FIRST EVER GROW, HELP ME DECIDE WHAT SEEDS TO ORDER!!!

First off, sorry for the caps lock, IM JUST SO EXCITED!!! My landlord gave me permission to grow a small amount of plants, to feed my habit, as I'm tired of giving away my hard earned money, and I hate dealing with low life's.

A little bit about my plan, before I start asking for [tons!] of advice!

I plan on making 2 stealth cabs, one for veg/clone, one for flower.
In the veg cab I plan on having 1 mother plant, 2 plants vegging, and a space for 2 clones.

My plan is to cut 2 clones every 2 weeks, and then veg those clones for 2 weeks after that. After that I will move them into my flower cab. The goal being to constantly have 4 plants in flower, and to harvest 2 plants every 4 weeks.

I plan on using a 150w MH for my mother/veg cab, a 250w HPS for my flower, and a couple (4-6?) CFLs for my clones. Both the MH and HPS will get DIY cool tubes (assuming I can find some pyrex all around a or whatever)

So far so good? Great (I hope!).

So now to the first piece of the puzzle... Seeds!

This is wishful thinking, but whatever quality genetics I get, I would like for them to meet most, if not all, of the following requirements, as I plan on smoking the same strain for months, if not years, on end.


-Indica/Sativa hybrid. I dislike the pure Sativa "mind-fuck," and I also don't want a bud that will put me to sleep. I want a bud that has a clear-headed, euphoria, and relaxing high. Giggles are great, but I don't like my bud turning me into a zombie, or tripping out like I'm on LSD
I also would like to keep the plants short(ish), so they work out great in my cabs.

-READILY CLONE-ABLE! My whole plan hinges on the ability to clone, almost a must for me.

-8 Week Flowers (schedule!)

-Decent Yield. As I said, I don't need enough to sell, this is just personal consumption, but I need each plant to be able to provide me with 1oz (dried) bud, after 2 weeks veg, under a 250w HPS.

-HIGH QUALITY!!!! An absolute must. No further elaboration necessary.

-A reliable Seedbank. I don't feel like getting ripped off, or having my stuff snatched my The Man.

-Finally is taste, the lowest of my priority, but still a priority. It would be great if it could be something tastey! Lemoney, piney, grapes, what have you, I want it to be tastey!




Tons of questions to come, but I'm just hoping some growers, that have first on experience, and have an idea of what I'm looking for, will be able to point me in the right direction.


Thanks folks!

Might try some Buddha cheese.try Herbies seed bank or attitudes.both great seed banks.I'm currently growing some og kush from ilovegrowingmarijuana all the beans popped an I'm about 2 weeks from harvest right now.

Herbies is good. My advice is to stay away from anything crossed with Big Bud otherwise known as Critical. Critical is hemp and designed to give good yields, but it's a step down in quality.

What's your plan for smell control?

sunny747 said:

Herbies is good. My advice is to stay away from anything crossed with Big Bud otherwise known as Critical. Critical is hemp and designed to give good yields, but it's a step down in quality.

What's your plan for smell control?

Click to expand...

I plan on getting 4 fans (for the life of me I can't remember what they're called, mini "silent[something or other]" fans that Micro[something or other] was talking about. Powerful little 10" fans. 2 for each cooltube, 1 for intake, 1 out through a DIY carbon scrubber (the pencil cup one)

I was looking at her new, and read a lot of good reviews about them: but the selection is pretty small, and I rarely see companies advertising how well they clone :/

I hate auto correct, "I was looking at herbies*"

Also, not 10" fans, $10 fans.**

Herbies has nearly every strain imaginable. Try the search function..
That's not to say that Herbies works with the best breeders. I have heard great things about "SanniesSeeds". One person posted on my one of my threads that he used to grow ok weed then he purchased seeds from Sannies and he grew incredible weed. Genetics has a lot to do with it. Check out the Sugar punch and the and the herijuana..

Let's chat about your setup.
a 250 hps will not flower 4 plants of any real size. You could grow 4 small plants in 1/2 or 1 gallon pots I suppose. How large will your flower cab be?
Also, realize that just because you take 2 cuttings doesn't mean that you will end up with two plants. I'd say take 6-8 cuttings and then choose two strong growers. Plan for bit more space needed in that regard.
8 weeks in flower may be aggressive. Better to allow for 11 weeks from when you pop them in the tent. It takes a week or more for them to begin flower. They're not done until they are done. Maybe choose a fast flowering strain.

Let's talk heat and stink control.
To mess around with home made carbon filters is a newbie waste of time unless you really like the smell of pot and your neighbors like it also. We all start out that way with homemade cabs and filters and cheap fans. We spend a bunch of time and money on odds and ends (The cost really adds up). We quickly outgrow these tools and we eventually upgrade to real equipment which would have actually cost less than the things we messed around with in the beginning.

