Guide to Growing Marijuana
Guide To Growing Marijuana
This is a beginner's best guide to growing marijuana that puts everything in plain and simple English, and doesn't go to deep into advanced gardening. This is one of the best beginner's guide to growing marijuana plants out there.
Indoor Marijuana Cultivation
Introduction:
Growing marijuana indoors is fast becoming an American Pastime. The reasons are varied. With the increased interest and experimentation in marijuana plant cultivation, it was inevitable that people would apply their knowledge of plant care to growing marijuana. Many of those who occasionally like to light up a joint may find it difficult to locate a source or are hesitant to deal with a perhaps unsavory element of society in procuring their grass. There is, of course, the criminal aspect of buying or selling grass; Growing marijuana is just as illegal as buying, selling, or smoking it, but growing is something you can do in the privacy of your own home without having to deal with someone you don't know or trust. The best reason for growing your own is the enjoyment you will get out of watching those tiny little marijuana seeds you picked out of you stash, sprout and become some of the most lovely and lush of all marijuana plants.
Anyone Can Do It
Even if you haven't had any prior experience with growing marijuana plants in you home, you can have a successful crop of marijuana plants by following the simple directions in this pamphlet. If you have had problems in the past with marijuana cultivation, you may find the solutions in the following chapters. Growing a marijuana plant involves four basic steps:
1. Get the seeds. If you don't already have some, you can ask your friends to save you seeds out of any good grass they may come across. You'll find that lots of people already have a seed collection of some sort and are willing to part with a few prime seeds in exchange for some of the finished product.
2. Germinate the seeds. You can simply drop a seed into moist soil, but by germinating the seeds first you can be sure that the seed will indeed produce a plant. To germinate seeds, place a group of them between about six moist paper towels, or in the pores of a moist sponge. Leave the towels or sponge moist but not soaking wet. Some seeds will germinate in 24 hours while others may take several days or even a week.
3. Plant the sprouts. As soon as a seed cracks open and begins to sprout, place it on some moist soil and sprinkle a little soil over the top of it.
4. Supply the plants with light. Flourescent lights are the best. Hang the lights with two inches of the soil and after the plants appear above the ground, continue to keep the lights with two inches of the plants. It is as easy as that. If you follow those four steps you will grow a marijuana plant. To ensure prime quality and the highest yield in the shortest time period, however, a few details are necessary.
Soil
Your prime concern, after choosing high quality seeds, is the soil. Use the best soil you can get. Scrimping on the soil doesn't pay off in the long run. If you use unsterilized soil you will almost certainly find parasites in it, probably after it is too late to transplant your marijuana. You can find excellent soil for sale at your local plant shop or nursery, K-Mart, Wal Mart, and even some grocery stores. The soil you use should have these properties for the best possible results:
1. It should drain well. That
is, it should have some sand in it and also some sponge rock or pearlite.
2. The ph should be between 6.5 and 7.5 since
marijuana does not do well in acidic soil. High acidity in soil
encourages the plant to be predominantly male, an undesirable trait.
3. The soil should also contain humus for retaining
moisture and nutrients.
If you want to make your own
soil mixture, you can use this recipe: Mix two
parts moss with one part sand and one part pearlite or
sponge rock to each four gallons of soil. Test your soil
for ph with litmus paper or with a soil
testing kit
available at most plant stores. To raise the ph of the soil, add 1/2
lb. lime to 1 cubic foot of soil to raise the ph one point.
If you absolutely insist on using dirt you dug up
from your driveway, you must sterilize it by baking it in
your oven for about an hour at 250 degrees. Be sure
to moisten it thoroughly first and also prepare yourself for a
rapid evacuation of your
kitchen because that hot soil is going to stink. Now add to the
mixture about one tablespoon of fertilizer (like Rapid-Gro) per
gallon gallon of soil and blend it in thoroughly. Better
yet, just skip the whole process and spend a couple bucks
on some soil.
