My last grow was in 2007. A lot has changed, which is exciting. I want to grow soil, perhaps starting with a tent and working my way up from there. The space is 13’ X 10’ and has a vaulted ceiling. There are two windows, one with an AC unit.
Ironically, I knew barely enough to help others years ago. And here I am lost. Everything has changed.
Welcome to the forum! There are a lot of knowledgeable growers here to help you get back up to speed!
Hi @novicedave
Welcome to GN. Sounds like you have a good space to start growing, what advice do you need?
Thank you for responding to my plea. Would it be best for me to start out with a tent? I feel like I could eventually do a lot with this given amount of space, but I would like to get “something” going quickly.
It all depends on what lights u have. If windows r fully covered for no light leaks ect. If the room is total blacked out a tent wont be necessary and would give u thebqhole 10x13 ro play with. Start off in a corner and branch out from there. Wish i had a full room to play in. Lol. Welcome and good luck plenty of help to get u moving on a freat grow
What Mark said…but another thing is with a tent for inside you have all the reflective walls to aid in light distribution inside the tent. It helps with getting more light to the mid and lower parts of the plant so better bigger buds a little farther down the plants. You can go plain and simple or you can go ultra tech. It depends on how much you want to spend or have to spend. Give us some parameters of what you want to do. How many plants, amount to spend etc.
Marty
Do you plan to do living soil or are you going to trash the dirt afterwards? The size of your pots/beds will have a huge determining factor on whether or not living soil is an optimal choice.
Highly recommend build a soil for easy to access, but slightly pricey organic soil amendments. They also show you how they make a most of their stuff on YouTube if you want to take the time to do it yourself.
If you’re trying to keep it cheap, espoma organic 333 fertilizer and azomite as your main two amendments. That covers most of your bases.
If you have the space, composting bins and worm bins will help keep cost low and can be maintained with minimal effort, but may take sometime to be usable.
Stratiolaelaps/hypoaspis is a great all rounder soil predator. Once they’re there, they’re there forever. They are opportunistic eaters so they switch from carnivore to detritivore as necessary. They are great at annihilating and preventing fungus gnats and root aphids. They are, and I cannot stress this enough, horrendous at hunting plant based pests.
Other wise dr zymes, lost coast, spinosad, and insecticidal/castille soap are you best options for vegetative pest control.
Thank you, that is very kind. Money isn’t much of a restraint since I understand that you get what you pay for. I just want to grow for my own use and have a little to put back. I like the idea of starting out with a tent and going from there.
Thank you for the reply, this is very kind of you.
The way I did it before was to trash the soil after I used it. I baked it in an oven with perlite to kill the bad stuff. Living soil? With worms? Yes, I’m up for anything! Back when I did grow, I guess I was lucky and didn’t have any issues with fungus or gnats. But I am also not in that same location, so I’d rather be prepared.
So you can purchase this living soil if you do not want to make it yourself and then reuse it over and over again?
That a bit hard to answer, in a sense yes in a sense no. Once a bed is well established more so, and even then you will likely use different types of teas to sway what kind of microbe activity occurs. Starting new you will need to establish the rhizome ecology which is generally determined by what kind of fertilizer or organic material the bed is mainly comprised of. You will also need to add back nutrients for the microbes to eat Whether its top dress, mulching cover crop, ferments, teas, or any mixture of them. The dirt gets washed out if you don’t and the life inside starts to die. With living soil we are trying to emulate what nature does from the ground up, no pun intended. So you will be performing some maintenance but you will not be discarding the dirt.
Fair warning there is a bit of a learning curve to living soil but there are many YouTube gardeners that can get you started. Searching basics of knf, jadam, or permaculture should get you to a pretty decent starting place.
When doing living soil you will need 5 gal container minimum but preferably 10+ gallon containers.
If you don’t plant to till, bigger is much better and you will likely want some kind of cover crop, such as clover. These are used as nitrogen regulators then mulched back into the top layer of soil to feed the microbes. Also you will definitely want a soil conditioner and wetting agent using this method. This reamends the soil after use. Aloe, yucca, or quillaja extract in addition to a worm tea.
Otherwise you will have to dump the dirt, amend, and repot. And from what I’ve seen is people have extra storage totes of dirt they are readying so that they have no downtime on their dirt in between harvests.
My method is mostly the first, with the addition of ferments and aerated teas, and a small bit of composting.
