Hey guys i'm growing a single plant and i need some advice

Ok, so here's my setup:

In my room the far wall is made of shelves and there is a rectangular one that I have layered black trash bags inside and I have a 18' inch incandescent "Grow Light" that I purchased from Wal-Mart going long ways in the enclosed shelf. The shelf is approximately 36' inches tall and 14' wide. I have the sprout in a 1.28qt. plant pot with some Jungle Growth soil that I found in my garage. I have a small tray under the pot which I fill with water when I water the sprout(usually once daily because I put a decent amount of water in the tray for it to soak up). I was giving it only 12 hours of daylight and night but I read it needs at least 16-18 hours of light, is this true? And is my watering technique efficient for my single sproutling? Will my grow light be good enough for it? WIll having the light straight up and down instead of above the plant affect it?

If someone could answer my questions it would be greatly appreciated.


P.S. Love this forum, I'll be back to post some more tomorrow, because I'm about to smoke me some and crash. =D PEACE!

any pictures maybe ??

Ah! I lost my digital camera and haven't got any way of taking any pics =/ Sorry. Oh, and the plant is like 3 inches tall and has 8 or so leaves.

16 to 18 hrs for veg. water your plant from the top when it needs it, you should be able to tell when it needs water by how light the pot feels when you pick it up. Your light might be ok for a very short time but you should look into better lighting.

you need some better lights. go to walmart and pick up 4 or 5 of the 26 watt(make sure you look at the actual wattage and not the equivalent)...you want cool white(blue) for veg and warm white(red) for flowering.

icepik1234 said:

you need some better lights. go to walmart and pick up 4 or 5 of the 26 watt(make sure you look at the actual wattage and not the equivalent)...you want cool white(blue) for veg and warm white(red) for flowering.

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Do i realy need more than one light if I'm only growing 1 plant?

Thanks for the advice btw =]

xXKillerDroXx said:

Do i realy need more than one light if I'm only growing 1 plant?

Thanks for the advice btw =]

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how many watts is your light?

You can't grow with incandescent lights. You need at least 3 CFLs to get any kind of growth. Your best bet would be to get two warm white and two daylight spectrum CFLs and stick them in there.

oh damn i didnt read it was incandescent. i thought you just had one cfl.

but i still stand by what i said earlier. just go out and grab some cfls.

weeda has it right. 3 at the LEAST. also he does make a good suggestion of getting both spectrums at light and using them throughout both cycles.

but still make sure the majority are of the type i told you for each cycle(even will work too)

Is there anything small enough to fit where i am growing? The measurements for the shelf I'm using are on my first post.

uhm. get at least 4 32w cfl's if you plan on having the plant be at least 2ft. i would say 4 per every 1.5 feet spaced out accordingly.
i have 4 32w cfls scattered around on top, and led's around the lights. and i'm growing dwarfs. (on purpose)

ive never seen an 18" incandescent light before guys...im pretty sure he means fluorescent

and killer you need a real grow light

but id say you need plenty more than that 18 inch

yeah your right man he said he got a grow light from walmart has to be fluorecent, but yeah get ur self some cfls

Wal Mart has a special going on right now for 4 23 watts 6500K (For Vegging/Growing) for 6 dollors, Cheap as hell, Go get you 8 of them for 12 bucks and call it a deal

thats a really good deal. but anyways about the watering. if you like filling a dish underneath, make yourself a nice little wick system. your going to need to keep that (hopefully flourescant even though you said incan.) light about 3 inches away from your canopy. and when it really starts to develope..like 2 sets of leaves forming, i would purchase a new lighting system. such as the really good wallmart special 4 24w or whatever for 6....and yes..get 8 cause your gonna need em when that plant gets bigger.

Ok thanks guys. I'm going to Wal.Mart soon to pick up those lights. And if anyone wanted to know, on the bulb of my light it says:

Lights of America
Color Temp. 7800K
CRI=11 8000hrs



BTW, I'm gonna try to get a pic of my setup soon.

EDIT:

I found this little bit of info to help on the incandescent or fluorescent problem. The info was on the site posted by a guy named matth, its stickied in general growing.

Incandescent lights: Incandescents are the most popular type of lights in the world. They may come advertised as incandescent, tungsten, quartz, halogen, or simply standard. The important thing about incandescents is this: they suck.
There are some incandescents which are sold as 'grow lights.' They usually have a blue coating(mine looks blue) and usually come in 60W and 120W sizes. While they may seem like a good choice to new growers, they are next to useless; they produce some light at a usable spectrum, but only have about a 5% efficiency and generate more heat than usable light. Most of us have these in our homes right now. Don't use them for growing, instead opt for a Compact Fluorescent as a cheaper but more efficient alternative.

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youve got plenty of headroom in your cab so i dont think youre going to run into any space issues, especially using cfls. besides the light bulbs you may want to look into picking up a timer and something for the bulbs to go in(unless you have like 8 lamps sitting around)

ive seen some good things done with a bathroom vanity light like this. (hopefully you can find a shittier one than that for cheaper cause it doesnt have to look pretty.) it has slots for 4 bulbs so you can get some 4 y splitters and fit all 8 of yours in it. you could also make a reflector for it out of a mylar reflective blanket or one of those sunshades that you put in your car...

also ive seen people people make similar arrangements with 1 surge protector, a bunch of plug in adapters for the light bulbs, and y splitters

EDIT:
forgot to give you some links you might find helpful
just some general stuff about growing with cfls
link1
link2(really good book for beginners)
link3

also heres what the y splitters i was talking about look like

and heres the plug in adapter things:

Thanks a lot! As soon as i get some money I'm going to pick up some y splitters and something to put them in. And btw, i bought i timer when i first bought my light Thanks again, the help is greatly appreciated.

yea i agree with the cfl talk in this thread. more lighting means more offchutes and more off chutes means more tops to bud. iv found that nething less than two bright white cfls in any grow closet will make a wispy plant. i prefer the 30w bright whits cuase they are the largest bright white that will fit in my reflectors that come very cheap from home depot. right now i have 4 of said cfls in about 3.5 square feet of space to vegetate.

right on bro thats exactly what i got man, and i have 2 flowering girls ~!!