Containers
After you have prepared your soil,
you will have to come up with some kind of container to plant in. The
container should be sterilized as well, especially if they have been
used previously for growing other plants. The size of the
container has a great
deal to do with the rate of growth and overall size of the plant. You
should plan on transplanting your plant not more than one
time, since the process of transplanting can be a shock to
the plant and it will have to undergo a recovery
period in which growth is slowed or even stopped for
a short while. The first container you use should be no
larger than six inches in diameter and can be made of clay
or plastic. To transplant, simply prepare the
larger pot by filling it with soil and scooping out a little hole
about the size of the smaller pot that the plant is in.
Turn the plant upside down, pot and all, and tap the rim of the pot sharply
on a counter or the edge of the sink. The soil and
root ball should come out of the pot cleanly with the soil
retaining the shape of the pot and with no disturbances to
the root ball. Another method that can bypass
the transplanting
problem is using a Jiffy-Pot. Jiffy pots are made of compressed
peat moss and can be planted right into moist soil where
they decompose and allow the passage of the root system through their
walls. The second container should have a volume of
at least three gallons. Marijuana doesn't like to have its roots
bound or cramped for space, so always be sure that the container you
use will be deep enough for your plant's root system. It
is very difficult to transplant a five-foot
marijuana tree, so plan ahead. It is
going to get bigger. The small plants should be
ready to transplant into their permanent homes in
about two weeks. Keep a close watch on them after the
first week or so and avoid root binding at all costs since the plants
never seem to do as well once they have been stunted by
the cramping of their roots.
Fertilizer
Marijuana plants like lots of
food, but you can do damage to the plants if you are too
zealous. Some fertilizers can burn a plant
and damage its roots if used in to high a concentration.
Most commercial soil will have enough nutrients in it to sustain
the
plant for about three weeks of growth so you don't need to worry
about feeding your plant until the end of the third week.
The most important thing to remember is to introduce the
fertilizer concentration to the plant gradually.
Start with a fairly diluted fertilizer
solution and gradually increase the dosage. There
are several good marijuana fertilizers on the commercial
market, two of which are Rapid-Gro and Eco-Grow. Rapid-Gro
has had widespread use in marijuana cultivation and is available
in most parts of the United States. Eco-Grow is
also especially good for marijuana since it contains an
ingredient that keeps the soil from becoming acid. Most
fertilizers cause a ph change in the soil. Adding
fertilizer to the soil almost always results in a more acidic ph.
As time goes
on, the amount of salts produced by the
breakdown of fertilizers in the soil causes the soil to
become
increasingly acidic and eventually the concentration of
these salts in the soil will stunt the plant and cause browning out
of
the foliage. Also, as the plant gets older its roots become less
effective in bringing food to the
leaves. To avoid the
accumulation of these salts in your soil and to ensure that your
plant is getting all of the food it needs you can
begin leaf
feeding your plant at the age of about 1.5 months. Dissolve the
fertilizer in worm water and spray the mixture directly onto the
foliage. The leaves absorb the fertilizer into their veins.
If you want to continue to put fertilizer into the soil as well
as
leaf feeding, be sure not to overdose your plants.
Remember to increase the
amount of food your plant receives gradually. Marijuana
seems to be able to take as much fertilizer as you want to give it as
long as it is introduced over a period of time.
During the first three months or so, fertilize your plants
every few days. As the rate of foliage growth slows down
in the plant's preparation for blooming and seed production, the
fertilizer intake of the plant should be slowed down as
well. Never fertilize the plant just before you are going to
harvest it since the fertilizer will encourage foliage
production and slow down resin production. A
word here about the most organic of fertilizers:
worm castings. As you may know, worms are raised
commercially for sale to gardeners. The breeders put the
worms in organic compost mixtures and while the worms are
reproducing they eat the organic matter and expel some of the best
marijuana food around. After the worms have eaten all the
organic matter in the compost, they are removed and
sold and the remains are then sold as worm castings.
