New to growing and looking for some guidance in the right direction...?

Hello all! My name's cloud4xL and I'm new to the forums.

I live in the U.S., just recently got into smoking, and I am in love (don't know why I never did before lol). LoL I've been smoking for about 2 months so far, and I now want to try my hand at growing too since finding a reliable dealer around my area has been particularly troublesome.

But here's my situation:

1) I live with 3 other roommates in a ground-level 4 bedroom/4 bathroom apartment, and 2 of my roommates don't smoke. Well, that's not true. One of the 2 DOES smoke, but he doesn't smoke than often, so for the sake of this post, we'll just say I have 1 smoking roommate, and 2 non-smoking roommates. Anyway, I thought I'd mention that so you can get an idea of how much space I have to work with (not that much), and some other precautions I may need to take. My main concern here is whether or not I'll have to worry about the smell from the plants escaping from my grow space, and funking up our apartment (which I'm sure would piss my roomies off). Do you guys think a small indoor operation of about 2-3 plants would be a problem (smell-wise)?

2) As far as grow spaces go, the only place I could see it happening in is my closet (which I also use to house my clothes lol). It's about 5 ft. wide, 5 ft. long, and 11 ft. high, with white walls. Do you guys think that would be sufficient? And also, do you think the smell from the plants would be strong enough to leave my clothes smelling like skunk? Or should I relocate my clothes elsewhere?

3) I've done a bunch] of research into some of the things I'll need for my operation, but I have no idea where to get most of the stuff from (except for like Home Depot or Lowes, which I'm not sure even has all stuff I need). Where do you guys get your supplies (e.g. nutes, lighting, lighting fixtures, timers, grow mediums, etc...) from?

4) Since electricity isn't covered in my rent and I have to pay for it out-of-pocket, how much do guys estimate I'll have to end up spending (monthly) in electricity for this operation?

5) I've procured a few seeds from a friend of mine who sells (he buys shwag from some guy in his hometown), and I have no idea what kind of particular weed they are (is there an easy way to tell?), so I don't know what kind of growing conditions I even need. Is there a way to find out what I'm workin with? Or do I have to just hope for the best?

Those're all the questions I can think of off the top of my head. If I have any other questions or concerns, I'll post 'em later. But yea, definintely lookin forward to hear from you guys. Thanks in advance for viewin my post, and I'll see some of ya'll around the forums. Laterz.....

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OH!! And this is a big one:

Which do you guys think would be better for a first grow? Soil? Aero? Or hyrdo? Thanks!

The good news is that you can grow in your closet and smell can be controlled. The bad news is that it takes a lot of work and study on your part. Soil would be the way to go for you.

That said, if you can't figure out how to find a store that sells growing supplies you might want to skip the whole thing - growing in your situation would not be easy and frankly if you can't type growing supplies into Google you may be screwed from the start.

Not trying to rain on your parade, just telling you how your post read to me. Good luck.

Pretty much you can find alot of stuff at hardware stores.. and i agree with picasso345 that you should grow in soil.

Picasso345 said:

frankly if you can't type growing supplies into Google you may be screwed from the start.

Not trying to rain on your parade, just telling you how your post read to me. Good luck.

Click to expand...

Yea, I guess that did come out kind of stupid sounding. LoL WHile I DO know how to find the supplies, I guess what I SHOULD'VE said was that I didn't know if you guys knew of any cheaper alternatives because I've shopped at Home Depot for other things, and found that I could've gotten the same stuff online (or at another smaller hardware store in my area) for waaaaay cheaper. I guess that's what I meant. LoL Trust me, even when I'm blazed, I'm not that incompetent. LoL

And thanks for the info Sniper. I guess soil it is! LoL

1) Unless you have a well thought out carbon scrubber setup and ventilation system you are going to smell up the whole apartment. Stuff is super strong when its flowering.
You have other roomies, no way your going to keep it secret. The others that smoke will probably find out and steal your bud as it grows.

2) You have enough space to grow 20 plants with two 400 Watt HID setups, but for 2 or 3 plants just a single 400 watt MH/HPS light system will do fine. Your clothes will stink like pot all day.

3) http://www.htgsupply.com and E-Bay are good places to look for grow equipment.

4) I am going to assume average electricity rates of 14 cents/KWH. During veg (18/6) your 400 watt light is going to use 7200 watt hours of power, so $1.08 each day of veg, then during flowering(12/12) its going to cost 4800 watts of power for $.62 a day. Figure 2 months of veg and 2 months of flower so 60x1.02=$61.20 add in 60 days flowering at $.62/day x 60 days=$37.20 so total to complete 4 months of growing is going to be a grand total of $98.40 or around that.


5) No way to know what kind of strain you have from the seed, heck you'll only be able to figure out whether it is mostly sativa or Indica after you have grown it out. Many bag seeds can be very good MJ due to the care taken in growing it.



Soil is the best for noobie growers. Its more tolerant of mistakes and basically all you need to do is water it. For the most part the soil itself will have enough food in it to support vigorous growth for the first 6 weeks or so.

Read this https://www.rollitup.org/view.php?pg=faq

cloud4xL said:

Yea, I guess that did come out kind of stupid sounding. LoL WHile I DO know how to find the supplies, I guess what I SHOULD'VE said was that I didn't know if you guys knew of any cheaper alternatives because I've shopped at Home Depot for other things, and found that I could've gotten the same stuff online (or at another smaller hardware store in my area) for waaaaay cheaper. I guess that's what I meant. LoL Trust me, even when I'm blazed, I'm not that incompetent. LoL

And thanks for the info Sniper. I guess soil it is! LoL

Click to expand...

Ebay is a good source, I personally like bghydro.com for things Home Depot doesn't sell, but are specific to growing.

Have a look at my grow - I think you might need something like that. Stealthy and self-contained.

When I was learning this was my favorite thread - lots of great info in there. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=21879

Or if you want to go smaller and cheaper there are things like a Rubbermaid grow:

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=100698

Yea no problem... It took me a few days to find some good cheap supplies..