Lights and Fertilizer Question

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dbtwiztid

Member
I am a first time grower who is trying to design my first grow room.

I have done a whole bunch of research and watched "I Grow Chronic" by Mr. Green (Was very helpful).

However I am stuck with two questions:

1) What type of lights should I use for only growing a maximum of five plants? I was going to get a HID HPS bulb, but I'm afraid the ballast (spelling?) may be too expensive. The space I am growing in is sort of like a walk-in closet. I don't have exact measurements right now but it is roughly 3.5' wide and probably 7' long, and probably around 8-9' tall but has a slanted ceiling so it would be about 7' tall (plus the slanted part). I was only thinking about have 1/3 of the room be for flowering, and another 1/3 to be for cloning/saplings. I also would be using mylar.

2) Now I am going to be growing in soil, simply because a hydroponics set up would be too expensive for me right now. My basic idea on watering would be that I would go by distilled water and add the fertilizer myself, one with higher nitrogen for veg and less for flowering.

If someone could please answer these that'd be great.

Please keep in mind that I haven't started building the room yet but am trying to get a good idea of how much it's going to run me before I head out to Lowe's to get everything, and before I buy the seeds.
 
Purplekrunchie

Purplekrunchie

Well-Known Member
A smaller HPS would, probobly be ok, only thing id be concerned with is the 3.5 width. Id for sure wanna test run this lamp well before I started.
When I first started, I used a 250 watt Hydrofarm HPS, my area wasnt very large, I flowered in a space roughly 7' x 6' but only used a palet for my flowers, and my mom room was about the same as the closet you explained.
 
ElephantRider

ElephantRider

Well-Known Member
Understand that a 250 W HPS will still set you back $500 if you want to do it right - electronic ballast, enclosed / ducted hoods with inline fans. You could also do 2 200W CFLs for about half that, since you need no ballast and don't need to vent the insane amount of heat that an HID generates. Is HPS better? Probably, but it's getting to be marginal, at best, these days. The only thing CFL doesn't do so well is canopy penetration, but you can prune your plants to combat that. And.. let's not forget that 400W > 250W. Also, you need to change your HID bulb every 2 grows. Not so, with CFL.

Fertilizer.. go organic soild and foxfarm nutes. FF makes it so easy, a monkey could do it. A cheap veg. fertilizer is human urine, btw. It's got high N and loads of other good stuff. 10:1 water:urine is a good mix.
 
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dbtwiztid

Member
ElephantRider said:
Understand that a 250 W HPS will still set you back $500 if you want to do it right - electronic ballast, enclosed / ducted hoods with inline fans. You could also do 2 200W CFLs for about half that, since you need no ballast and don't need to vent the insane amount of heat that an HID generates. Is HPS better? Probably, but it's getting to be marginal, at best, these days. The only thing CFL doesn't do so well is canopy penetration, but you can prune your plants to combat that. And.. let's not forget that 400W > 250W. Also, you need to change your HID bulb every 2 grows. Not so, with CFL.

Fertilizer.. go organic soild and foxfarm nutes. FF makes it so easy, a monkey could do it. A cheap veg. fertilizer is human urine, btw. It's got high N and loads of other good stuff. 10:1 water:urine is a good mix.
Click to expand...

Alright so I think I am going to go with CFLs (lol). I've been looking into how to go about growing with them and have been led to believe to use mostly "Daylights" for veg and mostly "Softwhite" for flowering. I am planning on growing 4 plants in about a 3.5' by 3.5' space. They would be surrounded by walls on 3 sides and I was planning on putting black plastic to cover the one side to prevent light from escaping. How many CFLs should I have? How many watts should I have in total/per plant?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can answer these questions.
 
Purplekrunchie

Purplekrunchie

Well-Known Member
ElephantRider said:
Understand that a 250 W HPS will still set you back $500 if you want to do it right -

Where the hell do you buy your lamps? I could get two 600 watt lamps for this price. You can get a UL listed, safe 250 watt HPS lamp for less than 200 dollars at my local hydroponics store.
Click to expand...
 
neg90

neg90

Active Member
ElephantRider said:
Understand that a 250 W HPS will still set you back $500 if you want to do it right -

Where the hell do you buy your lamps? I could get two 600 watt lamps for this price. You can get a UL listed, safe 250 watt HPS lamp for less than 200 dollars at my local hydroponics store.
Click to expand...
I think he's probably including the price of the reflector, heat tube, cooling etc..
 
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dbtwiztid

Member
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