Lighting, please need advice

gregie420

gregie420

Member
ok so I am a noob at all of this my first grow is finishing up the flowering stage in a few weeks and I think theyre doing pretty good. So next round I am gonna give autoflower a shot, I have 5 white cheese seeds coming from dinafem and I researched autoflowers pretty good but nowhere do I find if you do the switch from mh to hps when they go into flowering, ive read that people stager there harvest and I would like to do that but seems undoable if you have to switch bulbs. in a perfect world it would be nice to stager and start seedlings when the other plants are halfway through there cycle. another question is how many times would you flush your autoflower if at all?? thanks much guys.
 
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kermit2692

Well-Known Member
ok if i understand this correctly...basically you would benefit from a seperate flower veg room economically....no need to veg with mh just use cheap old cfls then switch the staggered plants to hps in the flower room...if you cannot do this because of space (which i dont get on an auto you can stick the damn thing in a corner somewhere with a cfl on it) then i would just use the hps as soon as you have plants flowering and the veg plants will be fine with the hps you can add a couple compact flouros on the vegging plants if your worried about spectrum..
 
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i420lad

Member
gregie420 said:
ok so I am a noob at all of this my first grow is finishing up the flowering stage in a few weeks and I think theyre doing pretty good. So next round I am gonna give autoflower a shot, I have 5 white cheese seeds coming from dinafem and I researched autoflowers pretty good but nowhere do I find if you do the switch from mh to hps when they go into flowering, ive read that people stager there harvest and I would like to do that but seems undoable if you have to switch bulbs. in a perfect world it would be nice to stager and start seedlings when the other plants are halfway through there cycle. another question is how many times would you flush your autoflower if at all?? thanks much guys.
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If you have both MH and HPS available then you could use the MH for the first 2 - 4 weeks after that autoflowers usually show sex and pre flowers , after that perioid id switch to the HPS but like kermit2692 said if you dont want to use MH you could start them off under some small CFLs , as for the flushing of auto depends if you have used and nutes through out its life if they're organic and what not but usually flush a week or 2 before harvest.

Hope this some what helps.

Peace and Pot :peace::bigjoint:
 
gregie420

gregie420

Member
I use all fox farms nutes, and i have royal flush from humboldt nutrients. Room is definetly an issue i already have a small tent and to put another one up would be pushing it. I was under the impression that i didnt have to worry about the sex of autoflowers, thought they were all feminized.
 
gregie420

gregie420

Member
Well i suppose i could get my head outta my a** and explain my setup, i have a 48x24x60 tent, a 400w light setup with both mh and hps bulbs hooked up to a dimmable ballast, water is filtered and oxygenated, 2 small clip fans, a 4 inch inline carbon filter and fan. I will take some pics and post them in the next few days. Im about 700 dollars into it so thats all i can really afford.
 
Patriot420

Patriot420

Member
gregie420 said:
Well i suppose i could get my head outta my a** and explain my setup, i have a 48x24x60 tent, a 400w light setup with both mh and hps bulbs hooked up to a dimmable ballast, water is filtered and oxygenated, 2 small clip fans, a 4 inch inline carbon filter and fan. I will take some pics and post them in the next few days. Im about 700 dollars into it so thats all i can really afford.
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How's that setup working for ya?

Anyways, some cheap CFLs would help the new plants get along if you have the room, not sure how many plants you have going, but honestly if you just want a few new ones starting you might be able to get away with a power strip + a few outlet to plug converters and some 5k+ CFL bulbs to keep the little ones vegging. Then when the teens are ready to be evicted, switch bulbs back to MH until flowering starts for them, then once you see flowers, pop the HPS in for flowering and repeat.

If that makes no sense, I am sorry. It makes sense in my head but getting it to words is difficult right now. bongsmilie
 
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kermit2692

Well-Known Member
ya if you only have the one space then when its time to flower one just switch to the hps and add a few compact flouros if you want..most autos that ive seen are feminized..if your using fox farm thats organic and you physically cannot flush organic soil nor is their reason to, growing in chem ferts you need to flush.
 
gregie420

gregie420

Member
It's working so far lol definitely ran into a few snags, was vegging 6 plants and once they started getting bigger it was tight squeeze, also should have thrown into flowering way earlier because the height of the tent, when I switched to flowering the stretch damn near made the plants hit the light. like I said in the previous post this is my first grow, so def learning as I go. I do also use dyna gro instead of fox frms grow big. and I bought a cheap florescent at wal-mart that says its good for plants, ive heard of putting a florescent in a cooler with the seedlings making a nice warm humid environment for the little guys firsts few weeks, any ideas on that??
 
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