To cool your space you need a vortex fan.Small personal fans are a great thing to have around, but to use them as ventilation isn't the best. They leak light. A vortex fan is sealed. No light leaks. Trust me when I say that seeing the obnoxious glare of an HPS beaming out of a hole in the side of a cab is so irritating. Also the light inside the tent will interrupt flowering.

A good carbon filter is a must. Nothing escapes a Phresh filter. You need a vortex fan to run a can-type filter. They last a really long time. I wouldn't consider growing without one.

Cooling lights in a small space can be a challenge. It will drive you crazy trying to cool all-in-one HPS or MH setups or CFL's. If you live in a very cold climate I guess it's doable. The best way to keep temps under control is to use a good air cooled hood or a cool tube. You evacuate the heat before it ever hits your tent. I was running two 150w HPS in a 4x2 home made tent. My temps were constantly in the low 80's even though my room was 72 degrees. This was with the assistance of a 180 CFM Vortex fan.

Get a 6" vortex fan and filter. Not a 4".

I bring all of this up because you really can never beat the tried and true methods used by many home gardeners. Here is my suggestion. Do things right from the start and save yourself a lot of heartache, money and trial and error.

Flower chamber.
3x3 x 6ft grow tent for flower. This fits four 2-3 foot tall, trained plants very nicely.
Pop a 400w HPS in there with an air cooled hood.
Use a good vortex fan with speed controller in this tent and pump the warm air out a window or into a large room (Cut a hole in the wall). This will keep your grow area really nice and cool. Your temps will be just a few degrees above ambient. You HAVE to pump the arm air somewhere. Attics also work great for this.

Veg chamber.
Another 3x3 would be great. This would allow plenty of space for Moms and for your cloning and vegging. I like CFL for Veg because it's easy to move the lights around and keep them very close since you will have plants in various stages of growth. Either that or inexpensive LED's do a nice job on veg, Say you have two 2ft tall moms and a bunch of clones in a space. Your veg on your clones won't go that great if you have one large light hanging 3ft high above the babies. Individual lights is the key.

Tents vs home made cabs. Tents are better than a cab. It's difficult to make a cab so perfectly designed as a tent and you will likely spend more on the cab. Every time you need to change design on a cabinet you have to cut new holes and patch old ones.Tents cost $100 and the reflectivity is really great PLUS they are easy to disassemble if you ever want to halt growing for a while. Also it is really difficult to make a cabinet completely light proof. Not impossible, but nothing seals like a zipper.

Cooling the Veg tent. You could give this a try. Connect your veg tent outtake to one of the flower room intakes. This will pull air from your veg tent into the flower tent and out through the filter.

Drying bud really lets out some wonderful smells. You need to consider this also. The space should be dark with air that is circulated and filtered. I am drying buds right now and ran into the stink issue. I hooked an old veg cab outtake to my flower tents intake. Problem solved. Just give some thought as to where you will dry.

If you live out the woods much of what I said is irrelevant, but otherwise you have a lot to consider. My goal is to save you time and money. I wish you the very best.

Sunny:

Thank you very much for your thought out and thorough response. Some responses and some questions:

Phresh filter: I'm good with that, thanks for the tip. The best place to get ahold of a vortex fan and phresh filter?

Heat: yes, I was planning on doing DIY cooltube with the bake-arounds. Do you know a decent fan, that I can do this with?

The HPS: ok, you really just bummed me out, as I really wasn't trying to do that high of a wattage (if I could avoid it anyways). I am not trying to be insulting, or question your advice (as I question your advice, lol).
250w HPS really won't do the trick? After reading the 150w HPS club thread(s); it seemed doable. My thinking being, many people run .75+g/w and with a 250 over 4 plants, .45g/w would get me would get me 112.5 g altogether, or 1 oz per plant, which is my goal.

Tent Vs. Cab
I was thinking of a tent, for just those reasons the main problem being is I NEED some kind of stealth. If family/friends/guests walk into my basement, I can't have them seeing a grow tent, it needs to blend in. Is there any decent way to disguise a tent, as a tent is obviously preferable, if I can make it stealthy.

On a side note, the cabs I wanted to use would be roughly 3.5'x3.5'


Finally, you kind of lost me while talking about drying, it seems you had your explanation mixed with your intake/outtake explanation, was that on purpose?


As far as flowering: all of the seeds I have picked out have 8 weeks flowering period. Are you saying they should really get 10 weeks each? If that's the case I'll just veg my best 2 growers for an extra week, and move 2 into the flower cab every 5 weeks. Of course then I will need a little higher harvest, so I guess I might have to go with a 400w anyways >.<. Will a DIY cooltube work for a 400w?


Thanks again for all your help.

These are the seeds I have narrowed it down to. Does anyone have any experience with these? Do they fit the requirements, for what I'm looking for??


Barneys Farm Liberty Haze
Cali Connections 818 Headband
G13 Labs Seeds Cinderella 99
The Cali Connection Girl Scout Cookies
Bomb Seeds THC Bomb
Greenhouse Seeds Kalishnakova


Any input is appreciated.

