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Beginner's Guide to Growing
cannabis
This guide which I found
on the internet is very straight forward and perfect for the beginner.
Indoor Marijuana
Cultivation
Introduction:
Growing marijuana indoors is fast becoming
an American (worldwide!) Pastime. The reasons are
varied. With the increased interest and experimentation in
house 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 seeds you picked out of
you stash sprout and become some of the most lovely and lush of
all house plants.
Anyone Can Do It
Even if you haven't had any prior experience with
growing plants in you home, you can have a successful crop of marijuana
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.
Fluorescent
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 likes 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
%
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~
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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
==================== =========== ========== ==========
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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
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. If the leaves are too damp when 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, marijuana mellows out
with age. The aging process tends to remove the chlorophyll
taste.
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