First time grower - Having troubles

[SDSz]

Hi all,

First I want to say this community is pretty amazing, everyone is really nice and open to not only newbies but experts as well, astonishing .

I decided I want to start growing Marijuana so I purchased the auto-fem White Widow seeds off CKS. I picked auto-fem because first of all, I live in a small space and can be a little more discreet. Secondly, I heard they were a little bit easier for beginners.

The seeds arrived yesterday and I went to researching. As I'm writing this, one of my seeds is germinating following CKS' instructions. The germination process I've done before, and have no problem.

I plan to only grow one plant at a time for personal consumption, so the main part that's confusing me is the lights. I am not really tech savvy, and having gone to my local hardware store (Home Depot here, in Canada) I couldn't find half the things people were talking about. I managed to find CFL light bulbs that said they were 100W with an avg. of 1600 lumens per bulb. This was the only thing that looked like it could kind of work, but I didn't end up buying them.

I ended up buying Pro Mix Potting Mix because everyone was recommending it, I also purchased 3gallon pots. So far that's all I have.

My question is how should I, having never grown weed before, go about the lights? Should I leave them on 24/7? Were the lights I'm looking at good?

Back to the lights, I would need about 4 of them on at the same time correct? Or is there a type of light bulb I can buy that's just one really strong bulb? One of my friends said I should run a 6500 CFL until they start flowering, then add on a 2700 for my first time.. problem is I couldn't find either of those things, and nobody in the store knew what the hell I was talking about.

Finally, what should I do about nutrients? I read somewhere to mix my soil with perlite to give it nutrients, thoughts?

Thanks so much for the help,
-S

 

[Weaselcracker]

Re: First time grower, having troubles.

Some of those questions would take quite a while to answer properly but here are a couple quick answers.
Luckily all this info has already beeen written about lots already so there's no need to rewrite it. Lots of info in here re most basic growing questions including your lighting questions. How to Grow Marijuana Everything You Need to Know

The numbers you're referring to with the CFLs relate to the light spectrum (the colour) which is measured in Kelvin (K)
Most bulbs will have that specific info on the package. Otherwise you may be able to find it online.
Probably with cfls you're better using several so you can surround the plant better, instead of one large bulb. I could be wrong about that- not being much of a cfl user.
For anything more than one small plant cfls aren't economical and you'd want to look into LED or HID.

Perlite isn't a fertilizer- it's something to provide aeration (better drainage).
Your plant won't need much in the first few weeks so you have plenty of time to order up some cannabis friendly nutrients- widely available online- plus grow stores are common in many civilized parts of the planet. Any of the popular brands will work fine.

 

[Torst]

Re: First time grower, having troubles.

What kind of ventilation setup are you using?

Fox farms trio is a great soil nutrient line. I haven't really gone over 75% strength when I was using it.