BigTurtle

First you'll germinate your seed in a paper towel then move to a jiffy pot (when you buy them they are flat disks about 1 1/2" across and 1/4 " thick. add water and they swell up into a 2" tall ball of dirt to plant your seed in. They are at any wal-mart nursery section. also try "germinate marijuana" on you tube. lots of paper towel demos...

I'm turning in so shoot me anything else and I'll answer tommorow. In the mean time, go to you tube and enter "Jorge cervantes" watch anything that comes up. there will be alot. All of it will be helpful, just don't let it confuse you. It can be real simple or high tech. your call. Later.

I use 5 gal. Some people use a little smaller but my local nursery does not carry cheap conainers over 1 gallon so i use regular 5 gallon buckets and drill a bunch of 1/2" holes in them. I start seedlings in 6"pots...

Plenty of room for 2 or 3 plants. Here's where cost starts coming in. you could get by with around 100w MH (metal halide) and 250wHPS (high pressure sodium) which would use less power and generate less heat or go around 175W-200W mh and 400W hps. Thats a pretty standard setup. My thoughts on lights. You CAN get a good grow with florescents but HID is simply better.

there are 2 light spectrums or colors you will use. red and blue. 2700kw and 6500kw or HPS and mh. they all mean the same thing. sort of. You will use a "blue" light when plants are young and a "red" light when they are flowering. both are available in either type of light. Cost issues? I think they come out about the same when all is said and done but some people have done well with cfl at a low investment. cfl=twisty flouro bulbs for lamps. heat can be a problem so you'll need to vent the closet with fans too. later on that.

your biggest decision right now is lights. Flouro or HID (high intensity discharge) the basic unit of measure for how much light you get is lumens. The more the better. Both flouro and HID work but they are used differently so we'll get into that more later when you know the type of grow you are doing.

when you are in vegatative state. The early times. you leave your lights on 24 hrs or 18 on 6 off. I'm running 18/6. You do know about the 2 different types of light for veg and flower, right?

Soil is an easy one. basicly get any "premium potting soil" that does NOT contain time released fertilizer. Miricle grow does. it has little pellets that disolve and release nutes you have no control over. Big hassle. Mix your potting soil 4 scoops soil and 1 scoop perlite. add dolamite lime to stabilize the ph is recommended but I haven't so far.

Lights. Another great debate. I started with 4 4' flouros giving me about 7500 total lumen. I've left that far behind by going HID. 400w hps and 200w MH. I've read that you can put a MH bulb of equal or lower wattage in an HPS fixture but not HPS in an MH fixture, so if you are going to do a cycle grow with all plants in the same light/room you can get away with 1 400w HPS fixture and bulb and 1 200w MH bulb to save cost.
Everyones favorite nutes are Fox Farms. I plan to start using them but have been using standard schultz fert and superthrive food so far. If you'd like to check out the current Kush read my thread 12/12 vs veg and flower. I've been documenting these ones weekly

OK. First, this site and others have recommended sites for buying seed monline. I never have, so no help there. Advice. Use bagseed for your first couple grows. Why pay cash for seeds you will probably not get the full potential from? I grew a nice indica and am working on kush from barseed now. Came free with the stuff I paid far too much for.
Then you have the big decisions. Hydro or soil? I grow soil while I'm learning hydro because it is simpler. I've set up and played with a few hydro but I don't trust my skills or my local power grid enough to use hydro yet.
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It's easier than it seems. What's your situation. I'm med so no real advice on stealth at all. My grow is in the guest room. I'm still fairly new so I can probably help you with most of the newbie concerns. Retired and bored so sure I have time.
Appleseed