general beginners help. Im sure everyone can gimme a lil advice

Hey santas helpers. Im in the process of growing plants for my first time in my bedroom closet which has a floorspace of 5ft x 2ft (10 square ft). I have a 4 foot T5 high output lighting system containing 6 48'' inch T5 bulbs. My plants are about a month into their growing. Im a hardcore newbie but i want to do this right. The soil for the plants always seem to dry out, even after saturating the soil. Is that bad? The temperature drops at night due to the light being off. Is that bad? How do I keep a constant temperature if it is? The humidity seems low, environment does not seem to be moist. How do i add moisture / keep the environment humid for the plants. How far apart should i place the plants in the closet? closer or further? I have a fan beside the plants. Do i leave the fan on all day and night, or do i turn it on and off.
These are a bunch of questions that I think I should know and Im sure I will have more questions soon. All the help would be great and best of luck to everyone whos in my position.
Mer' Christmas

soil drying out is bad you are using small pots no doubt for decent sized plants. humidity being low is not necessarily a bad thing - prevents mold. keep temp constant with a fan and always run it the same way get a thermometer / hygrometer with memory settings so you can review the highest and lowest value for temperature and humidity. leave the fan on day and night if you want to or just run it during the day. you will need many fans blowing air all over to stabilize the temperature in the whole area.

Thanks alot dbo. I am using small pots. I suppose that makes sense that the plant uses the water immediately and some is evaporated. I will go out today and get some new soil and larger pots. What is a recommended size pot for plants that i want to grow about 18inches tall.

2 gallons or so if you are hand watering in soil - 3 would be even better. if you're feeling creative you can set up a drip system with nutrients and everything for fairly cheap and just water them a lot more often.

what light cycles are you running, just curious

My light cycle currently is 18-on/6-off.

i'd definitely get a thermometer/ hygrometer that records min/max.. you can get one pretty cheep and they come in very useful

If your containers are too small double pot them by putting the smaller pot into a much bigger sized pot if you dont want to do that you can add lots of rockwell to your soil remove as much of the soil from the top of your plants without damaging the roots then add rockwell it holds alot of water it might kinda over saturate the roots but if your soil is drying out too quickly this will help for sure.

You do know you will need to change bulbs when you go to flower? T5 is great, I use them. But when plants get larger they don't penetrate well and you also need to add sidelights.

ya also the thermo/hygro meter has outdoor setting sometime and you can set a probe by some spot to see the temp there too rather than just at the device itself.

If you want to do it right, then listen up. First, you're gonna need at least 6 - 8 inch pots. Second, for veg time, keep your flouros on 24 hours and about 2 inches above your plants. That will keep the plants compact and bushy and also keep the temp around the plants at about 65 or 70 degrees. And third, if you want to do it right, then you're gonna need a bigger light to flower with. I would suggest a 400 hps with a cooling hood. Flouros are great for veg, I wouldn't use anything else, but your buds will be small and airy. With hps you can get 3 or 4 ounces per plant as opposed to getting a quarter to a half ounce per plant.

you can have your light off during the day time and off during night time so it wont be so cold in the grow room at night

KaleoXxX said:

you can have your light off during the day time and off during night time so it wont be so cold in the grow room at night

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finally, the last post was the one to say what i was gonna say, lol.. yeah, if the temps drop too much at night, you can always try and run the lights at night to keep them up some, this is what i do know that winter is here, and it works good..
i also do it in summer for the oppisite reasons though, as my temps get a lil too hot during the day, so i turn them on at night time when its cooler..
i love those t5's for veg, and you can always get some bloom bulbs for them along wtih a bunch of 2700kcfl's as big as you can find and as many as you can pack in there, and you will get a decent yeild for a first attempt...

kcbennie said:

If you want to do it right, then listen up. First, you're gonna need at least 6 - 8 inch pots. Second, for veg time, keep your flouros on 24 hours and about 2 inches above your plants. That will keep the plants compact and bushy and also keep the temp around the plants at about 65 or 70 degrees. And third, if you want to do it right, then you're gonna need a bigger light to flower with. I would suggest a 400 hps with a cooling hood. Flouros are great for veg, I wouldn't use anything else, but your buds will be small and airy. With hps you can get 3 or 4 ounces per plant as opposed to getting a quarter to a half ounce per plant.

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That's a bit of an exaggeration. You can flower just fine with cfls and get 4+ oz per plant. There's no reason why you wouldn't be able to "if" you use enough of them and position them correctly. The plant doesn't care where the light comes from if there's enough of it and it's the right spectrum. And I'm talking about cfls. T5 HO is a big improvement over cfls and negates at least 1/3 of whatever advantage hps has over cfls. Granted, hps is the shit, but I don't want to deal with the heat even in the dead of winter.

ps I have a small ceramic heater in my grow closet set low to come on at 65 and it goes off at 67. That's for lights off at night. Lights on in the day it is about 75. I want lights on during the day and off at night and this makes it easy to do that. Summer? Forget it, I'm now a 3 season grower.