First time grow w/ 400w HPS, need help sexing and just in general!! Thank you!!!

Hey everyone!! First time grower here and so happy to have found this site! I will be updating this quite a bit to show my first time grow as it becomes a "Sea of Green". So here is the run down:

I started with some random seeds a friend gave me, put them in a wet napkin to see if they would sprout and grew into this little grow op. At first I just put the seeds in my regular (from garden) soil and had them under 6 40w florescents. The plants did ok but then started reading... After two weeks I had nine little plants that were doing ok. I then put them into gallon containers w/ miracle grow 3 month nutrition potting soil. Wow oh wow they started to do much better and I snipped all of the dead parts and leaves off. Since I am going for a sustained grow and not a large grow, I am vegging them for 2-4 weeks under florescents (24hrs)and then flowering them at 12/12 under a 400w hps. Keeping small plants that rotate quickly, my idea is to have 2-3 plants ready every 3 weeks (3 rows of 2-3 female plants with a 9 week flower cylcle). Every 3 weeks I hang the ready ones up and then bring 2-3 plants from the veg room over (clones or from seed but once i get it going will have mother plants). I seem to have the heat controled with a small occilating fan and then a 4in duct fan in my light hood exhausting directly outside, with my intake coming from house a/c. Planning on sealing everything in with plastic and curtains to keep clean but not there yet (closet greenhouse).

At the moment I have these 6 plants under the 400w, plants 1-5 have been in there for 4 weeks and I brought plant 6 from the veg room a week ago. They have been under a ton of stress (being my first grow) but now that I am settled (before i was in the hot garage and now have a pemenant set up in my closet) seem to be doing great. But I dont know what I am doing so please help! Here are my questions:

1) Can you tell if these are male or female yet? if so can you help!

2) How do they look? Do they look ok?

3) Should I be misting them with water?

4) Do you think this will work?

5) Any tips or problems you see?

Any feedback would be amazing!!!! Thank you for your help and have a beautiful day!!!!

1) WAY too early to sex; the plants either need to mature or you need to force flowering
2) They look very stretched; get that light closer!
3) Some people like foliar feeding; I dont right now but probably will in the future
4) Should work fine
5) Other than the stretching, they look good. They are pretty far behind growth wise to a regular 4 week old plant, but you mentioned they were stressed quite a bit so that's normal.

Good Luck!

Hi Juno

Welcome to RiU

Your a dab hand with the cam ..nice shots

Little early to tell the sex from what i can see ... your looking for sines of little hairs on the nodes where the leaf stems join the main stem , They need to mature a little bit yet

View attachment 1108673

Second , They look pretty streched between the nodes .... you have to get your light a little closer They also look a bit small for 4 weeks old but that could just be the perspective of the shots .

On a positive note ... They look pretty healthy and very straight lol ...

+Rep for a Great first post ... awesome pics ... and very discriptive , Its clear to see that you have attention to detail and care for your plants ... In my opinion you will be a great grower

Good Luck ...and i hope you have a " beautiful day!!!!" to

V


EDIT ... bhaaa ... Purple beat me to it ... But was copying from my post while i was writing it

Thank you thank you thank you!!! I am a photographer that is excited to have his own grow! Ok:

1) By inducing flowering, what do you mean? Ive read to turn off the light for 48hrs, is that what you mean?

2) My 400w hps is 21 inches away from the top of the plants, how much closer?

3) What could being behind do to the final result? Any idea how much yeild I might have at the end of the first 5?

4) I have 3 vegging right now, is there anything I can do to increase the yeild on those? I was planing on putting them in the flowering room after the first 5, so they should be much bigger than these when the started I am guessing.

5) Any tips on making my grow more seamless? Anything I can do to make it better (its addicting!)

Thank you again! I wish I could share my first batch with yall!!

Also I can get a 1000w HPS for $80, do you think I am good for what I have or should I upgrade? again... haha I have just heard that a 1000w will yeild double...?

If you need help sexing click on my link below. Good luck.

Hey all!

Check out these new pics! They were taken today, 10 days after the last ones! What do ya think!?! Any feedback would be great!! Do I have any males I need to take out?