I will say that hydro has evolved very far and if that’s something you’re interested in it has a lot of advantages. Plants display toxicity and deficiency much quicker, soil pests are for the most part non existent, and an extremely wide variety of nutrients lines to pick from and they are a great deal more straight forward. Not to discourage you in anyway from your soil quest!
I tagged you in a post another user made for organic nutrients lines that are built off of the knf/jadam philosophies. A bit more expensive than a three part hydro series nute line but looks like a great all inclusive organic starter nutrient line.
I love a grow tent. I have 9 tents. I staryed growing outdoors and inddors in 1998.
What I have found is that if you start small, you will spend more money going larger in steps. If I had to start from scratch, and had the resources, I would definetely get a larger tent (you sure have enough room) and get a good size double tent. It helps because it will give you room to work in there. A good place to start and will all the options you could every want is AC Infinity. They have the tents and all the components you will need for the tent, and actually have completely set up tent packages with the pole fans, the exhaust fan fancy or fancier controllers that will control the speed of all of your fans, the output of a humidifier, your light etc. They just came out with a AI controller whic I am getting today, just got the notice of delivery from UPS. Anyway, then you need to decide how you want to grow as others have mentioned, soil, coco, hydro, semi hydro etc. I am currently growing 100% organic, organic nutrients and organic soil, I at this point don’t do living soil but I am a heartbeat away from it. If I would get off my lazy ass and clean out my basement of all the crap I no longer use, I would have a larger tent. I am currently growing in a 5x5 AC Infinity tent and all AC Infinity accessories. Pole fans, controller, exhaust fan, and Humidifier. If you purchase one of their upscale controllers it will control all of the grow parameters. But it can get costly. Just go to their site and look over some of their packages. Let us know if you need any more assistance.
Marty
I second this don’t go cheap on lights, tent, or intake. Buy right, buy once. Ac infinity is, in my opinion, the best company for this kind of stuff. They don’t cheap out on anything and they have convenient and easy to use controllers.
Hi @novicedave
Great advice from our community. Dont forget purchasing quality products from quality suppliers for post sales service and guarantees. Try growershouse.com for the best service.
https://growershouse.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?c2c_brand=11962&q=ac+infinity+
Growershouse.com also has a great webapp to help you biuld your grow tents.
What about this?
There’s not a chamber for the mothers? People still use mother plants to take grafts, right? Or is that outdated, like me?
That’s exactly what I was talking about. You can get it from Growers house or direct from AC Infinity same price. You can spend that much on just a 750 watt light without anything else…actually you can spend a lot more than that on a light lol Just ask me I know. There are lights out there for a 5x5 tent that run over $2000. No that is not a chambered tent, and yes people still grow mothers, nothing has changed on that. We also still do clones either from a mother or from a plant in the tent before or partially in flower. After you see the pheno and structure of the plant you want to clone. I have a 5x5 with a 860 watt light, wish I had a 8x5 or bigger separated in the middle. Like I said when i get some stuff sold and some junk thrown out, that is what I am going to do. But starting with a 5x5 is fine, you can buy small clone or seedling tents to start seeds or make clones.
Marty
Thank you for that. Seriously, you taking the time to talk to me is huge. Is it safe to assume that I could grow my mothers from seed in this new tent and then set up a mother tent down the road? It seems like before, I had one cabinet for flowering and another for mothers and seedlings that just had fluorescent lighting.
Absolutely. It may take you awhile to find that “perfect” plant you want to keep for a mother. So sure get the 5x5 setup. One thing you might want to add and have when you start is a humidifier. I can control my temp with my house AC and heat, and fairly easy to do as I am in the basement, but even with having a whole house humidifier, the girls like more humidity. I also have a AC Infinity humidifier in my tent. A lot of people put them outside the tent, but I only grow 4 plants at a time now as 6 was just too crowded, so I set it in the middle of the 4. I got there largest model and it uses about 2 gal a day to keep the VPD in the best range with a heat setting of 78 degrees.
Here is the girls with the humidifier running in the middle…almost time !!
HTH
Marty
That looks awesome. Okay, I’ll move forward with the purchase, and we’ll meet on the other side. I am in your debt. You saved me an impossible amount of research.
No biggie we are all here to help, I ask questions to this day and have been growing since 1971. Start a grow log when you get up and running, then we can all follow and lend a hand if you need one.
Marty
