Perfect Grow Conditions?

Hey All!
So, I'm on my first grow. I have done a lot of reading so I can hopefully get a nice crop on my first grow. However I've seen a lot of deviations in what is the ideal growth condition some times I wonder if it is a matter of opinion. I'm wondering what your 2cents are on my grow conditions. This is what I have extracted and applied to my grow groom/closet (4x3x6Ft):

General: I'm growing Northern Lights and some bag seed. I use supersoil potting mix with perlite, vermiculite, petemoss, wormcastings and mycorhizzal spores. I'm growing in 2 gallon pots and plan to grow 15 imature and upto 9 mature plants that is if I get so many chicas. I did'nt fertilize until the 4th week. And I have used Nitrozime (0-4-4) at 1/2 strength and Mircale grow (20-20-20) at full strengh. I plan to do so every two weeks with only the miracle grow and increase Nitrozyme again when starting the flowering then decrease it to water after week 6 of flowering. I think I'm going stay clear from foliar feeding for now. And as I have enough ceiling I don't plan to prune them. Hmmm...maybe later to get rid of the lower foliage and for clones....

Vegging:
400W MH 6500K 18-6 for 8 weeks from seed.
I've tired the following during light hours:
A.With 1000-2000ppM CO2 with dry ice day 81-87F with 1000-2000ppm CO2 and 50-75% humidity. Inlet/outlet vent shut off to maintain CO2. Down side humidity increases. I just vent it to reduce humidity twice a day when refilling dryice. By the way 50gramms of dry ice keeps the ppm levels above 1000 for over 8 hours in my closet. I could add silica gel or calcium cloride to absorb some humidity if it becomes a major problem.

B. Without CO2 suplement. Inlet and outlet vents runnig 75-83F and 35-50% humidity.
My dark conditions are: 69-75F and 40-50% humidity with fresh air. I let the oscilating fan running 24/7.

Flowering:
400W 4000K HPS 7-9 weeks. Strain dependent.
Well if the humidity remains high I may just do the CO2 supplement for the first 4 weeks so I can grow the budds under dryer conditions.

What da ya all think? How far off am I from the perfect growing conditions? what would you change?
I admit I have neglected the oxygene for the roots aspect so far? H202? Oxygynated water? how important is that?
Thanks for your input.

p.s. they do get lots of love and attention.

Sounds like it should produce, nothing is perfect.

strange

bump - anyone?

do not use h2o2, it will kill the beneficial bacteria and microbes in the soil.

my grandma had a good way of putting it, "don't feed the plants dear, feed the soil, and the soil will feed the plants."

also, with good draining soil, oxygenated water is unnecessary, as the soil will breath and the roots will have plenty of air (unless you overwater)

btw, your hps bulb is 4000k? where'd you get that? sure it's not dual spec? 2300-3000k would work better for a higher yeild...

kp

Hey Princess,

Thanks for pointing out the potential probs with H202. Did'nt know it could be harmful. I guess its good that I have not used it so far.

I got the 4000K bulb together with my switchable ballast www.plantlightinghydroponics.com. (See link for specs)
http://www.plantlightinghydroponics.com/venture-400w-4000k-universal-metal-halide-bulb-p-75.html
I think its just a normal MH bulb for street and building lighting with a lot of useless emittted light in the yellow green wavelength. So went and spent 60 bucks on a 6500K Agrosun bulb. My plants seem to like the new light.

Cheers

ah, ok, it's a mh.

if you're going to use mh for flower, consider getting a solarmax gold bulb. it has quite a bit of red mixed in with the blue, and does very well. i have two of them.

kp

LeFreak said:

General: I'm growing Northern Lights and some bag seed. I use supersoil potting mix with perlite, vermiculite, petemoss, wormcastings and mycorhizzal spores. I'm growing in 2 gallon pots and plan to grow 15 imature and upto 9 mature plants that is if I get so many chicas. I did'nt fertilize until the 4th week. And I have used Nitrozime (0-4-4) at 1/2 strength and Mircale grow (20-20-20) at full strengh. I plan to do so every two weeks with only the miracle grow and increase Nitrozyme again when starting the flowering then decrease it to water after week 6 of flowering. I think I'm going stay clear from foliar feeding for now. And as I have enough ceiling I don't plan to prune them. Hmmm...maybe later to get rid of the lower foliage and for clones....