These castings are so rich that you can grow marijuana in straight
worm castings. This isn't really necessary however,
and it is somewhat impractical since the
castings are very expensive. If you can afford them
you can, however, blend them in with your soil and
they will make a very
good organic fertilizer.
Light
Without light, the
plants cannot grow. In the countries in which marijuana grows
best, the sun is the source of light. The
amount of light and the length of the growing season in
these countries results in huge tree-like plants. In
most parts of
North America, however, the sun is not generally intense enough
for long enough periods of time to produce the same
size and quality of plants that grow with ease in Latin America
and other tropical countries. The answer to
the problem of lack of sun, especially in the winter months,
shortness of the growing season, and other problems is to grow indoor
under simulated conditions. The rule of thumb seems to be
the more light, the better. In one experiment we know of, eight
eight-foot VHO Gro-Lux fixtures were used over eight plants.
The plants grew at an astonishing rate. The lights had to be
raised every day. There are many types of artificial
light and all of them do different things to your
plants. The common incandescent light bulb emits some
of the frequencies of light the plant can use, but it also
emits a high percentage of far red and infra-red light which
cause the plant to concentrate its growth on the stem.
This results in the plant stretching toward the light bulb
until it becomes so tall and spindly that it
just weakly topples over. There are several
brands of bulb type. One is the incandescent plant spot
light which emits higher amounts of red and blue light than the
common light bulb. It is an improvement, but has it
drawbacks. it is hot, for example, and
cannot be placed close to the plants. Consequently,
the plant has to stretch upwards again and is in danger of
becoming elongated and falling over. The red bands of
light seem to encourage stem growth which is not desirable
in growing marijuana. the idea is to encourage foliage
growth for obvious reasons. Gro-Lux lights are
probably the most common flourescent plant lights.
In our experience with them, they have
proven themselves to be extremely effective. They range in size
from one to eight feet in length so you can set up a growing room in
a closet or a warehouse. There are two types
of Gro-Lux lights: The standard and the wide spectrum.
They can be used in conjunction with on another, but the wide spectrum
lights are not sufficient on their own. The wide spectrum
lights were designed as a supplementary light source and are cheaper
than the standard lights. Wide spectrum lights emit the same
bands of light as the standard but the standard emit higher
concentrations of red and blue bands that the plants
need to grow. The wide spectrum lights
also emit infra-red, the effect of which on stem growth we have
already discussed. If you are planning to grow on a large
scale, you might be interested to
know that the regular flourescent lamps
and fixtures, the type that are used in
commercial lighting, work well when used along with standard Gro- Lux
lights. These commercial lights are called cool whites, and
are the cheapest of the flourescent lights we have
mentioned. They emit as much blue light as the
Gro-Lux standards and the blue light is what the plants
use in foliage growth.
Now we come to the question of
intensity. Both the standard and wide spectrum lamps
come in three intensities: regular
output, high output, and very high output. You can grow a
nice crop of plants under the regular output lamps and
probably be quite satisfied with our results. The
difference in using the HO or VHO lamps is the time it takes to
grow a crop. Under a VHO lamp, the
plants grow at a rate that is about three times the rate
at which they grow under the standard lamps. People have
been known to get a plant that is four feet tall in two
months under one of these lights. Under the VHO lights, one may
have to raise the lights every day which means a growth rate of ate
least two inches a day. The only drawback is the
expense of the VHO lamps and fixtures. The VHO lamps
and fixtures are almost twice the price of the standard. If you
are interested in our opinion, they are well worth it. Now
that you have your lights up, you might be curious about
the amount of light to give you plants per day. The maturation
date of your plants is dependent on how much light they receive per
day. The longer the dark period per day, the sooner the
plant will bloom. Generally speaking, the less
dark per day the better during the first six
months of the plant's life. The older the
plant is before it blooms and goes to seed, the
better the grass will be. After the plant is
allowed to bloom, its metabolic rate is slowed
so that the plant's quality does not increase with
the age at the same rate it did before it bloomed.
