How to Grow Weed, How to Grow Marijuana

Nothing beats the growing potential of sunlight. The only downside to outdoor growing is not being able to precisely control the marijuanas environment. To effectively grow outdoors, you first have to find the right spot.

 

The right Spot:

 

Marijuana is a demanding plant if you want good yields. You need to find a spot that's:

• Known only to you for obvious reasons

• Has a full days sun from dawn till dusk

• Where the soil is rich yet well drained

• Soil with a neutral PH (neither acidic or alkaline). If not then slightly acidic, never alkaline!

 

When Should I plant?

 

The ideal time of year to plant is near the beginning of spring after the final frost. Remember, frost will kill young delicate seedlings.

 

Sprouting the Seeds:

 

One needs good quality seeds. Seeds that you have kept from a good strain will do but just bear in mind that these seeds will be a few generations old and not nearly as good as seeds from a quality seed bank. It's all about genetics here.

 

To sprout the seeds, I like to place them in between layers of kitchen towel. Keep the towel quite damp but not soaking wet. Use distilled water here and wash your hands before you start the process. Once the seeds are in the paper towel, leave them in a warm place like a window sill etc. Keep the towel damp until the deeds have sprouted. After a few days to a weeks time, the seeds will have sprouted. Once again, don't touch the young shoots with dirty hands. It's now time to plant.

 

Planting:

 

Don't just place the young shoots anywhere. Have your ideal location ready and waiting for planting before the seeds are ready. Clear all plants, grasses and weeds away from your growing site, we want to eliminate competition. DIG A HOLE: At least 3 foot long by 3 foot wide by 3 foot deep and fill will a quality, sterilised potting mix. Ask your local gardening supply store for a ph neutral potting mix. Its also a great idea to mix at least a quarter perlite with the potting mix to keep the soil well drained.

 

With clean hands, make an inch deep hole with your finger or a stick and place the sprouted seed into the hole. The root must be pointing down into the hole so that the sprout can grow up with little effort. The best way is to plant from seedling stage so that slugs and snails don't munch the young shoots. To make seedlings, simply plant the young shoots into seedling trays or much smaller containers and keep them in a place where pests can't get to them and where there is slight shade so that they don't dry out. When they are about two weeks old, you can move them to the permanent site. It is important to note that the grower should not add any nutrients to the plants for the first 2 weeks, they must use up whats available in the soil first.

 

Watering:

 

Marijuana needs damp soil to thrive. This means that one cannot water too much nor too little. Over watering can cause root rot and severly damage or destroy your crop. Water often when the plants are still young and less when they are older. One only needs to keep the soil damp. A good way to tell if there's not enough water is that the surface will loook dry and probably cracked. Keep up your watering schedule until 2 weeks before harvest. At this point, flush the soil with at least 60lt (12 gallons) of water. This takes out the remaining nutrients in the soil and forces the marijuana plant to use what it has within the plant. This will result in a much smoother smoke as nutrients are what makes the smoke harsh. Do not water again, the final 2 weeks must be water free. This allows the plant to develop more THC resins on the buds and results in more potent weed.

 

Nutrients and Fertiliser:

 

This is the trickiest part of the grow. How much fertiliser and how often. The general rule is to go by half the recommended dosage that the packaging reccomends, unless ofcoarse the fertiliser is designed for growing marijuana.

 

Marijuana hasa long outdoor cycle. It sprouts in spring, vegetates in summer and buds near the end of fall (Autumn). These different stages of growth need different fertilisers.

 

Seedlings: Do not feed or fertilise from sprouting. Do not feed the seedlings any nutrient until at least two weeks old and you have planted them in the final grow site.

 

Vegetation: This cycle is when marijuana does most growth. The strong summer light causes the plant to grow stems and leaves (vegetation growth) and needs nitrogen rich fertilisers. Once again, I like to use organic food so here is a list of effective, nitrogen rich, organic foods:

• Blood meal

• Chicken and other animal manure

• Cotton seed meal

• Fish emulsion such as SeaGro

 

My favourite of these is the fish emulsion. It is great as both fertiliser and a feed (foliage spray). About half a teaspoon full mixed with 3lt of water should do the trick. You can also mix a tiny amount with water, put the water into a spray bottle and use on the foliage directly. During veg growth, one only needs to feed and fertilise once a week. It's also a good idea to fertilise and feed on seperate days.

