Growing Space Help

I have what I believe to be a pretty decent spot in my basement to grow; however, I need help with what I would need to make this spot better. I have two pictures I can show of this spot. I only wanna grow like one or two plants for my own personal use, and I mean come on this seems pretty fun to say the least. So if you guys could help me out with stuff I would need, lets say with like stuff to put on the walls, what lights and how I could rig it up. This is my first time attempting something like this. I am also thinking about doing 12 hours light 12 hours dark from seed. Is that a common thing or a good idea? Every little detail helps. Thanks a lot!

Quite a few people start with 12/12 from seed. I don't know if it's the norm though? I'd recommend 18/6. It looks like you have plenty of space there for one or two plants. You can paint the walls flat white or use mylar. If you don't have a grow shop in your area you can also use emergency blankets. You can get them at Walmart for $2 or $3. You'll only need one, maybe two blankets for your space. Lights? If you can get metal halide for vegging and high pressure sodium for flowering that would be the best. The other option which ultimately leads to a smaller yield, is compact fluorescent lights. Get 6500K for vegging and 2700K for flowering. If you can't get 6500K, don't go with anything less than 5000K. Once your seedlings get bigger you're going to want to have as many lights on them as you can get, something like 3-10 on each plant. Of course, you're going to need a fan circulating air in you area, plus, blowing directly on your plants. If you're growing illegally, you're also going to need to build a carbon scrubber to remove the odor from the plants. Also, you're going to want to get a light timer to shut off the lights. A lot of guys also get surge protectors too. Back to the 12/12. Are you planning on doing autos or regular photo plants? The schedule you use has a lot to do with the type of plant you're growing. Setting up a grow area seems pretty easy and it really is, but there's actually some considerable planning involved. When I set up my area, I wasn't thinking about all of the extra things that are needed, stuff like hooks and rope or chain to hang the lights, saucers to catch the water run off out of the soil containers, odor control, timer, and so forth.

Honestly if you wanna go 12/12 probably better off going with something like easy ryder, the plant not that dude up there ^. Autos have really come a long way. It's personal preference of course but you can throw them 18/6 or 20/4 full cycle. If you want a quickie test grow, go buy like 4 mylar camping blankets (like a buck a piece on ebay) and tape them up, get a couple 42W 5500's and 2700's CFL's, and order a couple auto's. Get an extension cord and wrap it around a hook on the ceiling and just raise it with the plants. All that'll probably cost you mabye 20 bucks + seeds, get some MG potting soil and tomato fertilizer and throw that in the water once a week after 12 days. You seem like you're one of the people like me when you get started and wanna make your own soil and do 100 things perfect. While you're sorting your shit you can throw a few of those up and have some quickie but in 70-75 days and learn a lot of simple growing methodology first hand, by the time you're done with that you'll have all the shit you need together, everything all dolled up, and already have a simple grow under your belt. Just a thought. Nirvana NL autos also, easy as hell to grow. I just harvested 2 that I put a total of maybe 2 hours work into and they put out some bomb ass buds.

Anyway just a thought, you look like you have a decent space so ventilation shouldn't be an issue, if you don't have close neighbors you won't have to worry about the smell although if you're only growing a few the smells not nearly as strong as some people make it out on a lot of plants (except the skunks, those'll stink you out). Anyway just a suggestion, kinda like putting up a tent waiting for your house to be build I suppose. Or maybe sleeping in your car. Idk.

Good luck ! I'll be watching to see how it goes

Wow, thanks a lot guys I appreciate all the help! So I guess for the first grow I will go with some autos and see what happens. If I need help with anything else hopefully I can rely on some good answers like the ones that were just provided! I am going to start buying the stuff this week. If you guys have a favorite strand of auto that is easy to grow first time around please share the link or name!

Check out subcools stickies in his organic sub form.

Nirvana Northern Lights Auto, World of Seeds Afghan Kush Ryder, and Easy Ryder are my 3 current favs in autos, although I've heard good things about Barney's pineapple express auto.

Pineapple express is probably the one I'm gonna go with. Is anyone familiar with buying from Barney? I am in the states by the way.

Yea, I'm currently doing my first grow. Here's a pearl of advice for you, once you get them 35 days old don't go and trim all of the fan leaves off. That's what I did and I messed mine up. It seems pretty obvious, but, hey, you never know. Anyways, Cranker had some good advice. I'm doing Easy Riders and they have been really easy to grow and they grow really fast. Maybe all weed grows really fast. Who knows? I've been in the market for another auto strain for my next grow and the Northern Lights sounds pretty good. My 5 easy riders starting putting out a noticeable smell at 2 1/2 weeks. Overall, though, it hasn't been too bad. I was hoping to find an auto strain that has the least amount of odor. I suppose all weed smells. It's just that some are much less noticeable. In the auto forum that has 65,000 views or something I saw some pics of some snowryders that looked pretty awesome. In general, I think autos are a lot of fun to grow.

Any pics of your first grow? I'm very curious of your grow setup lol

Here's a few pics. It's a simple setup. Fan above the lights, mylar on the walls, CFL lights 2-4" above the plants, lights hung with rope, and approximately 2 gallon soil containers. There's 5 lights on top and 2 for side lighting. Ideally, I should have more lights, but this is what I'm going with for the time being. You can get some decent size plants with CFLs. See pics.

Nice! Yours and mine will probably end up looking almost the same. How much did you spend on your whole setup minus the seeds? Also, did you get the lights from Home Depot, or something along those lines? One last thing, will you got to 5 Gallon for the females or lower??

Thanks for the compliment. Yea, I got my light fixtures which have the hoods at the Home Depot. They were about $5.35 each. I bought 7 of them so it was about $36. Then I had to buy the actual fluorescent lights, which I bought at Walmart. You don't necessarily have to have the fancy light fixtures. You could just use a household lamps or something without the shades, but I think it is good to have the light being focused on the plants. How much have I spent on my setup minus seeds? I'd guess about $210. Some of the stuff I didn't need or use though. You could probably easily do it with less than half of what I spent. As far as soil containers goes, the general rule is for every foot of plant you want to have a gallon of soil. For example, if your plant will grow to be 3 feet tall then you should have a 3 gallon container. However, if you're only doing one or two plants I'd recommend going with 5 gallon containers. If you can swing it, the bigger the better. My containers are only 2 gallons, but I was trying to squeeze in 10 in my small area. Had I known only 5 plants were going to actually grow I would have gone with bigger pots.

I actually went and got all my stuff today. All I have to do now is order my seeds and wait till they get here. I am pretty excited. I think it takes about two weeks to get here? So until then do you have your own forum or journal with your current grow? I am/will be curious how it turns out.

Yes, it takes about 2-3 weeks to get your seeds. No, I don't have a grow journal. I'll probably do one on my next grow though. More recently I was out of town for 5 days. When I checked my plants last night they were all wilted and drooping really bad. Some of the lower leaves dried up and turned brown. When I checked them this morning they looked a lot better. Yea, my current grow probably isn't going to yield much. I guess I'll see how it ends up. I can't express how cool autos are. I just love them.

I got my seeds and a free one just the other day; however, I might be moving into a new place by first of october so I probably will end up waiting to grow which is pissing me off lol. I might Just use the free seed now and see how it goes I think I can squeeze it in before I go. Its some UFO shit or something. Came free from Barney's with the Pineapple Express.