If you're sold on hydro, the first recommendation for your situation would be the tried and true, ol' reliable... The bubble bucket.

HD black 5 gallon bucket... ~$6.00
Bucket lid with integrated net pot... ~$4.00

Top it off with a small air pump and your favorite genes.

This is about as simple as hydro gets. Personally, if I were growing in a closet, it wouldn't be hydro though. Put that bucket in your the closet under a thouie, and it's going to be more than a little outside the recommended temperature range...

What the hell man, put one in a bubble bucket, one in some dirt and one in some coco. See what agrees most with your style/schedule/budget/goals/etc.

Can't lose with a simple soiless setup.

4 plants in a small tent w/ a 430 or 600 cooled setup.

At your aforementioned dosing rate, you will be well looked after.

Use a simple one part nute and get your learn on ;)

Cheers

5 gal pot, some soil or coco and GH Flora Nova bloom use all the way thru.

thx guys, quick responses! @unit, not sold on hydro, just assumed that was the modern way to go, i just want the best results i can get for low cost and low maintenance so i can just get a useable med source for my small needs. 20/g at the dispensaries makes my blood boil, lol. its like they became just like the pharma companies! its a new monopoly because of the legality. as i said, my "buddy down the street" has just as good meds for half the price. the upside of the pharmaspensaries is the strain choice. but if i can just get a seed of something i like, id rather be independent and self supporting, which is the way nature meant for it to be.. :)

so yeah, ill examine your input, i just need to decipher some of the terms to figure out what you mean. i was hoping for some shouts out for some branded "ready-to-go" units, but i understand that most of you are elaborate DIY guys, and it must make some of you cringe a bit to even recommend an "easy bake oven" type product, ha ha.

but i can deal with a few things to put together, like the bucket.. though not sure what a "bubble" bucket is, or HD bucket, or net pot or coco for that matter.. sorry for bein so noobish! but i did gather that a thouie must be a 1000 watt light, and that nutes are nutrients.. im a little lost on what "one part" nute would be (@convex).

but building with pumps and hoses is a little intimidating, which is why i was hoping for a ready-made type thing with instructions. im very comfortable with reading and following instructions. i know this is all second nature to you guys, and i know i COULD learn it all, but like i said, i just don't have the time or money to become a home pro in whole new realm.

id like to just be able to implement the first couple effective improvements over a seed in a pot of dirt and a light and fan.. unless thats still the winning move for a basic one plant setup. all the further improvements that you guys do with the equipment and science i think is for quantity and consistency of product.. please excuse me if i assume too much there. i know that theres a large factor of love for the plant and hobby too.. :)

another way to put it is that i can tell someone how to bake an apple pie at home using a store bought frozen crust and apples and it'll taste wonderful. but i could also tell them how to make the crust from scratch and to go to an orchard for the freshest apples, and the pie will taste maybe 20 percent better, but take 3 times as long with 3 times the effort and 3 times the cost.

maybe at this point i should be asking you guys whether i should even go hydro or dirt.. i merely assumed hydro was a big improvement over dirt.

thx again, you guys are great, MUCH appreciated input!!

Well, IMHO the main difference between hydro and dirt is that you HAVE to check hydro every day (PH is VERY important in hydroponics).

Bubble buckets are really simple, honestly. There's one hose (two if you're like me and put 2 airstones per bucket), and one air pump. You'll need ph drop to check the ph every day, and a thermometer/hygrometer to keep an eye on your environment. That's really all you NEED other than nutes..

That's what my wife and I started with. Throw em in a small tent with a small HID light and fan, and you'd be great... we started with a 4'x4' tent, but you can find all sorts of sizes to fit your needs.