The idea, then, is to let the plant get as old as
possible before allowing it to mature so that the potency will
be a high as possible at the time of harvest. One
relatively sure way to keep your plants from blooming until you
are ready for them is to leave the lights on
all the time. Occasionally a plant will go
ahead and bloom anyway, but it is the exception
rather than the rule. If your plants receive 12
hours of light per day they will probably mature in 2
to 2.5 months. If they get 16 hours of light per day they
will probably be blooming in 3.5 to 4 months. With 18
hours of light per day, they will flower in 4.5 to 5 months. Its
a good idea to put your lights on a timer to ensure that
the amount of light received each day remains constant.
A "vacation" timer, normally used to make it look like you are home
while you are away, works nicely and can be found at most
hardware or discount stores.
Energy Emissions In
Arbitrary Color Bands
40 Watt Flourescent Lamps
In
Watts and Percent of Total Emissions
Daylight Cool White
Gro-Lux GroLux WS
Light Type
Band Watts
% Watt
% Watt %
Watt %
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~
Ultra-Violet
-380 0.186 2.15
0.16 1.68 0.10
1.42 0.27 3.16
Violet 380-430 0.832 9.60 0.72 7.57 0.70 9.67 1.07 12.48
Blue 430-490 2.418 27.91 1.98 20.78 1.96 27.07 1.22 14.29
Green 490-560 2.372 27.38 2.35 24.67 1.02 14.02 1.24 14.49
Yellow 560-590 1.259 14.53 1.74 18.27 0.10 1.42 0.83 9.77
Orange 590-630 1.144 13.21 1.69 17.75 0.44 6.05 1.36 15.93
Red 630-700 0.452 6.22 0.81 8.47 2.86 39.55 1.86 21.78
Far Red
700-780 0.130 1.53
0.07 0.81 0.06
0.80 0.69
8.10
==================== =========== ========== ==========
==========
Total
8.890 100.0 9.52 100.0
7.24 100.0 8.54 100.0
Temperature and Humidity
The ideal temperature for the light hours is 68 to 78 degrees fahrenheit and for the dark hours there should be about a 15 degree drop in temperature. The growing room should be relatively dry if possible. What you want is a resinous coating on the leaves and to get the plant to do this, you must convince it that it needs the resinous coating on its leaves to protect itself from drying out. In an extremely humid room, the plants develop wide leaves and do not produce as much resin. You must take care not to let the temperature in a dry room become too hot, however, since the plant cannot assimilate water fast enough through its roots and its foliage will begin to brown out.
Ventilation
Proper ventilation in your growing room is fairly important. The more plants you have in one room, the more important good ventilation becomes. Plants breathe through their leaves. The also rid themselves of poisons through their leaves. If proper ventilation is not maintained, the pores of the leaves will become clogged and the leaves will die. If there is a free movement of air, the poisons can evaporate off the leaves and the plant can breathe and remain healthy.
In a small closet where there are only a few plants you can probably create enough air circulation just by opening the door to look at them. Although it is possible to grow healthy looking plants in poorly ventilated rooms, they would be larger and healthier if they had a fresh supply of air coming in. If you spend a lot of time in your growing room, your plants will grow better because they will be using the carbon dioxide that you are exhaling around them. It is sometimes quite difficult to get a fresh supply of air in to your growing room because your room is usually hidden away in a secret corner of your house, possibly in the attic or basement. In this case, a fan will create some movement of air. It will also stimulate your plants into growing a healthier and sturdier stalk. Often times in an indoor environment, the stems of plants fail to become rigid because they don't have to cope with elements of wind and rain. To a degree, though, this is an advantage because the plant puts most of its energy into producing leaves and resin instead of stems.
