my first personal grow

Hey I'm new to the forum and to growing, this is my first time.

Right now I am about 5 weeks in, probably 3 weeks of good veg, with ~8" plants.

My first plant showed signs of gender, and it was a male. Luckily it was a shorter one and it also has discolored pigmentation on the leaves so I am not sad to see it go. Unfortunately, however, I repotted it right before noticing the gender.... so waste of my time doing that.

Been using the following equipments:
schultz fertilizer
vf11 formula fertilizer
generic potting soil
miracle grow
1 gallon food containers from cafeteria
3 and 5 gallon pots from local nursery
started with two 13w desk lamp flourescents and a few 42 watt energy saver flourescents
1000w HPS kit now, homemade
mylar, black plastic tarp, space heater, distilled in a bucket water,
and a cheap thermometer.

One of the pitfalls of my grow is the number of casualties. 14/15 germinated. 13/14 made it out of the soil. 1 became a male. 3 are stunted to being like 1/8 the size of the good ones. 2 died. I remain with 6 good plants, and 1 skinny one that I am doing a LST bending treatment on.

Recently ordered a 1000w MH convertible, hopefully it will be here in a week and I can get it up for the last 2 wks of veg. This is going to result in a long veg phase of about 2 wk.s. Can't wait for the MH to blue it up.
I also have a 26W coil UVB 10.0 light, but am going to return it tomorrow for a 24in UV-B tube light. This will come in handy for flowering.

Recap my methods/errors:
germinated in a wet paper towel
planted in qt or gallon containers
transferred to 3-5 gallon containes
lost half of the plants in the process
use a lot of electricity - get a big electricity bill
no pH meter - not sure of the pH. hopefully I don't run into problems
HPS light only ( and flouros ). Next time around I will have my metal halide bulb handy for vegetative phase
topped a little early - impatient
foliar feeding - frequent

and some pictures

also using yeast and sugar and water to create some CO2. Whenever I go in I shake it around a couple times and poof out some stinky CO2 for the plants

found another male today, going to leave him in for a bit, its a nice big strong one. I might try to pollenate a branch later, but this could be very risky since I don't have a seperate grow area.

so I have about a week before I start to flower the plants, maybe less. here are some pics of them now and a better pic of my homemade setup, as well as a good close-up of an early male plant.

Couple of the plants were starving for nutes, but ate the extra feeding like champs. Fertilizer strength has finally been raised to full. There's about 3 more males w/ presex flowers in there, and I'm breeding one of them: the big bushy dark one in the picture. Hopefully get about 4-5 females out of this. With the stunted grows in the same area, can really see the effect a too small container.
Will probably need chicken wire installed at the top to keep the distance from the lamp. As of now plan is water every other day feed every other water, tomorrow I will change to high pressure sodium, change fertilizers and cycle, beginning 2 month flowering phase.

plants love food, and cannabis seems like it could probably eat lots of it with the way it grows.
on upcoming clones, after 6 inches of vertical growth I will fertilize them with 50% strength, increasing every feeding as follows. 50-60-75-90-105-110-115 until the first signs of burn are prevalent.
shultz and vf11 work great, but the chemicals in shultz make it not so desirable. vegetables are grown to be consumed, so perhaps a fertilizer made for vegetables would be more suitable for cannabis than a fertilizer made for house plants.

avoid burn, survival is imperative. keep as many alive as long as possible. If unavoidable, plants do die, but don't destroy them by breaking the stem or burning the leaves. also, don't give up on them once burned. remove them from the main area for a day and don't fertilize them, they'll be back in a week.

seventh night of flowering. Several plants are beginning to flower, several males. Took six clones. First clone rooted from topping a couple weeks ago, but topped plant appears to be male. One apparent hermie. Killed a male.

new pics. 1 wk flower. tossed out more males. 6 plants remain, 2 more possible males. 3-4 definite fems. Out of 11 thats not too good.

4 girls is better then none
your plants look nice
you could keep the boys and make hash oil from them
im going to have a go at it when my grow is over

mmm yea I just scrapped all the males. I got 4 fems and a hermie in the end, but the hermie is dominantly female so I just cut off all the male buds and am letting it bud, which it should be doing nicely. Actually not in town right now but I will be back soon and I think its about time for some high res pics of young buds.
plants are 18-20" tall and have gone through appx. 2 weeks of flowering.

list of ferts/nutes (this is not all organic)
alaska morbloom 0-10-10
foxfarm big bloom (bat guano and worm castings in liquid form.... crazy)
vf11
shultz bloom food 10-54-10
shultz for plants 10-15-10

I just dilute these concentrates in water and the plants seem to like it. I also bought some superthrive but apparently it never made it out of my car... seeing as I found it in there this morning. They already thrive superly but I might as well toss it in the mix next time I feed them.

got back from vacay, all is looking good. Didn't even need to water most of them yet and its been a week, I left water in the tubs for the roots to wick up, but only the largest plants dried out their soil.

pics of buds after a few weeks after appearing. Took 2-3 weeks of 12/12 for them to come in, I guess this is around 1/3 of the way done with flowering, although its an estimate and there are very different strains. the plants enduring minor fertilizer burn is no good at this point. here are some pics. I am hoping this is only 1/2 or 1/4 the yield they will produce. Feeling pretty good about the grow but it could be better.