Relatively new grower here, busy with my 4th grow. My first grow started Dec 2019 and harvest around April 2020 (made lockdown a lot more bearable!).
I immediately followed with the second grow and both the first and the second were quite successful considering my limited experience and equipment. We still have some left of those harvests.
Both growths were in 2 space boxes, one with 90w CFLs, and the other a 100w general LED floodlight; nursery potting soil, Nutrasol and some good old Eastern Cape bag seed. Grew like a charm with minimal setbacks. The boxes look like this:
Then I decided to upgrade to a tent etc and some autos and bag seed. What an utter disaster! I narrowed my failure down to wrong soil, high temperatures, overwatering and probably two much nutes! Oh ja, there was also a bad case of thrips, which I then proceeded to worsen by spraying the plants with double the recommended dose of pesticide, due to a miscalculation. Two of them turned a lovely shade of dead, the rest, let us just say were never the same again.
So, I decided to retreat and regroup. I realised that unlike the previous grows, I am fuffing around too much. Overcomplicating it. I looked into how to simplify my grows and let the plants do their thing. I ended up buying better soil; fabric pots; at least one good light; proper extraction; and I also decided to stick to photoperiods for the time being.
I am now a few weeks into the new grow and it’s not looking bad at all. Well one's a bit "wrinkly", but should be fine. Two feminised Super Sativas and one Transkei. The one in the plastic pot is a Transkei regular that I managed to save from the previous grow. It’s really just there because I am stubborn. And curious. Cheers.
