Hey there everyone!
Here I’ll be sharing with you my path on growing without any kind of experience whatsoever.
My experimental (!) idea is to grow based primarily on chat GPT advices, breaking all of the traditional rules and simply relying on AI to do all the hard job of decision making and calculations for me. The budget is limited too, so I'll try maintaining the conditions with the least amount of spendings.
Even though I see that the English language thread is not active at all, I had no other choice but to place it here. Hope someone will notice me and share their thoughts. The 1st post will be longer than any other, because I already made my first steps and now want to catch up.
So let me start at the beginning. I had just 3 seeds and no info about the strain (don't even know if they are feminized or auto),. I got this blurple 10W bulb for a regular socket (E27) online just as a start (now I know that this was a mistake).
Then, I germinated the seeds as they do on youtube videos, by putting them in a wet paper towel and covering from the light. After a couple of days they were ready to be planted.
I prepared 3 small (about 500-600 ml) pots out of regular pavlaka buckets. Filled each of them with different soil (!). The first one was taken from the forest nearby, two of the others are two different types of cheapest humus from a regular convenient store.
In a few days I saw the seedlings rising from the ground. It felt good.
I took a 10 liter bucket and covered it with tin foil from the inside to make some kind of reflector. Made a small transparent window out of plastic bottle, added a hole at the top for ventilation and some screws at the base to rise it from the floor making some room for air travel. Fixed the full-spectrum 10W LED on this improvised bucket-reflector.
Humidity: After some research with GPT I realized that I need some kind of a humidifier. It recommends to keep the humidity around 60-70% at the seedling stage and gradually decrease it when it comes to vegetation. So I bought a small ultrasound humidifier that evaporates the water, works from USB type-A, works fine. Also got a small electronic thermometer + humidity meter to track the current state of environment, which happened to be very-very useful (still not sure about it’s accuracy though).
Temperature: It was a little cold at the time I planted, so to maintain 25-30 C (as GPT suggested) I placed my older laptop to the side of the bucket. To add some airflow I also used a small USB fan which I bought from a Chinese shop nearby.
Overall, to adjust the conditions I was playing around with the placing of humidifier, laptop and fan. Sometimes I had to run STALKER on my laptop to add the temperature so that the hot air will go underneath the bucket, heating up my small seedling box.
I was veeery impatient at the start and made a common mistake of overwatering. Currently with my setup I add just a little of water each 2-3 days. And checking the soil humidity just by sticking my finger into the pot.
The Chinese USB fan died from working 24/7 (not surprised), the laptop is not needed anymore because the temperature is pretty much acceptable. So my setup become a little simpler, but lacks ventilation. Interesting note: I found that the one I put in a soil rom the forest was growing way faster and healthier.
Currently I see that there’s not enough light for them to grow bigger. Due to the fact that I’m very limited with the budget, I tried finding some ready-to-go cheap solutions, but nothing valuable is available locally. Ordering from abroad is not an option too due to all of the following risks.
Now back to my old friend Chat GPT. I’ve asked him few times to make sure he’s confident – it is possible to grow just by using regular household LED bulbs. The trick is in the spectrum (yeah, yeah, I know that you already know everything about that, but I’m new to that, soo…). By now I know that blue is important for veg and red is absolutely crucial for flowering. Therefore, I would need some combination of cold and warm bulbs depending on the current stage. Ideally it should be around 1:2 – 1:3 ratio between the bulbs to maintain a certain stage.
Now to the specifications (defined with some help of ChatGPT)…
1) Since I’m growing 3 plants, it would be reasonable to aim for at least 300w depending on the size of the tent I will build.
2) I found it that I should NOT go four something below 15W/bulb, because it would simply too many bulbs. The bulbs should be about 15 cm apart from each other to evenly spread the light.
3) I decided to go for 25 bulbs of 18W. Combining 2700K and 6500K. Here’s what I come up with:
So as you can see I plan to have 2 switches (2 modes): partial (298W, to the right) and full power (442W). I tried to predict the positioning of the lamps to make it even.
Cannot say for sure until I try, but based on ChatGPT recommendations of the 6500K to 2700K proportion, I’ll be running 12 bulbs 18w of 6500K + 4 bulbs 18w of 2700K + 1 full spectrum 10w making a total of 298W.
If needed, I’ll be adding more (gradually to full power). And if I’ll be hitting flowering stage I’ll just start swapping 6500K for 2700K to add more red.
4) The board will be around 110x110 cm, with bulbs 18 cm apart.
Update (03/07): it seems that I already ran into some problems, the plants are not growing well, have something with leaves and weak in general. But I guess it’s normal since there’s no ventilation and not enough light.
Also ordered smart pots 7l, light mix, perlite and hesi set. Not sure I will fix pH though…
Plans: replace the plants to the 7l light mix with washed perlite, add the DIY lights, adding watts little by little, add a new fan.
Upcoming setup expenses for the lights:
- Bulb 6500k 18w (samsung led) x18 - 5500 din
- Bulb 2700k 18w (smd2835) x18 - 6800 din
// can go WAY cheaper with 12x 6500k and 4x 2700k for now (3700 din + 1500 din), but want to buy all bulbs in advance
- Fan - 800 din
- 110x110 wooden board - free
- E27 socket x25 - 2500 din
- 3-position electrical switch/button - 150 din
- Cable 2x1mm2 x 2,5m - 150 din
And have to come up with some idea for light reflective tent. Need to find foil-like material that won't be tearing apart and is reflective enough. Thinking about something like that, you might have saw it on a tv:
But don't know where to find something similar. Plus, gather some household consumables to paint the board and hang it on a string.
Now time to go and visit some shops… Stay tuned for the news.
I really hope to get some comments from you guys, give me some tips and tell me my mistakes.
