Soil Choosing: Nirvana Northerin Lights Indica

[rhetorical]

This will be my first time growing and I still need to germinate my seeds but I need to pick out some soil.
I have heard of: Pro-Mix, Advanced Nutrients, Scott's potting soil, and Organic Garder's Power Flower
I have not done any gardening and I will only have access to the local home depot. I will need something that I can leave for up to 24hours at a time (I go out of town for overnighters every now and then)

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I don't want to mess up on my first grow

I also need to get some lights for both "vegging" (the early stages I think?) and growing and flowering.

I appologize for being a wee bit of a n00b

 

[sunnyside]

First of all...Welcome to IC, you came to the right place if you want to learn!! The great thing about working with soil is that 2 or 3 days away are fine..
If you have access to a grow shop, I would highly recomend checking them out before anything else...if Home Depot is your only option...It will do fine.

 

[sunnyside]

im not sure what brands HD stocks...maybe someone here can help you with that. You can find lights from fluro's to HID in the lighting section as well..
Your shopping list depends on your budget and what you want to get out of this???

 

[rhetorical]

Yah I was thinking about fluro's however I heard after vegging I should switch to something else.
My budget right now is aimed at about no more than $300 for all of my supplies, not sure if that is way under what you expected, hopefully yall can still help.
What I want to get out of it is I got 10 seeds so hopefully 3+ will grow, just grow em and harvest in a few months

 

[king j]

300 aint a bad start just try to only buy stuff that you are sure you cant salvage
depends what light you go with though... HID dependin on size and if you build it yourself could be 100-300 dollars... floros are cheap if you spent 100 bucks youd sure have a hell of a lot of light
if you carefully position those lights you could have a nice setup i like to use those CFLs i think homde depot sells the 42watters for 8 bucks here. so you could get 12+ of those or do a mix of those and 4 foot tubes... i say if you buy tubes only get the 4 footers cause the smaller sizes just dont have the watts.
dirt can come from so many places.... soooo many places. i like to buy mine as close as possible to not pay shippin and not drive far but you do what you like. all the ones you mentioned i used and i gotta say all worked well but depends on the blend of your setup and your nutes along with the strain you are growin. i like to always add perlite though and i usually add manure or compost or some N... bat guano is lovely too. i usually order that and it aint too bad for the shippin. i also gotta push the use of compost teas the plants just love them but might be too much work... alfalfa sprays and kelp sprays are great for your plants but dont use kelp spray on clones.
wow im wasted tright now and off on a tangent of sorts but you got the money to get the job done but spend wisely.... very wisely.
i say your best bet for pickin a soil is decide your lightin and grow room setup entirely then do a seach for other growers that have similar setups and see what nutes and soils they use. thats the only way to pretty much garrentteee success; to match someone elses experiments in essence. im sure your will do a fine job just slappin some perlite into any bag of soilless pottin mix that is ment for seedlings or has no added nutes... be careful with hot mixes like miracle grow cause nute lock ups are easy and ph problems occur often with those.
anywho goodluck

 

[rhetorical]

Thanks ya'll, I'm workin in just a small 4x6 closet that's also got some old clothes and whatnot in it so this should be interesting.

 

[Rellikbuzz]

Hey Rhetorical - Welcome to ICMag! I too am a newbie that has just started his first grow. While I have spent waaaayyyyy in excess of $300.00, you can certainly do it for that but, as stated earlier, you have to spend wisely and really watch your pennies. As far as soil goes, there is a gentleman by the name of BOG here that has an awesome soil mix which I believe used either Home Depot or Walmart soils as it's base. Do a search for BOG SOIL and see if you can't find the thread that gives the recipe for this mix. A lot of people here use it with fantastic results!

As far as lighting goes, a standard 4' flouro fixture with cool white bulbs will work well for seedlings/clones and early veg stage. It is EXTREMELY advisable that you look into getting an HID light for flower stage, specifically an HPS (High Pressure Sodium) light. Based on your closet dimensions, a 400 watt HPS would do fine and wouldn't present too much of a heat problem. You could go to a 600 watt or even 1000 watt and the increase in your final yield would be significant but not without equally significant heat build up in that small of a space. If you were to use a 600 or 1000, then you would have to concern yourself with an air cooled reflector which utilizes a squirrel cage or centrifugal fan. This means significant additional dollars invested.

While any of these lights, be they 400/600 or 1000, will run up to or over $300.00 if bought brand new. However, the best suggestion I can give you is to look on Ebay for a good, lightly used light. Look for a brand name like Hydrofarm, Sun Systems, PL or similar to get something of quality. I have seen lightly used 400's go for less than 80.00 but usually one can be had for around a 100.00 or so. Here's a link to "grow lights" on Ebay. Just scan through the pages and check things out. When on a budget it's definitely the way to go! Hope this helps get you started. Good luck, bro.

Ebay "Grow Lights":

http://search.ebay.com/grow-light_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8