My First Grow. CFL and Soil

Lights - CFL
Medium - Soil
Strain - 2 types of bagseed.


Germinated the seeds in this propagation dome.

Transplanted the seedlings on day 4 to small peat pots.

I'm using a system of eyes and string to manage the level of the CFL's in the box. I used the plans for the DIY carbon filter and then taped on a PC fan rigged to a 12v adapter. Intake is done passively.

I'm currently working on drawing up the plans and then building grow cabinet v2.

The first picture is the floor of my grow cabinet.

The second picture is of the top of my grow cabinet showing the eye and string system, and the carbon filter mounted in a hole in the back of the cabinet.

The third picture is of one of my seedlings.

Please post with any suggestions, or comments.

Your light setup looks very good, but it looks like Your plants are stretching - put Your lights as close as possible without burning them. Check the heat with Your hand - if it doesnt burn it, than the distance is ok for plants. It improves growing, when the light is close as possible without burning.
More light reflective material or white paint on the walls will improve growing also.

Good luck, man!

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've been trying to find a good place to buy the reflective material that's sticky on the back, kinda like peel and stick. I'll lower the lights down a little and see if that stops the stretching, I was a little worried about that.

I lowered the lights down to stop the stretching, most of that was caused by the propagation dome and the fact the light in it was too far away.

Got a question, When should I start with my nutes? I'm using botanicare's pureblend nutes. There is a section on the back of the bottle that gives the strength for 0-3 weeks. Is that too early to starting giving the nutes to the plant?

Now its definately too early for nutrients. Your plants will tell, when they need some. You will ses yellowing on leaves. And thats the right time to start feeding them.
Ofcorse - there are many different oppinions about when to start feeding, but this is Your first grow - better to start feeding later than burning them in early veg stage.
There are enough nutrients in the soil for few weeks.
When You will start feeding them, be careful and give less. If plants will not show any burn in next few days, everything is ok.
More experienced growers could tell You more, but I`m just warning You to don`t do same mistakes almost all growers have done in first time.

Yeah, I was gonna wait a couple more days and give them 1/4 nutes and stepping it up every other feeding.

I bought some chains today, gonna change the way I hang the power strips, string was too awkward to change the height of the lights, good idea, bad execution. I will post some pics when I'm done.

How old are Your plants?

SPCCrow said:

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've been trying to find a good place to buy the reflective material that's sticky on the back, kinda like peel and stick. I'll lower the lights down a little and see if that stops the stretching, I was a little worried about that.

Click to expand...

Lookin good bro, flat white paint will work fine in there.

dsn, they were germ'd 6 days ago. the massive stretching was caused by the light on the propagation dome. It was tall. I recently transplanted the plugs into soil and put them under the CFL's.

Top 44, Thanks for the support, We tried using flat spray paint but it wouldn't coat the wood for some reason, gonna have to buy a gallon of flat white paint and brush it on.

Got the chains up in place of the string and got the lights better situated. Might get some pictures up later, kinda baked right now. It's my favorite way to fiddle with my grow box.

I think You should feed them when they are atleast two weeks old. And its better to feed them every second or third watering.

Thats what I was going to do. Sorry I didn't explain it very well. When I said I'm going to up it nutes by 1/4 every other feeding, should have added, gonna feed them every other time I water. But yeah, I was gonna wait until they were about 2 weeks old. Thanks for the advice.

I'm seriously thinking about scrogging in my cabinet. I need to find a good material to make my screen out of. I'm considering building my own that would set in space. Anyone know any good links to threads for scrogging? I've done some searching, but couldn't find anything usefull.

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/123658-led-t5-veg-400w-hps.html

Detailed scrog thread.

great, simple, stealthy

cfls are great but keep em as close as possible, when i was using my t5 fixture and had cfls as supliment lighting growth was great but with cfls i found i either have em at a perfect distance but when i get back they grow into the bulb or if i put it farther away they dont grow that much or stretch for the light

Well, Most of my plants are growing out their leaves. I think one is dying. Others are looking good, and even the one that got burned by the CFL, it got way too close. It's recovering.

I'm thinking about starting a LED experiment, similar to potpimp's grow. I have some ideas on how I can improve on the setup and see what results. That will be in a different journal when I start it.

On to the pics.

1. This is my worst looking plant. I think it's dying, not sure why.
2. This is one that got really stretched under the dome. So much that it was leaning over. It's standing up now, and looks good.
3. This one got burned by the CFL, it's recovering.
4. A shot of all the ladies, hopefully.
5. Shot showing the chains that replaced the string.
6. That's how far I have the lights from the babies.

I know a lot of them are stretched, I've slowed it down as much as possible by keeping the CFL's as close as possible. When I repot them, I'm going to seat them further down, getting rid of alot of the stretch, so I'm not too worried about it.

Editing to add: Thanks DSN for the advice. and ganjaboii, thanks for stopping by. keep watching, it will only improve from here. =p