I say a small tent is a good idea. Dirt or hydro can be easy. Just depends on the type of person you are. I would go hydro. Coco would be an easy way to go. One to six plants in a small tent in some coco pots would work great. You could just hand water for simplicity. You have to understand that there will be a bit to learn with any grow of course. If you are unsure, and don't want to do the research, you could always go down to a local hydro store and get their opinion on their simplest setup. A single 400w light would be plenty for your stated med quantity needs. A one part nute would be a plant nutrient (fertilizer) that is all in one component, be it liquid or powdered. That way it is simple and easy to deal with for a newbie for plant feeding.

-TF

Neat question. I've had a couple patients make the transition from me providing their meds to them being able to grow their own. In both circumstances they started off with a quality organic/soil mix and some cuttings I gladly provided. THey also grew their meds in a small closet where a 600 watt hps was more than adequate. The soil and organic ammendments was really inexpensive and the quality that they have produced is outstanding. IMHO I think you would be very pleased with the results, particularly if you are partial to flavors.

BTW congrats on getting your card and best wishes!

From what I have seen growing in dirt or a medium is far easier than growing hydro. I personally grow hydro but one of my buddies who lost his first attempt at a hydro crop tried some dirt pots and has some real nice looking plants that are ready to harvest right now. It doesn't seem to yield nearly as well as hydro but it couldn't be easier, you hardly even have to do anything and you really don't even need a meter to do the dirt bombs.

Like rick said... Soil... cheap forgiving and IMO the meds are better flavored,smell better and create natural chemical ratios that I really prefer to a "steroid" bulk-up. With that said, I have seen a few hydro samples that really finished well in the taste department. If you are concerned about yield, hydro will usually yield more.

For soil get fox farm ocean forest and some one gallons and minimum of 600W lamp. Fit the pots to your space and plug in some babies straight from the club. Honestly you won't even need nutes in ocean forest for 3 weeks and you'll be fine. finish them up with some bloom formula and you'll have some great clean smoke..good luck

If you use FFOF I would recommend ammending it with some extra perlite. In my limited experience (but this has also been recommended to me by others), the soil has a tendency to compact itself to the point that complete saturation becomes difficult.

When I was helping a friend of mine's father (he was the first medical patient I got to help with their grow), he was using FFOF and by the time his plants were being harvested the soil was rock hard. We got him to start mixing it 50/50, soil/perlite and it made a HUGE difference..

wow, im blown away by all these responses.. thx guys, youre all so helpful! from what ive gathered so far, i think im just gonna do soil in a 5 gal bucket, and use the old school light and fan method in a reflective box, but with some of your tweaks.. the fox farm ocean soil, mixed with the perlite (ill research what that is), your nute recommendations, and the light power recommendations of 600w. im assuming this is the HPS lights you guys are talking about, and ill research where to get a good deal on that, ive checked amazon, now ill compare to my local home depot. also, i saw grow tents on amazon from LED Wholesalers, but i dont see why i cant just make one lined with foil like i used to do in college out of a big appliance box.. duct taping it all up with an overlapping lid to keep the light in/out.

i also just want to menion/ask about some of the grow lights i saw on amazon.. my memory tells me HPS is the accepted light source for growing plants, yet they're selling compact flourescents and LED grow lights now, and correct me if i'm wrong, isn't that just completely inadequate sun-mimicking technology?? yet they have good reviews on Amazon. i didn't bother to read them to see what they were raving about.. i feel pretty "right" on this, and i wanted to get the real answer from you home pro's.. :)

last thing i'll ask, i was thinking of just ONE bucket with one plant that i'll hopefully have successfully germinated using the old ziploc bag and moist paper towel method.. but some of you are saying MULTIPLE buckets. do i need to assume that most will fail and that i need to get like 4 going hoping for at least one to get to the actual flowering stage?

thank you thank you thank you! :D

If you can source some feminized seeds than I think 1 plant would be adequate. I'd definitely go with a 600 hps but I must be candid and admit that I am not sure how well it will vent in an enclosed area you are describing. In my experience a 600 hps will produce about 150 - 250 grams of high quality meds in soil. (depending on genetics used and the "ups" and "downs" associated with growing) So, possibly a 600 is overkill for you? I've seen some terrific plants shown online with led and flouro lights but I have absolutely no experience with them. Some patients that I have had in the past have used them and have had marginal but adequate results. Bear that in mind when choosing your light source.

