll be updating and posting from now until harvest. Thanks for the help in getting started and I can't wait until the day where I don't have to call Billy anymore!!!

well it looks like u did your homework and i foresee a very nice experience coming of this for u (and the rest of us reading about it) im assuming those flouro lamps are so high up so u can take a picture? just remember to keep the flouros close to avoid stretching your plants. (within 1-3 inches) use a little thermo and actually keep your temp at about 80. ive never been able to get lower than 80 with a lot of flouro, havent wanted to either. as long a i keep it 85 and under i dont sweat it. keep researching to learn more about what your doing and good luck!

I have a hypothesis that color temp is more important then total lumens in overall plant life. We all know that blue light works for vegetating plants and red light is needed for flowering plants. However most flourescents I've seen (including all Compact FL) have a warm bulb used for flowering and the color temperature of these bulbs is 3,000K. In the 2' T12 flourescents that GE makes, the warm bulb puts out 1,350 lumens and has a color temperature of 3,000K. They offer a Plant and Aquarium bulb that only puts out 600 lumens with a color temp of 2700K. The challenge in using a bulb like this is getting enough lumens at that color temperature. My plan is to use 36 bulbs for flowering (24 Plant & Aquarium & 12 Daylight) This combo will give me total lumens of 27,000 for 8 square feet or 3,375 lumens of light per square foot. Well I bought my fixtures and bulbs today and flourescents aren't cheap. The final tally: 19 fixtures @ $18 each and 42 bulbs - 18 Daylight @ $5 each and 24 Plant & Aquarium @ $9 each. So that is a total of $685.

Now many of you will say I could have spent $300 on a dual ballist system with a HID system and gotten a lot more light. My hypothesis is that by literally surrounding my plants with light on all sides with a perfect temperature that my results will be superior to those acheived with HID. To bad I couldn't have done this for a science experiment!!!

Thanks for the temperature tip Battosi. I was wondering about that, because it gets to be around 80 or 82. As for the lights if you look at the third picture closely, you can see I have those lights right on top of the pots (within 1"), but again thanks for looking out for me

This morning I checked in and 2 more broke through, so now I have 5 little sprouts. Also, one of my seeds sprouted so she got planted and now I have 11 little pots in my veg chamber. What is the longest anyone has ever seen a seed take to germinate? I guess I'll let the other 3 seeds sit over the weekend and see if any of them sprout.