Dehumidifying Your Growing Room
Cannabis that grows in a hot, dry climate will have narrower leaves than cannabis grown in a humid atmosphere. The reason is that in a dry atmosphere the plant can respirate easier because the moisture on the leaves evaporates faster. In a humid atmosphere, the moisture cannot evaporate as fast. Consequently, the leaves have to be broader with more surface area in order to expel the wastes that the plant put out. Since the broad leaves produce less resin per leaf than the narrow there will be more resin in an ounce of narrow leaves than in one ounce of broad leaves. There may be more leaf mass in the broader leafed plants, but most people are growing their own for quality rather than quantity.
Since the resin in the marijuana plant serves the purpose of keeping the leaves from drying out, there is more apt to be a lot of resin produced in a dry room than in a humid one. In the Sears catalog, dehumidifiers cost around $100.00 and are therefore a bit impractical for the "hobby grower."
Watering
If you live near a clear
mountain stream, you can skip this bit on the quality of
water. Most of us are supplied water by the city and some cities
add more chemicals to the water than others. They all add
chlorine, however, in varying quantities.
Humans over the years have learned to either get rid of it somehow or
to live with it, but your marijuana plants won't have time to acquire
a taste for it so you had better see that they don't
have to. Chlorine will evaporate if you let the water
stand for 24 hours in an open container. Letting the water
stand for a day or two will serve a dual purpose:
The water will come to room temperature during that period
of time and you can avoid the nasty shock your plants suffer
when you drench them with cold water. Always water with
room temperature to lukewarm water. If your water has
an excessive amount of chlorine in it, you may want to get some anti-
chlorine drops at the local fish or pet store. The most important
thing about watering is to do it thoroughly. You can
water a plant in a three gallon container with as much as three
quarts of
water. The idea is to get the soil evenly moist all the
way to the bottom of the pot. If you use a little
water, even if you do
it often, it seeps just a short way down into the soil and
any roots below the moist soil will start to turn upwards toward
the water. The second most important thing about watering
is to see to it that the pot has good drainage.
There should be some holes in the bottom so that any excess water will
run out. If the pot won't drain, the excess
water will accumulate in a pocket and rot the roots of the
plant or simply make the soil sour or mildew. The
soil, as we said earlier, must allow the water to drain evenly through
it and must not become hard or packed. If you have made
sure that the soil contains sand and pearlite, you shouldn't have
drainage problems. To discover when to water, feel the soil with
your finger. if you feel moisture in the soil, you can wait a day
or two to water. The soil near the top of the pot is always drier
than the soil further down. You can drown your plant
just as easily as you can let it get too dry and it
is more likely to survive a dry spell
than it is to survive a torrential flood.
Water the plants well when you water and don't water them at all
when they don't need it.
Bugs
If you can avoid getting bugs
in the first place you will be much better off.
Once your plants become infested you will
probably be fighting bugs for the rest of your plants' lives. To
avoid bugs be sure to use sterilized soil and containers and don't
bring other plants from outside into your growing room. If
you have bets, ensure that they stay out of your growing room,
since they can bring in pests on their
fur. Examine your plants regularly for
signs of insects, spots, holes in the leaves,
browning of the tips of the leaves, and droopy branches.
If you find that somehow in spite of all your precautions
you have a plant room full of bugs, you'll
have to spray your plants with some kind of insecticide.
You'll want to use something that will kill the bugs and not you.
Spider mites are probably the bug that will do the most
damage to the marijuana plants. One of the
reasons is that they are almost microscopic and very hard to spot.
They are called spider mites because they
leave a web-like substance clinging to the leaves.
They also cause tiny little spots to appear on the
leaves. Probably the first thing you'll notice,
however, is that your plants look sick and depressed. The mites
suck enzymes from the leaves and as a result the leaves lose some
of their green color and glossiness. Sometimes the leaves
look like they have some kid of fungus on them. The eggs are very
tiny black dots. You might be wise to get a magnifying glass
so that you can really scrutinize your plants closely.
Be sure to examine the underside of the leaves too.
