1st Grow -- Northern Lights CFL & 600w

This is my first post and grow but I have been reading this forum for many months now. I am starting a legal medical perpetual grow today and will update this grow journal every day or 2.

The setup is a 3'X1.5'X5.5 storage cabinet for veg/clone and the mother plant I am going to keep. The flower room is a 4X4X6 grow tent with a 600w HPS light, vent and charcol filter (I'm still waiting for these items to arrive, so photos of them later in this grow.

The plan is to keep 8 medium size plants flowering at once and harvest 2 plants every 2 weeks.

Here are the photos of the flowering cabinet, it is in a closet so I is hard to get good photos of it. I have 8 23w 6500k CFL's in there right now. Those are my 2 Basil plants I started from seed 6 weeks ago and they are now over 12" tall and taste yummy in some of the dinners I have cooked



I just started to germinate 2 seeds (out of the 5 I bought) and hope they will be ready for soil in 2 days max. I am using Fox Farms Ocean Forest for soil.

I am planning on vegging these 2 to about 12", take 4 clones from each and put them into flower. Then grow the clones to 12" take 4 clones from each of them and put them into flower. Finally I hope to have 8 plants flowering from the mother that produces the best bud on a schedule to be harested every 2 weeks.

My only question is will it be ok to start the seeds in the Ocean Forest after germination? I want to make sure this soil is not going to be too hot.

Thanks for checking this out, I'm sure it will be entertaining and educational for some people (myself included!)

I also wanted to give Nirvana Seeds props, I ordered them on June 20th and received them today, 6 days to the west coast!

Quick 24 hour update. One of the seeds has cracked and has a small tap root coming out, the other is still doing nothing. Will post after the other seed cracks and I pot them.

nice lookin good man.. yea i always start my seeds in ocean forest they do just fine.

Thanks for the reply. I figured it would be ok but wanted to make sure I was not sticking my ladies in something they would not be happy in.

Nice, when my seeds cracked I put em in a propegator for a few days to make it real humid. As soon as they got around 2" high I planted them and put them under the lights straight away

Will be followin this thread from now on. Check out my grow https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/343422-3-x-white-widow.html

Hey Scudberry, thanks for checking out my journal. I'm subscribed to your journal, it is looking good.

I have a similar sized grow area for my first grow and will be using a 600w HPS when it's time to flower. I'm curious to see how your grow turns out, good luck

bajafox said:

I have a similar sized grow area for my first grow and will be using a 600w HPS when it's time to flower. I'm curious to see how your grow turns out, good luck

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Thanks! I will be posting here every step of the way

I have planted one of the germinated seeds in FFOF a few minutes ago. the other seed popped but the tap root is still very small, I will plant that one in the morning. I'm starting them in 2.5 Q pots then moving them to 3 gallon pots after a few weeks of veg.

How do you plan to keep it cool in there with a 600w? I have a 2x4x5 foot area and had a 400w in there, it got to 93 degree's on average. I downgraded to a 200w cfl for vegging and upgraded to a 600w for flowering (also picked up a 6" inline fan and carbon filter) and hopefully will stick the light in a cool tube to try and keep my temps down.

Curious to see how you set it up

bajafox said:

How do you plan to keep it cool in there with a 600w? I have a 2x4x5 foot area and had a 400w in there, it got to 93 degree's on average. I downgraded to a 200w cfl for vegging and upgraded to a 600w for flowering (also picked up a 6" inline fan and carbon filter) and hopefully will stick the light in a cool tube to try and keep my temps down.

Curious to see how you set it up

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I have (on order) a 6" fan with carbon filter. The closet is in my master bathroom so I plan on venting the tent out the bathroom vent. The closet stays around 77 with 8 23w CFL's and just the bathroom vent on and the temp of the whole house at 77. I know that the CFL's put out no heat compaired to the HPS, but I think I will be fine. I can also vent it out to the room next door if needed.

Both seeds have germinated and been planted. I have them in 1/2 gallon pots with the soil moist, not wet. The temps are 78 and 35% humidity and I plan on keeping the light on 24/0. Should I cover these pots with plastic? I have seen some people that do and others that don't. I have grown other herbs and never covered them. Here are the pots (other small red cups are just water to help with the low humidity)

I put plastic domes over mine, I was told to keep them on for about a week but I took it off after 2 days on my seedling because it was getting tall and skinny. I used the bottom of water bottles and just put them over the seed

bajafox said:

I put plastic domes over mine, I was told to keep them on for about a week but I took it off after 2 days on my seedling because it was getting tall and skinny. I used the bottom of water bottles and just put them over the seed

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Thanks for the quick reply baja! I was reading through your journal, great stuff! We do not live that far apart. I put small glass bowls over the pots and will only leave them on for a few days...

Hope that works for you, I haven't had very much success germinating and keeping seedlings alive since I first started about 2 mos. ago, that Jack Herer seed is my best try so far

Quick update -- 24 hours in soil and no change, not that I expected one

I woke up this morning and both of my girls have come out of the soil

NL1 -- She already tossed the seed


NL2 -- Still has the seed

Nice! Are you going to keep the domes over it or remove them? I think it's all personal choice but I would leave it on a few days

bajafox said:

Nice! Are you going to keep the domes over it or remove them? I think it's all personal choice but I would leave it on a few days

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I am going to leave them on until the first set of true leaves come out, maybe 1 or 2 more days.