Here I’ll be sharing with you my path on growing without any kind of experience whatsoever.
My experimental (!) idea is to grow based primarily on chat GPT advices, breaking all of the traditional rules and simply relying on AI to do all the hard job of decision making and calculations for me. The budget is limited too, so I'll try maintaining the conditions with the least amount of spendings.
Even though I see that the English language thread is not active at all, I had no other choice but to place it here. Hope someone will notice me and share their thoughts. The 1st post will be longer than any other, because I already made my first steps and now want to catch up.
So let me start at the beginning. I had just 3 seeds and no info about the strain (don't even know if they are feminized or auto),. I got this blurple 10W bulb for a regular socket (E27) online just as a start (now I know that this was a mistake).
Then, I germinated the seeds as they do on youtube videos, by putting them in a wet paper towel and covering from the light. After a couple of days they were ready to be planted.
I prepared 3 small (about 500-600 ml) pots out of regular pavlaka buckets. Filled each of them with different soil (!). The first one was taken from the forest nearby, two of the others are two different types of cheapest humus from a regular convenient store.
In a few days I saw the seedlings rising from the ground. It felt good.
I took a 10 liter bucket and covered it with tin foil from the inside to make some kind of reflector. Made a small transparent window out of plastic bottle, added a hole at the top for ventilation and some screws at the base to rise it from the floor making some room for air travel. Fixed the full-spectrum 10W LED on this improvised bucket-reflector.
Humidity: After some research with GPT I realized that I need some kind of a humidifier. It recommends to keep the humidity around 60-70% at the seedling stage and gradually decrease it when it comes to vegetation. So I bought a small ultrasound humidifier that evaporates the water, works from USB type-A, works fine. Also got a small electronic thermometer + humidity meter to track the current state of environment, which happened to be very-very useful (still not sure about it’s accuracy though).
Temperature: It was a little cold at the time I planted, so to maintain 25-30 C (as GPT suggested) I placed my older laptop to the side of the bucket. To add some airflow I also used a small USB fan which I bought from a Chinese shop nearby.
Overall, to adjust the conditions I was playing around with the placing of humidifier, laptop and fan. Sometimes I had to run STALKER on my laptop to add the temperature so that the hot air will go underneath the bucket, heating up my small seedling box.
I was veeery impatient at the start and made a common mistake of overwatering. Currently with my setup I add just a little of water each 2-3 days. And checking the soil humidity just by sticking my finger into the pot.
The Chinese USB fan died from working 24/7 (not surprised), the laptop is not needed anymore because the temperature is pretty much acceptable. So my setup become a little simpler, but lacks ventilation. Interesting note: I found that the one I put in a soil rom the forest was growing way faster and healthier.
Currently I see that there’s not enough light for them to grow bigger. Due to the fact that I’m very limited with the budget, I tried finding some ready-to-go cheap solutions, but nothing valuable is available locally. Ordering from abroad is not an option too due to all of the following risks.
Now back to my old friend Chat GPT. I’ve asked him few times to make sure he’s confident – it is possible to grow just by using regular household LED bulbs. The trick is in the spectrum (yeah, yeah, I know that you already know everything about that, but I’m new to that, soo…). By now I know that blue is important for veg and red is absolutely crucial for flowering. Therefore, I would need some combination of cold and warm bulbs depending on the current stage. Ideally it should be around 1:2 – 1:3 ratio between the bulbs to maintain a certain stage.
Now to the specifications (defined with some help of ChatGPT)…
1) Since I’m growing 3 plants, it would be reasonable to aim for at least 300w depending on the size of the tent I will build.
2) I found it that I should NOT go four something below 15W/bulb, because it would simply too many bulbs. The bulbs should be about 15 cm apart from each other to evenly spread the light.
3) I decided to go for 25 bulbs of 18W. Combining 2700K and 6500K. Here’s what I come up with:
So as you can see I plan to have 2 switches (2 modes): partial (298W, to the right) and full power (442W). I tried to predict the positioning of the lamps to make it even.
Cannot say for sure until I try, but based on ChatGPT recommendations of the 6500K to 2700K proportion, I’ll be running 12 bulbs 18w of 6500K + 4 bulbs 18w of 2700K + 1 full spectrum 10w making a total of 298W.
If needed, I’ll be adding more (gradually to full power). And if I’ll be hitting flowering stage I’ll just start swapping 6500K for 2700K to add more red.
4) The board will be around 110x110 cm, with bulbs 18 cm apart.

Update (03/07): it seems that I already ran into some problems, the plants are not growing well, have something with leaves and weak in general. But I guess it’s normal since there’s no ventilation and not enough light.
Also ordered smart pots 7l, light mix, perlite and hesi set. Not sure I will fix pH though…
Plans: replace the plants to the 7l light mix with washed perlite, add the DIY lights, adding watts little by little, add a new fan.
Upcoming setup expenses for the lights:
- Bulb 6500k 18w (samsung led) x18 - 5500 din
- Bulb 2700k 18w (smd2835) x18 - 6800 din
// can go WAY cheaper with 12x 6500k and 4x 2700k for now (3700 din + 1500 din), but want to buy all bulbs in advance
- Fan - 800 din
- 110x110 wooden board - free
- E27 socket x25 - 2500 din
- 3-position electrical switch/button - 150 din
- Cable 2x1mm2 x 2,5m - 150 din
And have to come up with some idea for light reflective tent. Need to find foil-like material that won't be tearing apart and is reflective enough. Thinking about something like that, you might have saw it on a tv:
But don't know where to find something similar. Plus, gather some household consumables to paint the board and hang it on a string.
Now time to go and visit some shops… Stay tuned for the news.
I really hope to get some comments from you guys, give me some tips and tell me my mistakes.
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