well i was gonna tackle how i was to find seeds after figuring out the setup i would go with, i'm limiting my research to one thing at a time so i don't get too frustrated. in the meantime i figured id get the odd seed out of something i pick up from a dispensary.. but i know, its a rare find these days.. :P i remember the days of seeds all over buds, to the point where you'd actually have to worry about how much weight in the bag was really from the seeds, lol.

im all about 600w, i believe in the more light the better, up to a certain price point, and i feel like a 600 won't actually cost 50% more than a 400.. and i figured id find a pretty big box, like a half a fridge box or something, and put a small oscillating fan right inside it to wave back and forth. if im supposed to vent, then i figure i'll cut some venting as per recommendations later.. i have no idea what the ratio of importance is between sealed in/out light and the need for venting. again, another research item for later.

and about using HPS, that's just what i remember being the main choice 10-20 yrs ago, but of course that was before compact flouro or LED came about.. but still, the way i understand the technology of those two latter light sources, it would seem it would be much less effective in achieving sun-mimicking growth.. the whole point of them is less energy.. but we want MORE energy directed at plants, don't we?

thx again, im feeling more and more confident about having success with a simple old-school dirt setup.. :) (with modern tweaks of course)

No offense but a 600W HPS is going to need more than an oscillating fan and a vent hole. you should look into getting a cooltube or air cooled reflector hood if you're going HPS. If you're on a budget you can make a cooltube out of a bake-a-round with directions on this site. for your first grow i agree that soil and organics is the way to go, very forgiving. and honestly if you are just growing one plant you will probably do fine with a 250W HPS and a 3x3 tent off Amazon. The tent is important because you want your grow space to be well ventilated and free from light contamination. Nothing worse than your one lady turning hermaphrodite due to stress. For small grows CFL's are OK too just be sure to get the ones for growing as they are a different spectrum from most of the hardware store types. The deal with CFL's is that they claim to put off the same amount of lumens at lower power. Since all we care about is number of lumens (of the proper light color) you can very easily compete with a 250W HPS or smaller using CFL's.

hope this helps and doesn't confuse you more. ive been taking my meds while writing this lol. also check out my last 2 grows they were very small scale beginner level hydro using DWC bubble buckets. should give you an idea of what to expect from a small closet grow.

not offense at all, im appreciating the heck out of all the input! i was saying i would go with the 600w as per recommendations from earlier in the thread, but all the input is giving me a great general consensus. you were the first to confirm that compact flouro is ok, so i dont mind trying that.. itll be cheaper and cooler and easier to deal with ill bet. but then you say 250w HPS and 3x3 tent.. i have nearly zero experience, so i don't know how i would decide between the two.. what do you think based on my small med needs?

im not necessarily on a budget, i just dont wanna put more money in than i have to for a small one user setup. ill buy something that will be a big improvement for the money no problem. i saw the tents on amazon, i just feel like i can tape up and foil up a big box to similar results.

how do you get good ventilation AND a sealed out light situation anyway btw? holes or slits mean light escaping or entering, right?

OK So for a grow of your size you can go either HPS or CFL and get similar results, with HPS being somewhat better. People say that the bud quality is better with an HPS but I've grown with both and the difference is small but noticeable for small setups. Plants tend to finish stronger and heavier under an HPS but the environment is easier to control with CFL's. Smoke quality IMO is about the same, yield from an HPS is a bit higher due to the raw lumen output..

