Let me start by saying that I am writing this to give another point of view on growing for the first time, and things I kept in mind and applied other experiences in my life to this project for it to be successful. I am not implying at all that this is the best or correct way, I feel as if this is just an easy way to start, and use what you learn on the first grow and do it better the next time. Everything is kept simple, nothing extravagant at all from start to finish. However, it is not the cheapest way but certainly not as expensive as it could be.

The first thing everyone that starts out for the first time should know….YOU MUST HAVE PATIENCE!!!!! That is first and foremost. I struggled with that the entire time but I stuck with it and it worked out in the end. I applied the setting up of a saltwater fish tank to this. Anyone that has had a fish tank knows that fish tanks are very involved and time consuming in the beginning. I did not have patience on the first setup. I killed many fish, once it crashed that was pretty much it, I literally had to start from the beginning again and had nothing at all to show for it. So I sucked it up cleaned the tank out and did it again. This time I had six fish by about the 12 month mark. I had five in 3 months the first time. The point is that I learned that I was more worried about what the tank looked like rather than making sure it was a stable environment for the tanks biology to work to its best ability. I added to much too quick, I see here on the forums that is a very common mistake for the first timers. They always try to make the plants do something they are not ready or mature enough to do.

The next most important thing to keep in mind is to have reasonable expectations. Don’t go in thinking you are going to get 3 pounds on your first grow, if you do end up with that; GREAT!! But don’t expect it.

The first thing you need is a grow area that is safe and able to be kept out view. In my case, my only option was to be indoor and still had to be completely hidden. To give credit where credit is due, I used JethroTulls grow box idea and I modified it some. The plans are here on the forum, I am not getting into the plans or the changes I made in this. The most expensive part of this was the initial investment which is building the box. I believe I did it for between 150 and 200 dollars. After that I put it in its home and started it up. However, even during the grow and learning things as I went along, there were more changes I decided I was going to make when this grow was done.

During my entire grow, I always kept common since things on my mind. If it did not seem right, then it probably wasn’t. I also kept in mind that these plants do grow wild without any help at all from people and they grow just fine.

Before I started my first grow, I was so confused about all the information here, I could not decide on what to do and when. Not that anyone is wrong here, but it just seems that every body feels that their way is the best. For them it is, for the next person it is not. Get my drift? I knew I was not going to go high tech with all the lights, ferts and what not. I knew I was for the most part going to just let it grow and let nature take its course. I knew that just doing that I would learn tons about the way the plants grow and at the same time taking away many variables that could cause me trouble as the plants got older. I did use a very light mix of ferts though. I realized very early that even keeping things simple, I needed something that was going to stay constant and something that I could control, I picked my soil as that constant that would not change throughout the entire grow. I felt if I did everything else right the plant would grow none the less, and if it died then I would revisit my soil, but it worked out for me. I think I will probably stick with this soil in the future, unless things start going down hill for me. However, the soil may not be the best for growing, but if you should succeed in a successful plant, over time I think you will learn how to grow anything in that soil. You will learn its characteristics and how to make things work with it. Just like adding any specific brand of salt to your tank, it may not be the best, but once you figure out how to make things work with it, you can still have a very successful tank. So during the grow, I never transplanted(plants in the wild do not get transplanted), I watered when the soil was dry, and just kept a close eye on them. I did do a little LST on them though, but I did not feel that would make any difference on whether the plant lived or died as long as I was careful not to start breaking things.

Even for my next few grows, I plan on only making one change at a time when it comes to “out doing” mother nature until I learn how the chemistry of everything mixed together works. That way if things don’t work all of a sudden, I only have to back up one step to find the culprit to the problem. For an example, the general rule of thumb here is to keep plants within two inches of the cfl lights. I was naturally doing that, but then I noticed that the leaves were turning brown. I knew that it could not be anything else at that time other than the lights. It may have been some sort of deficiency but that just did not seem to be plausible to me at the time. I certainly knew that it was not any sort of nute burn because I was not giving them any to speak of. So that only left one thing, the lights were to close. I increased the distance of the lights to about five inches and that solved the problem immediately, the burning stopped and the plant continued to grow. You just need to pay attention to everything that your plants are doing and when, and make adjustments that work for you. By not trying too many things at once makes things a lot easier to fix when you do have a problem pop up. During my flower stage, I still have not changed the way I am doing anything(except the light cycle of course), I noticed that while in flowering stage they are a lot more sensitive to things. From time to time throughout the growing, I would accidently go a bit longer than I should have without watering them and the plant would be laying down with most of the leaves wilting. I would catch it in time, but a little damage had been done, usually lost a couple shade leave branches. During veg stage it seemed to recover very quickly and kept growing at the same time. Its like it never noticed, and it just kept on growing. But while flowering, it seemed to take affect a lot quicker. When I was in flower and I let the soil dry as I did in veg stage the same affects would start showing before the soil dried out like it did in veg stage and the effects would be actually a little worse. So that kinda tells me that it either needs either more water during flowering or that it just has less energy to recover from stress while it is flowering. I will find a way to fix that, I think I know where to start.

To sum everything up here, I absorbed every bit of information that I have received here and from everyone, I just realized there was no possible way I could take each and every bodies advice and be successful. I found my baseline by doing what worked for me and taking bits and pieces of information and put it all together. On your first grow I think keeping it simple and just let the plant grow naturally is a great way to start. Again, I am not saying that what I did is the best way but I am happy with my results.

I just think if you remain very patient and do not have high expectations, and basically let the plant just grow by itself, your first grow will be a big success and make you a better grower the next time. And hopefully on the first grow you don’t end up with all males, that would be very discouraging, but don’t let it be. That is practically something no matter what you do, you cant control, we can only beat mother nature to a point.

Experience is a bitch. It takes fucking years. I learn quickly, and know lots and lots about growing weed, different systems etc. But knowing something because you've read it is no comparison to knowing something because you've actually experienced it.

Every mistake that's out there, I have deliberately perpetrated against my plants... or rather, just one plant at a time. I like to do things the wrong way just so that I can see for myself why it is the wrong way. Someone else telling me is just not enough, even common sense, sometimes, is not enough to deter me from deliberately making these mistakes.

Through this I have learned much about the hardiness of this plant, learned how to grow a decent yield, consistent... no mistakes. Now I seek perfection.

Amen Brother!!

Great advice thanks Man .
Please check out my progress from time to time as some advice almost killed my plant so I am taking your advice and listening to the plant....
By the way I think I had the same problem with the distance of the lights to plants!