New Grower Looking For Advice

[rarearnold]

Hi,
I'm a brand-new grower looking for tips and advice on how to produce a strong, solid yield for my first time. I noticed how friendly and willing to hand out advice everyone on here seems, and I figured that you all would be able to share some wisdom with me. I currently have 16 seeds in the mail: 3x Auto Colorado Cookies, 5x AK 48 Auto, and 5x Ayahuasca Purp (Photoperiod), as well as 1 Easy Ryder Auto, 1 Purp Auto, and 1 Amnesia Lemon. I'm planning on using a 1000 watt HPS light on a 20/4 schedule in a 60"x60"x80" grow tent, which will be in a wooden shed. I've heard some people say that 1000 watts is too much for that area, while I've seen others say it's too little, so I figured the only way to really know is to test it myself. I'm also planning on building a larger growhouse later on. My essential questions are these:

- What medium should I use? I want to use something soil-y because I'm a newbie and hydro seems more complicated and unforgiving of mistakes (although I do eventually want to progress to that). Because I'm operating on a budget, I don't want to spend up to $40 on each of 16 plants for a pre-mixed supercompost or something like that, although I am open to buying something pre-mixed, as I understand how important the growing medium is. I've heard that coco coir and perlite is a good mixture, but as I understand that's a passive hydro mix (I could be wrong, I don't know much). I've seen in a lot of pictures little cannabis plants in what look like bricks, which are also placed into a bigger container of soil. I'd like to know what those are, as I want to minimize any risk of killing or stressing plants by transplanting them. I've also heard that planting seeds after germination straight into a high-nutrient mix can kill the plants via shock (not sure if this is true).

- How should I water these plants? The whole operation will be on a property two hours away from where I live, and as I'm in school I'll only be able to make it up there once a week on average. I can ask the people who live there to water them in between my visits, but I'd like to be responsible for my own grow.

-Which plants should I keep in the tent? I'm thinking of putting some outside in a greenhouse, as the temperatures and light levels where I live (Pacific Northwest) are decent during the summer. I want to get a high yield, and I know that the plants in the tent will likely soak up the entire light, and that cramming the space full of plants wont really increase my yield (unless I used a SOG or something). I just picked out some strains that looked nice on the website, but I don't know which ones would do better inside versus outside. Some people say you can expect 50-100 grams per plant outside, while others say you can get up to a couple pounds. This seems like a big difference so I'm pretty confused on this. Would 9 plants (say, the AKs and Cookies as well as the Easy Ryder) in a 3x3 fashion be enough plants for this tent and light, or should I add (or take away) some?

Any other tips that a new grower could use would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Scientific]

Hi rarearnold -- May I suggest that rather than asking for a personal tutorial on how to grow, you instead subscribe to some of the grow logs here? I would suggest searching for logs related to the strains you want to grow and the cultivation methods you are interested in.

There is an awful lot to learn and no royal road to master grower status.

There is of course lots of great information on YouTube, too, as well as tons of other cannabis sites. Investing an hour a day in learning the craft should help you get up to speed pretty quickly. Then if you have specific questions, ask those here.

Good luck and have fun!

PS: The thread stickied above might be a good place to start: Joys Of Growing - Great Guide!

 

[fanleaf]

I second the above answer. Read some grow journals and it will help you get started a ton. Also. 5X5 area is perfect for a 1000w mh/hps

 

[Papageno]

I'm a brand-new grower looking for tips and advice on how to produce a strong, solid yield for my first time.

I was too.....I think that is fairly common at one point in the game.

So No joke I say hold the autos for round 3 or 4. You will waste them as a new grower. If you want to use them then go deep into the auto forums. There are a few guys you will want to talk to because Autos are especially easy to fuck up. Any minor misstep really hits the yield where as in a regular you can fix anything.

An Auto is a self timed plant that you can't stop you can only accelerate. By accelerating it you are not helping as that is happening from bad stress. Not to go on about it but the point is if you do everything perfect you can get great stuff with autos but it is easy to induce early blooming which gets you a baby plant on a root ball that is not mature enough to really work.

The best for autos is a strict regimen that is harder for newbs to manage. Hydro or Hempy.

The best for beginners is good ol organic soil blend that doesn't need much added. So you can learn about not watering and a pile of other things that don't make sense. Most organic blends are really too hot for autos meaning the soil has to much available nutrients early on for an auto sprout. So you have to layer with some real basic plain Jane soil up top and have some good compost at the bottom. Like SubCools recipe might be good for autos done real plain up top.

I agree with above. Look through the journals. Many explain step by step how to grow weed.

 

[Agemon]

My 2 best recommendations: do your research & less is more.