AnonymousNewb said:

Sunny:

Thank you very much for your thought out and thorough response. Some responses and some questions:

Phresh filter: I'm good with that, thanks for the tip. The best place to get ahold of a vortex fan and phresh filter?

Heat: yes, I was planning on doing DIY cooltube with the bake-arounds. Do you know a decent fan, that I can do this with?

The HPS: ok, you really just bummed me out, as I really wasn't trying to do that high of a wattage (if I could avoid it anyways). I am not trying to be insulting, or question your advice (as I question your advice, lol).
250w HPS really won't do the trick? After reading the 150w HPS club thread(s); it seemed doable. My thinking being, many people run .75+g/w and with a 250 over 4 plants, .45g/w would get me would get me 112.5 g altogether, or 1 oz per plant, which is my goal.

Tent Vs. Cab
I was thinking of a tent, for just those reasons the main problem being is I NEED some kind of stealth. If family/friends/guests walk into my basement, I can't have them seeing a grow tent, it needs to blend in. Is there any decent way to disguise a tent, as a tent is obviously preferable, if I can make it stealthy.

On a side note, the cabs I wanted to use would be roughly 3.5'x3.5'


Finally, you kind of lost me while talking about drying, it seems you had your explanation mixed with your intake/outtake explanation, was that on purpose?


As far as flowering: all of the seeds I have picked out have 8 weeks flowering period. Are you saying they should really get 10 weeks each? If that's the case I'll just veg my best 2 growers for an extra week, and move 2 into the flower cab every 5 weeks. Of course then I will need a little higher harvest, so I guess I might have to go with a 400w anyways >.<. Will a DIY cooltube work for a 400w?


Thanks again for all your help.

Click to expand...

Ok, so you need more stealth.. Tents look a lot like a temporary wardrobe. I'm not sure how stealthy any cab or tent is with fans and venting sticking out of it. Pappa, why does your tool shed make so much noise? Also, nothing says grow cab like 50,000 lumens of light beaming through cracks or seams so make sure to silicone caulk all seams..

If you go with a cab then consider the doors. They should be full overlay. You will need to use some weather stripping to really seal them up. It sounds like you are pretty handy so you will figure it out.
Also, the rubbermaid utility cabinets that are plastic leak light like crazy. To fix this you have to paint them black inside then paint flat white over the black. I've never been able to get one light tight.

Ok, so you just want one oz per plant. This means small plants. 1 gallon pots would do. in that case if you could keep all of your plants in a 2x2 footprint under the light I suppose a 250 would work. Outside of the two by two area you can forget about decent bud so keep them close.

Yea,for drying what you want to do is setup a box or cab. Cardboard box is likely fine. Run a piece of flexible venting from that box into the intake on your flower cab where the fan and filter are. Air will be pulled through the drying box and into the flower cab where the smell is mitigated.

Yes, you can't count on strains to finish in 8 weeks. If they say 8 weeks they really mean ten. After you grow a strain a few times you'll have a good idea of finish time. Breeders estimates on flower time are always very aggressive. They do this to sell seeds.

Since you are in a basement you probably don't need to vent the heat anywhere except for out of your cab. Basements are generally cool and open. If you can hook into a dryer vent this is awesome. It appears that you just dry a lot of clothes.

Two 150w HPS may serve you better than one 250w. It gives you more flexibility so that you can get the lights nice and close. The light above your older plants can be set to service those two and the light above your newbies can be set to a different height. I ran two 150's for a while. It worked fine. Not the world's greatest bud, but it was decent enough. See these lights don't penetrate deep into the canopy, but they do a decent job on small plants.

This is a 150w. I eventually added a second.




This is a good fan. The newer designs are noticeably quieter. You will want to use a fan speed controller to tone it down. You really won't need more than 200 cfm I would guess. Fans are very noisy. Once you add a filter they quiet down. Then add a speed controller to tone it down more then add a duct muffler to make it even quieter.
http://www.amazon.com/Vortex-S-Line-Ultra-Quiet-Fan/dp/B00EIRU2YU/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1438714982&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=vortex+s+line

A cheaper option would be something like this. This is what I have. It works great.
http://growershouse.com/hurricane-4-200-cfm-inline-fan-phresh-carbon-filter-combo-package

The issue with 4" fans is that air cooled hoods are almost exclusively 6" flanges. That's why I say buy a 6" fan so that in the future when you upgrade to a 400w or 600w then you don't need to upgrade fans or use reducers which take up a lot of space.

Very cool, thanks for the response. It's funny, I was thinking about the 2x 150s, and the Rubbermaid you mentioned was what I was planning on using. I was going to do the black->white paint, but you say that isn't good enough? Any other similarly sized cabinets you can suggest? I was thinking something along the lines of 3.5x3.5x5.5 or so.