New grower in urgent need of help

[Absurd97]

Im a new grower trying to start tomorrow i will be picking up my soil tomorrow to start the process but im not sure on how many plants to fit in my tent under a 400watt hid cool tube with duct fan the tent is 2×2.5 by 5'7 feet could i fit 3 3gallon plants? And when would i be able to figure out to separate the male. I am trying to grow 3 female plants. Will the duct fan being.on 24/7 have any affect in my yield? And as fertilizer goes which is.the best that is reccomended for a rookie? Thanks for and.goodluck on your grows

 

[Weaselcracker]

Hey.
I would grow 4 plants in 3 gallon pots. Divides better into the space.

If you're not using feminized seed then you just have to gamble. Probably the best thing you can do is grow 8 seeds and hope half are female. Another idea if you're short on seeds is to grow six seeds, or four seeds. If you only end up with only two or three females then just grow them larger to fill the space. If you have too many females just flower them sooner or cull the weakest one(s).

No the fan being on 24/7 won't affect yield. Just as long as the fresh air coming in isn't cold. I'm not really sure what you mean by that question... You don't need it on that much though. Mine operates on a thermostat to vent hot air out when temps rise, pulling in fresh cool air at the same time.

Plants generally show their sex at about 4-6 weeks of age in my experience. Some (generally females) won't show for longer. A plant is ready for flowering at (roughly) that time and, if it is healthy and has grown well during veg, will also be about the size you need to start flowering (about 14-16" high roughly) in 3 gallon pots. They will probably almost double in size once they begin the early flowering stage (after switching the lighting schedule).

Almost any decent nutrient lineup will work. Stay away from super cheap crap.

Check this link for many many hours of informative reading.
How to Grow Marijuana Everything You Need to Know
Good luck.

 

[paul keating]

Wow.
You need a lot of questions answered. Your best bet would be to start in the 'grow room' section of this website.
Lots of useful info there.

How to Grow Marijuana - Everything You Need to Know

But i can give you some quick advice, based on my own experiences and opinion.

In a tent that size, i wouldn't do more than 2 plants. But it depends on how big you are going to veg them.
You may only have enough room for 1 plant, but if you kept them small and under control, you could conceivably get 4 plants
into that tent. I have a 3 x 3 tent, and i struggle for room with 2 plants.

Have you got seeds yet? If not, i would recommend feminized seeds. You are guaranteed to get a female.
But if you just have regular seeds, you won't be able to tell the sex until you put them into flower.
There are some tricks to determining sex early, like taking a cutting and flowering it, otherwise you have to wait till flowering.

Your duct fan will need to be on 24 / 7, otherwise it will harm yield. Your plants need a fresh supply of air, and carbon dioxide, so it needs to be on constantly. Especially later on during flowering, as you will need a carbon filter attached to that duct fan, otherwise your house will get exceptionally stinky.

As for fertilizer, depends where you are in the world. There are many options, but i haven't tried many, as i mostly grow in soiless mix and so i use hydroponic nutrients.
When you get soil, try to get one with little to no fertilizer. Mainly because seedlings don't like a lot of fertilizer, as it can stunt their growth and even kill them. Its easier to feed your plants manually when watering, and there's less chance of an overdose if your soil isn't already loaded with fertilizer. Plus, when you go into flowering, there's less chance of ending up with a nitrogen toxicity problem.
That's just my opinion though. A lot of poeple like to load their plants up with as much fertilizer as they can, but for me, its caused nothing but problems.
One of the biggest newbie mistakes is over-fertilizing. Ive killed many plants that way.

I would head over to that link i put above and check out all the great info there. It has helped me out a lot.

Best of luck.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Looking at PK's post I see he fills in a bunch of good points I missed.
Especially pay attention to what he said about overfeeding and overwatering. The number one mistakes.
Re the number of plants- I'm basing that on the fact that I used to grow 9 plants in a space that was 3.5' X 4', and put into flowering at about 14". But on second thought, it was a bit crowded and I may be overstating things a bit, so you may want to flower at 12", or grow less than 4 plants.
Like I said, my vent fan runs off the thermostat and doubles as cooling, as well as for fresh air. It kicks in at least every 15 minutes for a few minutes. That amount of air exchange is fine and the plants are happy with it. It doesn't come on much, if ever, during lights off. Plants are happy. At any rate, running it 24/7 shoukd be fine like I said as long as the air is about room temp.
Read and read some more.

 

[Absurd97]

Thanks for the answers really helped out alot. I've been reserching for a month or so now and ive wanted to order some seeds but i wasnt sure of any reliable seedbanks or trusted payment options. My serious problem is the knowing how many plants i could arrange in my.tent and still get a reasonable yield. Im trying out some seeds from a friend that got them from mexican weed he said it was packed with them so it should be a pollinated female plant. Im trying those out to test out my equipment and skills.before i try them on $50 dollar seed. I have a fan pulling out the air i was thinking of leaving the rest of.the duct ports open for.fresh air? And having a small fan inside for the plants and the extract fan connect to the cool.tube outside the tent? I only have my ballast timer do i need any other equipment other than the humidity tester and thermometer? Also is the SCROG method reccomended for.my first grow? I feel like it would benefit me more or.is it.to much for.my first grow? I havent looked into any training methods yet i will be as soon as possible.is there anything you guys think i should know? I am aware of.the soil but im not sure of the mixture online.to add some.perlite how.much do you guys reccomend? I will most likely be using happy frog potting soil for.my grow. Thanks.again for all your answers getting me alot.more confidence for my first grow

 

[Weaselcracker]

Hey. You're very welcome. I'll probably just post here this one last time then move on to other subscriptions and stuff.

Re leaving the vent ports open -you do need absolute darkness during lights out, for the flowering period, so you wouldn't want those open during lights out if they're letting light in.
However, for the vegging period they aren't so fussy about that day/night schedule and you can pretty much do what you want, so leaving some doors open, having light leaks won't hurt during veg . If this is going to be an issue during flowering - at least you have some time now to get it sorted out. Myself, I built a sort of hinged door/flap for the intake vent. It gets sucked open when the vent fan comes on and closes with gravity when the vent fan turns off.

Sounds like a good idea to grow some bag seed first. It's stressful for new growers when the expen$ive seeds don't sprout, or get overwatered and die, etc.

Sure it would be fine to do a scrog first time around. It's a simple concept. You will have to learn some bending, topping, training techniques but that's a good thing. Besides a bit more of a first time learning curve to do scrog, the only drawback I could see is that you won't get to see the plant in its natural untrained form, but you'll have plenty of chances for that whenever...

I'm not a soil grower so don't know how much you need to test ph for happy frog, or if it is great at balancing out whatever you dump in there. For growing in peat moss as I do, I need a good ph tester, and I need to test and adjust everything I feed to the plants, or the grow is going to be feeling very ill. You may want to check that out- PH.
I see often people adding about 1/6 perlite to their soil.

As for the number of plants and your yield. It doesn't really work that way. What you are trying to do is fill the available space with a forest of plant foliage. You have five square feet of growing space (if I remember right without scrolling down) and you could grow a dozen little plants or one big one, and still end up with the exact same growing surface and the same yield.

My advice, and I know that growers hate to hear this just starting out, but I would recommend you just forget about yield and focus on keeping the plants healthy. They will generally probably grow and yield as best as they can despite us getting in their way and torturing and poisoning them. Just focus on the basic stuff. Things like not overfeeding and not over watering - you should actually in these cases just follow the basic guidelines which I'm sure you'll find in the link we gave you. The plants will follow after that. For some reason we always want to overfeed them and mutilate and trash them with our 'love'. Try and resist and your plants will thank you.
Best of luck with your grow!