 

Flower: This cycle begins at the latter part of summer and into autumn (fall). The weaker, more yellow sunlight triggers the manufacture of certain hormones that in turn trigger the growth of buds. During the flower cycle, marijuana needs phospherous rich fertiliser. Here are a few examples of phospherous rich foods:

• Bone meal (Apply early on in the veg cycle as it takes a while to break down and be useable by the plant)

• Bat guano (bat poop)

• Coke (very effective but can rapidly change the soils ph) (not organic but highly effective)

• Wood ash

 

I like the wood ash the most, it primarily only delivers phosperous and results in big buds with little leaf. It is important to note that one should stop feeding the and fertilising after the final flush. Another gardener's secret is to use black strap molasses (available from your local grocery or health store) once every 2 weeks or so during a watering session. Dissolve about a teaspoon full of molasses with the water and apply the water as per normal. What the molasses does is feed the micro-organisms within the soil which helps the root system take in nutrients. It also somehow adds to the sweetness of the smoke.

 

Below is a quick run-down of marijuana nutrition by a great grower called Robert Bergman:

 

Picking the right fertilizer can make the difference between a plant that is merely “surviving” and a plant that is truly “thriving”. Before you start growing marijuana, you want to know what your plant will need throughout its life cycle and how to buy (or create) your own plant food supplies. Fertilizer, generally, is any element that can be introduced to soil, water, or to a plant itself that will spur healthy growth beyond what it would be without aid from the fertilizing element. Just as a human athlete needs a proper diet to achieve maximum performance levels, so does a cultivated plant require the equivalent of a healthy diet to attain maximum growth.

There are many types and forms of fertilizer, but the one that works best is the one that most effectively provides the health-enhancing nutrients that a plant needs most at that time. For now, for our purposes, forget sophisticated and often expensive soil and water testers; you can do very well using only a few proven basics and simple off-the-shelf growing products.

 

What Cannabis Plants Eat

 

The three main elements marijuana plants need are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). All three of these are needed for strong root growth, vigorous leafing, and for lush flowers with high yields. Commercial potting soils are pre-blended with a balanced NPK ratio that will sustain a plant for the first two or three weeks. As plants grow taller and broader, supplemental nutrients are required.

Once you reach the vegetative, or leafing, stage, a good “20-20-20″ supplement is often adequate to maintain proper growth and development; that designation stands for the percentage of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium infused into potting soil when it is manufactured. Indoor growers dilute this formula to one-half or one-quarter strength, because enclosed marijuana does not tolerate full-strength nutrient feedings well, and may exhibit the leaf drooping associated with a temporary shock to the system. Diluted solutions of 20 percent NPK are probably best administered twice a week, although some growers feed their plants at every watering. Marijuana plants grown outdoors aren’t so finicky, perhaps   because they have greater freedom for root growth and breathe naturally fresh air.

 

The science Behind the Food

 

Just as in people and animals, all of the nutrients listed here work together to maintain healthy growth and development, and every one of them can be critical. Plants may grow poorly, refuse to grow at all, or even die if deprived of any one of these nutrients, because some are symbiotic in their ability to be metabolized as food. If deprivation is acute, a plant may go into “nutrient lockout,” a phenomenon in which the lack of a single necessary element disables the plant’s ability to absorb some or all of the other nutritional elements. When deciding which fertilizer you want to use, pay attention to the ingredients you see on the side of the box. You don’t need to understand the exact bioscience behind the numerous chemical ingredients in each product, but if you know what elements to look for, you stand a better chance of providing the best munchies for your hungry plant.

 

-In the flowering stage, an increased amount of phosphorus is needed to promote the production of flowers and bud sites and to encourage maximum yield. Phosphorus by itself, or in a higher, unbalanced ratio of 10-30-10 (10 percent nitrogen, 30 percent phosphorous, and 10 percent potassium), is the most preferred feeding mix at this stage.

-Secondary foods that are required to achieve maximum growth and potency include calcium (Ca), sulfur (S), and magnesium (Mg). These nutritional elements ensure that plant photosynthesis will be at peak efficiency, inducing strong growth and rapid development.

-Trace minerals a plant needs include boron (B), copper (Cu), molybdenum (Mo), zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), and manganese (Mn). Only small amounts of these elements are needed, but they are essential parts of the formula for total health.

Health problems that your plants experience as a result of needing nutrients are easy to remedy with almost any off-the-shelf general-purpose plant food, but you must act quickly. Aside from the need to bring a plant back to verdant health, think in terms of lost growth; a healthy plant in mid-July is typically between 2 and 3 feet tall, and before harvest time in October or November it will be 5 feet tall or more. Even a mild case of plant malnutrition can subtract two weeks of potential growth, so it’s important to keep plants as healthy as they can possibly be throughout their growing cycle.

 

Diagnosing Nutrient Related Problems: