1st Indoor Grow - White Widow and others

Hello everyone and thanks for tuning in. I just wanted to say what a great library of information this site is and thanks to all the contributors. With that being said this journal will be about my first indoor grow (duh!). So without further delay here goes my story so far.

I bought some seeds some time ago from netherlands and had some white widow and freebies left over. I also order some more seeds from netherlands and attitude which arrived fine. Those seeds are Nirvana brand AK48, Master Kush, and Or Cal Bud. I also have some Carmelicious, Thai Super Skunk, and about 35 other free seeds from the order.

I decided to start with the White Widow and I'll be growing them in dirt until I take clones and I may start to play with hydro at that point after I have the clones root. My setup is as follows and I'll try to explain why I chose what I did.

Growing rooms (both rooms are either painted white walls and floor or covered in white poly) -
veg room 6' x 3.5' x 10' with 2 400w MH lights.
I chose to go with 2 400w lights because because the lights will have to be close to the plants and I feel a larger lamp would not get enough coverage due to it being so close to the plants.
bloom room 7' x 6' x 10' with 1000w switchable ballast (HPS for bloom).
I chose the larger light here because the plants will be bigger and the light will be higher up and give more coverage that way. The lamp is air cooled by a squirrel cage fan which vents the air far away from the growing area.

Medium
right now the plants are in Happy Frog soil and I will be using organic nutes. I plan to use soil for this grow and possibly experiment with hyrdo when I take clones. I have a DWC bubbler set up and a bubbleponic cloner set up for when I take cuttings. I also have all the equipent for a ebb and flow system should I choose to set that up. I've got the rockwool, hydroton, nutes, etc. so it's good to go if I should so choose to go that route later.

Growing Method
I'm hoping to implement the SCROG method for these babies however I may just grow the mothers and use SCROG for when I take the clones. I understand it may be a little more difficult to use SCROG with plants in dirt but I'm willing to get on my hands and knees for my babies.

I might have left some things out here if I have please feel free to chime in with questions/comments.

What I've done so far
I use the wet paper towel germination method and most of the seeds cracked and shot out a taproot within 24-48 hours. The white widows (2 of em that I germinated) have been in dirt since 08.11.08 and sprouted 1 day later. I also germinated 4 freebies and they have been in dirt since 08.14.08. So I have 6 plants total. They have been under CFLs since that time. Yes the CFLs are VERY close to the plants and they have been responding well. My plan is to wait until they get a bit larger and then put them under the 400w MH light.

My question is when should they go under the MH light? When they have 3 or 4 sets of leaves?

I've attached pics and I'll post some more. Please feel free to comment and makes suggestions.

Thanks!

It's about time for an update so here's what's happened. I left town for a couple days and asked a friend (who already knew about the grow) to water my babies. Well he apparently asking someone to drive 5 minutes 1 time a day is too much. So I was gone for 3 days and they got watered once. In addition it appears they suffered from some heats damage (nothing major) due to the CFLs being too close.

So I decided to let them recover for a day after they got a good watering and move them to the 400w MH. I also decided to germinate more seeds and place them under the MH light once they sprouted. I germinated 3 carmelicious, 2 master kush, 2 ak 48, and 4 freebie seeds. Most of the seeds germinated in less than 24 hours however the AK-48 took over 2 days and only one of them germinated. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see how fast (or slowly) it grows. As it stands right now I have 16 small plants under the light.

I also decided to use a SOG method and have a harvest every 2 weeks using the method Al B. Fuct documented so well. I have all the supplies required and now need to assemble the units. I found very useful trays at Mendards (hardware store). They are about 8 inches deep and can comfortably fit 15 6" pots. I have 30 gallon resevoirs, 500 gph pumps, fittings for flood and drain, loose small rockwool cubes, nutes, etc. All that is left to do is to modify the trays to accomodate the fittings and build tables for the trays to sit on.

I also acquired a RO system and a dayton blower and a national garden warehouse can fan. I've still got quite a bit of work to do to have everything operational but I'm just taking my time and doing what is needed for the time being.

Here's the latest. The seeds I recently germinated and put under the MH light are growing like crazy. I suppose this is to be expected but I can't believe the difference between the CFLs and the HID light even when the CFLs were literally on top of the plants. In any case I decided to set up the cool air running across the bulb to reduce temperatures and to allow the light to be closer to the plants. So far everything is great.

I also brewed up some RO water. Before RO my water had 450ppm. After RO it was 25ppm at ph of 7.2. I decided to add a very small amount of Earth Juice grow nutes. This brought PPM up to about 100 for the water and then I had to adjust pH up because the nutes brought it down to about 5. I've decided I'll be using RO water from here on out and I'll see how the plants respond to a very light amount of nutes before I bump it up any. I'd rather go slow and safe than harm my babies.

I'm leaving the lights on 24/7 and have a fan on that oscillates - you can see it in the pictures below. Also below are some pictures of the carmelicous at 3 and 4 days old.