My baby grow box, some help needed

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wildmanweed

New Member
im starting my first grow with the one and only seed i have. (pray its not a male or herm.) and im using a small grow box i made yesterday/today. the box is about 2x2x3 (dont worry about hight im doing LST to take care of that.) the entire inside is covered in a insulating plastic then a layer of foil.. (cheap set up) and in the middle of ceiling is one 1270lumen halogen (mostly for the warmth, its chilly in garage.) then in one corner is 2 ( 1600 lumen) CFLs. and in the other corner is 1 (1600 lumen) CFL and a 1400 lumen CFL floodlight aimed at the plant, is this enought light? for a 2x2x3 box (7470lumans) its only one plant and entire inside is shiny. Also there is an air vent and a fan. are there any things im doing wrong/bad???



also my seed is germinating now and im using dirt from where our garden was during the summer to plant it. should i pour some mircle grow into the dirt before i put seed the in? or wait till some growth?


:rollit:
 
Re: my baby grow box, some help needed.

hello wildman =)

couple of things.
halogen is useless to us, swap it for cfl when you can.
lumens means nothing to a plant, its a term for human eyes ;)
what watt are your lights and what colour? red cfl's 2700k are for making buds and blue cfls 6500k are for growing from seed to the start of flowering.

you dont feed a seedling. if you put MG in the soil now you will almost certainly kill the baby. i suggest no nutes at all untill it has a good couple of leaf pairs or you can visibly see any signs of hunger.

make sure you get enough airflow in there, the plant will use up all the co2 in a cinfined space quickly, you want fresh air always gently blowing over the leaves =)
 
Re: my baby grow box, some help needed.

well i put some mg in then ran water throught it, the plants are in garage so really cold so need halogen for heat. my dirt is drying really fast but the box isnt even very warm, the halogen is directly above pot, should i move it
 
Re: my baby grow box, some help needed.

build a double layerered cold frame out of some scrap timber and some poly sheets to surround your grow area. its the cheapest and simplest possible way to maintain a higher average temp. with that in place you wont need the halogen as the cfls will warm up the area nicely. just remember to put some holes at the bottome and tom for air circulation...just not too big or it defeats the purpose.

coldframes have been used since time immemorial to protect earlies from frosts.

i wish you much luck my friend, i dont understand why you did that with the mg then flush..trying to understand the point?

i will reitterate quite clearly YOU DO NOT FEED SEEDLINGS. they carry enough food inside them to establish a good root system. a lot of soils are already borderline too packed with nutrients as it is. the most common newbie mistake is to kill your plants with too much love. ;)
 
Re: my baby grow box, some help needed.

i added mj to the dirt then rinsed some cuz the only dirt we got was from garden, worried about low nutrients
 
Re: my baby grow box, some help needed.

i think cold frame is same as grow box, which they are in. and box is wraped in insulating plastic ....
 
well the cfls make litterlty like NO heat, i can run them for an hour strait, and hold it in my bare palm with NO problem, honestly dosnt even feel warm at all
 
bad things generally happen to mj plants that go below 10c.
i know its a bit personal but hows the budget?

you may want to consider making an insulated grow box.
halogen may very well be making heat for you, but the light is useless and therefore some of your current electric bill is genuinly wasted money. a heater produces more heat for the same cost or use more usable lights.
its really hard to have too many cfls you need like 80-90 thousand candles worth of power before your producing too much light.

in your situation i would build a nice big grow box out of mdf or plyboard then attatch celotex to the outside, drill quite a few small holes around the bottom part of the box as air inlets and a bigger hole at the very top with an adjustable opening to control the heat and then just fill that bad boy up with as many CFLs as possible.

do you have central heating? the type with a boiler and radiators.
once before, i have disconnected a radiator from its pipe and ran a hosepipe from the water pipe to my attic wrapped a few coils round the thing i was trying to heat (not grow related) then back to the radiator to close the loop...a cheap ass way to extend the heating to an area mcguyver style, lol
 
Honestly, for what it costs for the cfl's and the halogen, you could have easily paid for a 100w or 200w HPS/MH all in one hood/ballast/bulb. Which would work much better for that size are than cfl's.


This is what i'd put in it ...................

Amazon: Sun System® HPS 150 Grow Light Fixture

There's another one for 10 bucks cheaper ...........
 
Yep. U get higher yields more intensity and the added benefit of the heat an Hps produces. Sounds like.the perfect light for ur situation. Run a cycle as is and get ur bearings. Learn from ur mistakes as u will make many (using outside soil, feeding mg to a seedling, etc) ;)
Once you've cleared the curve and decided whether its for u or not you can really evaluate ur situation and buy accordingly. Gl
 
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