The mites will often be found clinging to the underside as well as the
top of the leaves. The sooner you start fighting the bugs,
the easier it will be to get rid of them. For
killing spider mites on marijuana, one of the best
insecticides if "Fruit and Berry" spray made by llers.
Ortho also produces several insecticides that will kill
mites. The ingredients to look for are Kelthane and Malatheon.
Both of these poisons are lethal to humans and pets as well as
bugs, but they both detoxify in about ten days so you can
safely smoke the grass ten days after spraying. Fruit and
Berry will only kill the adult mite, however, and you'll have to
spray every four days for about two weeks to be sure that
you have killed all the adults before they have had a
chance to lay eggs. Keep a close watch on your
plants because it only takes one egg laying adult to
re- infest your plants and chances are that one or two
will escape your barrage of insecticides.
If you see little bugs flying around your plants,
they are probably white flies. The adults are immune to almost
all the commercial insecticides except Fruit and Berry
which will not kill the eggs or larva. It is the
larval stage of this insect that does the most damage.
They suck out enzymes too, and kill your plants if
they go unchecked. You will have to get on a
spraying program just as was explained in the spider mite
section.
An organic method of bug control is using soap suds. Put Ivory flakes in some lukewarm water and work up the suds into a lather. Then put the suds over the plant. The obvious disadvantage is it you don't rinse the soap off the plant you'll taste the soap when you smoke the leaves.
Pruning
We have found that pruning is not always necessary. The reason one does it in the first place is to encourage secondary growth and to allow light to reach the immature leaves. Some strands of grass just naturally grow thick and bushy and if they are not clipped the sap moves in an uninterrupted flow right to the top of the plant where it produces flowers that are thick with resin. On the other hand, if your plants appear tall and spindly for their age at three weeks, they probably require a little trimming to ensure a nice full leafy plant. At three weeks of age your plant should have at least two sets of branches or four leaf clusters and a top. To prune the plant, simply slice the top off just about the place where two branches oppose each other. Use a razor blade in a straight cut. If you want to, you can root the top in some water and when the roots appear, plant the top in moist soil and it should grow into another plant. If you are going to root the top you should cut the end again, this time with a diagonal cut so as to expose more surface to the water or rooting solution. The advantage to taking cuttings from your plant is that it produces more tops. The tops have the resin, and that's the name of the game. Every time you cut off a top, the plant seeds out two more top branches at the base of the existing branches. Pruning also encourages the branches underneath to grow faster than they normally would without the top having been cut.
Harvesting and Curing aka Dried Marijuana
Well, now that you've grown your marijuana, you will want to cur it right so that it smokes clean and won't bite. You can avoid that "homegrown" taste of chlorophyll that sometimes makes one's fillings taste like they might be dissolving. We know of several methods of curing the marijuana so that it will have a mild flavor and a mellow rather than harsh smoke.
First, pull the plant up roots and all and hang it upside down for 24 hours. Then put each plant in a paper grocery bag with the top open for three or four days or until the leaves feel dry to the touch. Now strip the leaves off the stem and put them in a glass jar with a lid. Don't pack the leaves in tightly, you want air to reach all the leaves. The main danger in the curing process is mold. Dried marijuana smokes so good, The best dried marijuana will crumble but not turn into dust. Dry marijuana is a labor of love. If the leaves are too damp when dry marijuana you put them into the jar, they will mold and since the mold will destroy the resins, mold will ruin your marijuana. you should check the jars every day by smelling them and if you smell an acrid aroma, take the weed out of the jar and spread it out on newspaper so that it can dry quickly. Another method is to uproot the plants and hang them upside down. You get some burlap bags damp and slip them up over the plants. Keep the bags damp and leave them in the sun for at least a week. Now put the plants in a paper bag for a few days until the weed is dry enough to smoke. Like many fine things in life, dried marijuana mellows out with age. The aging process tends to remove the chlorophyll taste.
