first time grow... did i screw up yet?

Hey all, noob here. I came across a couple bag seeds from some really headie stuff a couple weeks ago. I decided one night to germinate the seeds and see what I could do with them. I have 0% experience with both indoor and outdoor growing but I figured it would be fun to get the experience and maybe after a couple trial and errors I could eventually get good at it. I only had 2 of these seeds and I understand that the likelihood of either of them being female is rare, but I have hopes lol. So to cut to the chase, I am broke as a joke and can't afford a nice setup like all of you got, but what I have seems to be doing the trick. I started them out using 4" clay pots in MG Moisture Control. I know alot of you bash everything from MG but it was the only thing available and I am poor. I started with just a 4' T8 ballast with 2 cool white bulbs on 24/0 inside a crawl space and nothing else. Crawl space is not quite even 4' tall so I would like to flower ASAP and keep them short and bushy. So they sprouted within a couple days (09-12-11) and they're whole lives so far they have showed amazing growth every day. Eventually after I did some reading and acquired more gear I added a fan, a heater on a thermostat, a thermometer with humidity gauge and stocked up on some cheap, easy to obtain nutes, and transplanted them to a bigger pot. The pot said 10-inch but its really not that deep. Idk how many gallons it is. Looks like maybe a little over a gallon of water would fit in it. I fed them a little tomato food a couple times well before I should have, but they did okay with it. I tried to FIM them both 2 weeks into veg and they did not go into shock, but the FIM I guess was not done right because since then they still have not split into 2 colas only the top leaves are all messed up looking from cutting them as they were developing. The day before I FIMed I had bought a timer and cut back from 24/0 to 18/6. I only stayed with the 18/6 cycle for a couple days and eventually acquired a T8 warm bulb and a couple warm CFLs. One 100w equivalent and one 60w equivalent. So since I want them to stay as short as possible I switched them to 12/12 as soon as I got these other lights. They have been in flowering for only 5 days now and they are still looking good but showing no signs of sex yet. When I put them into flowering I also started feeding them Superthrive and MG Bloom Booster EVERY FEEDING (which I know now was probably a bad idea) But I was using distilled water and figured there wouldnt be enough nutrients. So I noticed yesterday morning that they were showing possible signs of nute burn. The tips of the leaves (even new growth) is turning from a dark green to neon green to brownish to yellow. Just the tips, not the whole edge and it is not happening to every leaf and it seems to be worse on one plant than the other... I stopped feeding them all nutes and gave them a large healthy dose of bottled spring water. Also I notice now that the roots are SUPERTHRIVING through the bottom drainage holes on the pots. I won't have a way to buy a bigger pot for a couple days and even then I dont have the space for a larger pot. Sorry to write a novel here, but I'm hoping a garden veteran could help me out here: How does everything look and what can I do without spending money to save these plants? Again noob so I apologize if this post was too long or the pictures do not work or are too large. This is my first post. Thanks again guys.

hey the pictures are not showing up on my computer I don't know what I did wrong but you can right click and save as and then open it. Idk sorry.

Hey I think you look like you are doing great. The leaves are huge. Did you top these plants. they looked topped. I didn't read that huge pargraph you posted so im sorry, but im a lazy stoner. By the pictures alone...I think they look great. Don't worry about browning on the edge of the leaves...just water when its needs it and keep your temps to about 74 degrees. Not too much moisture, and you should be solid. Good luck and enjoy growing. I promise when you stop feeling paranoid like we all did at the begining of our first grow, it becomes incredibly fun. Best of luck to you brothaman.

Hey Dr Greenthumb thanks for your input. Sorry for such a long post I mainly am just concerned with the possible nute burn. If it is not nute burn then I would like to continue using the diluted mixture that I have. It seemed to be boosting the growth quite a bit. Also the roots are breaking through the drain holes on the bottom and I cant get a larger pot for awhile and don't really have the room for a larger pot. Is it bad to have gigantic roots in a small pot? lol

i read most, how big is ur space u have them in for flowering

i personally think u should wait until u have more room/money.

I'm workin with like MAYBE 2 feet more above what theyre at right now thats why I wanted to flower them soon so they won't get too big. I would rather not have to tie them down it seems like you could break them easy doing that.

I was hoping if they stayed real small the roots would not get too big for the pot they are in, but I guess that Superthrive shit really does wonders for the roots.

i started 12/12 on my lsd strain, n they still got over 5 foot. ur best bet wd have been an autoflower, but even sum of them end up quite tall.

you'll want to lay off the superthrive completely by day 21 flower. it prevents the plant from ripening i believe.

idk if its just me but no matter wat strain i do it doesnt get taller than 33 inches lol thats my peak record

wow thats crazy i mean this is my first grow so I have no experience but everything that I have read made it seem like they are pretty easy to keep small without proper HPS lights and all that.

and thanks fattie I read that too somewhere about the ST but I thought that I had damaged the roots during transplant and heard ST was good for roots. Apparently its REAL good for roots lol. I'm done using it on these plants tho. anyone think that it would be a bad idea to keep these plants in the pot they are in now even though the roots are growing too big for it. The ultimate goal is to get like a 2.5 foot tall plant here with multiple tops or FIMs and go wide not tall.

It takes quite a while for a plant to get rootbound, BUT I would upgrade to a 2.5 or 3 gallon if you going to let it veg for awhile. And i really would be careful using nutrients every time especially in veg. I'd just give it water for a bit, maybe some epsom salts here and there to prevent cal/mag def. Just trying to help ya out.

thanks again fattie. they are now a week into the 12/12 cycle so I'm not really vegging anymore. tryin to force flower. I'll have to take some pics of the root tips coming out of the holes. Its just like a millimeter or two out of each hole. not much roots. If you think they will take a long time to get root bound then maybe I can just leave them in these pots. I took a picture of them this morning but forgot to snap a pic of the roots. I'll do that tonight when the lights come back on. I got them off from 9:30am to 9:30pm.

They look fine so far but I think in the long run it would be better if you can get at least one of those lights hung above the plants. What is the residue on the leaves in the 2nd pic? Could be pm.

The stuff on the leaves i guess is residue from either the water or nutes. Since I am using a combo of spring and distilled water it is probably the nutes is my guess. I mist them from time to time and I didn't have a separate bottle for plain water AND my nute mix but now I do... Is it bad to mist them with a diluted nute solution? Just MG Bloom Booster and Superthrive, but I stopped using the ST once I noticed the roots. You said get the lights above them? As in the CFLs? I have a dual T8 ballast right above them with one cool 3200k and one warm 2700k bulb in it and then I was using the CFLs to try to get light to the lower leaves.