nah man thats poo... plants grow in the wild without nutes! they get nutrients out of the ground yeah but not like what we put in...
they will eventually die but you have got to seriouls starve it of everything to do that. If you use one of those flat grow bags you will find you can have a large amount of soil and plenty of nutes if you get pre nuted and it wont take up the 6" steven is talkin about. Not ideal by any stretch but better than loosin height! also if you can take the bottom out of the drawer above you will give yourself load more room.
The reason why plants grow wild without any assistance is because theres all kinds of micronutrients in natural dirt. In store bought soil, your only gonna be able to let the plant feed off of the dirt naturally for about a month before it sucks up everything the soil has to offer. Your either going to need to go get some nutes now to anticipate your situation, or whenever a sign of deficiency pops up, just deal with it quickly as it comes. You could possibly save money that way, but you also run the risk of letting your plant get sick before you fix it, and it could very well die.
As far as your height restrictions go, if you have a foot of growspace OTHER than room for your growpot, you could do it. Not in theory, its a fact. My first grow was with limited space, and i just tied down every single branch i could as it grew, and i ended up with plants that were 9" tall n 11" tall. I yielded a 1/2 oz off of one, n almost a Z off of the other one. Its more than possible man, its actually a good idea, like i said, as long as you are taking into account enough room for a 2 gallon growbag, or something along those lines. If you can cut the drawers to give it more space, then do that - it will only help your plants out man. Plus, what are you doing for a lightsource?? how do you plan on feeding them light that they need if you have that little space?? these are the only problems with trying to grow in an area that small. 2.5' is ok, but 1' is pushing it.
My 1st grow journal for the most part is an account of my 1st grow. you can check out the final results in there, and be the judge for yourself on wether or not its worth it. N dont listen to the people tellin u not to even bother with a grow. Its always more beneficial to grow your own man, no matter how much you get from it. Im sure during the course of your grow youll figure out ways to improve on what your doin, and you could end up with more than enough room to grow in the long run, you never know. But even if you get 1/4 oz per plant, thats still a phatty quarter that you got almost for free, not to mention the fact that YOU grew it
good luck with your grow man. Cant wait to see if you pull it off.
-K1.