If you're not on a tight budget then you'll probably want to look into getting a Sunburst 250 or something similar. It has the lamp and hood built in together you just need to add a fan and hook up some ducting. You can pick one up with the accessories and a bulb for about $250. The output of a 250W HPS is about 25000 lumens average. This will be more than enough to grow 1 or 2 plants in a small tent. You will need a box that can support the weight of the light (15-20 lbs)

I gave a nod to CFL because you do not need to get any elaborate cooling equipment or enclosed hoods. a good strong fan will do the trick for that. You can get them cheaper ($100 or less with bulb and reflector) but you will be sacrificing lumens as a single 125W CFL only puts out about 10000 lumens (or about 15000 lumens for 200W). This is still adequate for a small space because more of the light is in a plant-usable range and you can maximize your light efficiency by getting the lights REALLY close to the plants.

If youre just going to convert a box you probably just want the CFL w/ a wing reflector. As for lightproofing your box, it takes some work but if you line the inside with mylar or B/W Poly sheets (not foil please) and cover your vent holes with those angled dryer vent guards from Homie Depot you should be OK. Just remember to intake from bottom and vent out the top. Of course you could spend the $$ and get the tent and the air cooled HPS light and "do it right" the first time. There are literally hundreds of ways to grow if you haven't noticed and most of them work well enough. I mean hell i grew my first plants in a closet under a row of 40W CFL's that I nailed to a piece of 1x4 like a vanity fixture and they came out OK. Just find something that fits your space and budget requirements.

Again I hope I didn't confuse you more I know it can be very overwhelming for new farmers. If you can go to a grow shop and talk to a salesman (with a grain of salt) and get some hands-on with the equipment you will be better prepared to make your decision. And of course keep reading and asking questions, we like to help around here. There is a thread in the Micro Grow forum called the Dank Desk, you should check it out it is very well documented and along the same type of setup you are trying for.

no no, you made it more clear and sensible to me actually.. i was hoping someone would give an answer to whether CFL, or even LED, were actually viable options. i definitely want to keep it simple, so i wanna build my own box from a fridge box (ill try to obtain a source for mylar), which i now understand limits the weight of the light fixture i can use, so CFL will be the way to go for me it seems.. thx!

next thing i feel i've gathered is that soil will be most forgiving, and apparently mixing it with something called "perlite" will be even more forgiving? i've seen mention of "coco", and even though i don't yet understand what this is, i feel like it's for hydro anyway, so a moot point for me?

the next hurdle will be whether to use a seed or a clone, and where i'll be able to obtain them. is there anything in the law that allows us to purchase either legally? or will i have to just wait for that magic seed to arrive in some overpriced bud im stuck with obtaining from my local "pharmaspensary" for now, lol?

thx sog, and again to you all.. :)

Everyone has their favorite strains, their favorite media to plant them in (or not, in the case of hydro and aero...), and their favorite lights to put over them. You can mix and match pretty freely from the look of peoples' pictures on here and do just fine for yourself.

I use LEDs, so I'll present you with my angle. I knew from the beginning that HID lamps were too hot for me to do a stealthy grow in a 6x3x3 tent, so I got some CFLs and T5 panels at first. The CFLs were great for sprouting the seeds and gently lighting the seedlings, but weren't powerful enough after a month or so. At that point I plugged in my two (4ft, 6-bulb) T5 panels. They seemed pretty potent, but they also got too hot for the tent, and the plants started wilting in the face of the heat. Besides which, with dimensions of roughly 4'x2' I could only hang them down the walls instead of putting them above the plants.

So THEN I said hell with it, sold them, and bought a solid 300w LED with 3w chipsets. It has been great, though I did get a pair of smaller 100w LEDs last week for side lighting. Now since this is my first grow I can't comment on how the plants look as compared to those under HIDs. I do believe that LEDs still can't beat HIDs yield when all is said and done, but my plant's response looks pretty good to me. And I love the fact that my electric bill isn't much higher than normal, that I don't have a PoPoCopter-visible heat signature, that I won't have to buy replacement bulbs periodically, and that I don't have to worry about an HID starting a fire in my closet. To me it's worth having paid well over 2x what I would have for a suitable HID.

But as I said, that's just me. If you read a bit about the pluses and minuses of each type of light I'm sure you'll find the right answer for yourself without too much trouble.