Click to expand...

NO NO NO!

Feeding plants isn't like painting by numbers - there is no set formula for success. Watch your plants and SEE what they tell you they need instead of just shoving nutrients down them willy nilly by guesswork and trial and error!

Full strength miracle gro at 20-20-20?

And Nitrozyme is basically just Seaweed Extract.

kindprincess said:

ah, ok, it's a mh.

if you're going to use mh for flower, consider getting a solarmax gold bulb. it has quite a bit of red mixed in with the blue, and does very well. i have two of them.

kp

Click to expand...

I'll be using HPS for flowering.

babygro said:

NO NO NO!

Feeding plants isn't like painting by numbers - there is no set formula for success. Watch your plants and SEE what they tell you they need instead of just shoving nutrients down them willy nilly by guesswork and trial and error!

Full strength miracle gro at 20-20-20?

And Nitrozyme is basically just Seaweed Extract.

Click to expand...

I don't get it. Are you telling me I should wait until they show a deficiency so I can tell what their need is? What's wrong with full strength mircale grow? What do you suggest instead.

Cheers

kindprincess said:

also, with good draining soil, oxygenated water is unnecessary, as the soil will breath and the roots will have plenty of air (unless you overwater)

Click to expand...

There's me telling people ways of ensuring the water they use on their plants is well oxygenated and here's you telling them they don't need to bother - they sure as hell do.

kindprincess said:

sure it's not dual spec? 2300-3000k would work better for a higher yeild...

Click to expand...

Erm, there's no such thing as a dual spectrum bulb by the way. If there is, which TWO light spectrums does it output? I think you'll find it outputs the full spectrum, with certain colours enhanced - that doesn't make it dual spectrum either.

The term 'dual spectrum' bulb is an advertising and marketing term, it bears no relevance whatsoever to what light spectrums the bulb outputs and in what quantities.

And I don't agree that a 2,700k bulb will give you a higher yield, in my opinion a 4000k bulb is more balanced in it's output and will give better results than a 2,700k which outputs far too much in the red spectrum.

The universally agreed mix of lighting in flowering is 2 HPS to 1MH.

I could go into a very long, detailed and turgid explanation of why this is the case and I'm sure you'll thank me if I don't. Let's just say that in nature, plants DO NOT flower soley under 2,700k spectrum light - it's a mixture of blue AND red. Think about when they flower in nature - it's in the autumn generally with the shorter 12 hour days and whilst the first and last 2 or 3 hours of light is primarily red in spectrum, the sun spectrum inbetween those times is the predominantly blue spectrum of 6,400k.

The reason HPS lights generally produce higher yields than say Metal Halides has nothing whatsoever to do with the light spectrum they both output and everything to do with the fact that watt for watt HPS outputs a lot more lumens than Metal Halides do. Lumen for Lumen there would be very little difference in yield between HPS and MH.

YOOOOOOOO. first off, i would advise against miracle grow, that is if you want tasty tasty nuggets. that nitrozyme stuff sounds badass, but only for flowering i would say. during veg you want more nitrogen than anything else. i f i were you i would try to go as organic as possible. you have worm castings thats good shit. and mycorrhizae or whatever sounds awesome as hell. so why corrupt your little darlins with miracle grow. see if you can find some neptunes harvest, or something nice and organic.

Wigmo said:

YOOOOOOOO. first off, i would advise against miracle grow, that is if you want tasty tasty nuggets. that nitrozyme stuff sounds badass, but only for flowering i would say. during veg you want more nitrogen than anything else. i f i were you i would try to go as organic as possible. you have worm castings thats good shit. and mycorrhizae or whatever sounds awesome as hell. so why corrupt your little darlins with miracle grow. see if you can find some neptunes harvest, or something nice and organic.

Click to expand...

I should look for a organic substitute for miracle grow then. What do you think would be a good source of nitrogen for the vegging? I have a feeling the wormcastings may not be sufficient or perhaps they are releasing the N slowly? Some other fertilizers are smelly like dung and guano.

Cheers

smelly is not that bad though, becuase it means the buds will be smelly, in a good way. use some fish emulsion if you can. look up a thread called organic npk 101