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A Beginners Guide to Starting Your Own Cannabis Grow

Cannabis is one of the most marvelous plants in existence today. Besides its medicinal value, it can also grow almost anywhere on this planet. Farmers have done well growing this plant indoors as well as outdoors. But, what kind of knowledge did they require to obtain outstanding results? If you are a beginner seeking to produce high-quality plants, here is a guide you can use to start your own cannabis grow.

Decide where you want to grow your cannabis

Cannabis can survive in both an indoor or outdoor growing environment. Whether you grow indoors or outdoors is a personal decision but can be based on your circumstances. However, in both cases, you will need to make sure your plants have enough sources of warmth and light.

Also, some strains of marijuana do well indoors while others succeed better outdoors. When choosing your seedling, put into consideration the growing method you want to adopt. Another important consideration is the amount of cannabis you want to harvest. If you are going into commercial farming, an indoor grow may not meet the demand. You may harvest several times a year, though. Outdoor cannabis growing gives large yields but only once a year.



An indoor grow

Growing your cannabis indoors can enable you to enjoy control of your grow and steer clear of common nuisances. For instance, you may not require specialized tools such as grow lights. Also, your plants are not as prone to pests as when they grow outside. Moreover, you keep off thieves, animals, extreme weather (such as frost), or a nosy neighbor.

However, you may have to do a lot of work. This is because it’s your responsibility to make sure your plants have enough light, warmth, and fertilizer. Always, buy your seeds from reputable sources so that you can get strains that are suitable for indoor growing.

So, where exactly does a grower plant cannabis indoors? Any properly ventilated space within your house can do. This could be a spare room, an empty closet, grow tent or the garage. Be careful about the temperature levels of the room. This is because some devices you use such as grow lights produce heat which could increase the warmth of the room to unfavorable levels.

An outdoor grow

One may not require a lot of capital to begin an outdoor grow. However, there are various things you have to battle with. When growing your plants outdoors, take precautions against things like bad weather, animals, pollination, and human trespassers. Such can easily damage your cannabis plants.

If possible, find an isolated area to cultivate so that you can keep off unwanted visitors. If you expect extreme weather, you may consider a greenhouse. Also, to help with issues like drought, pests, and frost, farmers can use special plant pots customized for outdoor growing.

Fortunately, the varieties of seeds used in outdoor growing are pest-resistant. Though you are likely to harvest only once in a year when planting outdoors, the plants are usually huge and produce high yields at a minimal cost.  This is because outdoor growing doesn’t require many seeds, use of electricity, air conditioners, and so forth.



Choosing the seeds

If you are fortunate to know other cultivators, it will be easy to obtain seeds from them. Having a personal interaction with a seller builds trust and you are confident about the quality of genetics you will end up with. However, those without personal relationships with cultivators or dispensaries can still order online. You will discover numerous seed banks and breeders selling cannabis seeds online.

Even though you are likely to come across numerous cannabis strains in the market, each is suited to different growing conditions. Other than the THC levels (or the kind of high you are interested in) and yield potential of a strain, you need to consider the method you want to use to grow your seeds.

  • Growing outdoors: Cannabis sativa varieties are the best choices here. This is because they grow into tall, thin trees with fingerlike flowers. At maturity, their buds are lighter but hairy. The length of sativa trees becomes hard to manage in an indoor environment.
  • Growing Indoors: Because of the short length of their trees, cannabis indica have become the go-to varieties for indoor grow. They tend to be bushy and their leaves are flat.
Basic Requirements for Cannabis Cultivation

No matter where you choose to grow your cannabis, here are the basic requirements of successful cultivation:

Light: You can use grow lights or the sunlight. It is important to have an idea of the light requirements of your cannabis plant and provide such so as to produce quality buds in optimal quantities.

Air: Always choose a properly ventilated space with free flow of air.

Soil/growing medium: Generally, soil is not the only medium in which you can grow your plants. You could opt for a mix without soil such as coco coir, vermiculite or perlite. These are also considered hydroponic growing since they do not involve soil. However, hydroponics involves growing plants directly in water, another suitable medium for a cannabis grow. Combining hydroponics with HID grow lights produces the fastest growth with highest yields. 

Temperature: you may not have the ability to control temperatures effectively, but having an idea of what your cannabis plants require is necessary. If you expose them to very hot conditions, they are likely to dry. This is true too for when the temperatures are at freezing points.



Basically, young plants do well in warm environments. Temperatures in the range of 70-850F will make such plants to mature fast. When they are in the flowering stage, cooler temperatures are favorable. In this case, 65-800F will enable them to manufacture buds with the best smell, color, and trichome.

Water: it is common knowledge that all plants require water to grow. The question is always about the best quality of water for cannabis cultivation. Some areas have extremely hard water. Basically, the main concern here would be the level of impurities existing in that water. Preferably, water should not have more than 200-300 parts per million of extra minerals and impurities.

Some people have used Reverse Osmosis to reduce the level of impurities in water used for cannabis growing. In case you choose to use purified water, beware that some mineral components of unpurified water are useful for the plant’s growth.

Nutrients: just like any other plant, cannabis will require proper nutrients to grow and yield optimally. If you compost your own soil, you stand a better chance of having all the nutrients you require for your plant. Nevertheless, you could buy pre-formulated nutrients that can be added to water.

Conclusion

Let’s say you have planted your seeds and provided the required conditions. How long does it take you to harvest your bud? You are likely to wait for at least 8.5 weeks before you can smoke a bud harvested in your cannabis grow. 

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Paul Morgan
Paul Morgan has over 5 years of experience working in the marijuana industry. He is a marijuana enthusiast that loves to read and write on anything that is remotely related to cannabis. At the moment, he is pursuing that passion as a content manager at CannabisOwl.
http://cannabisowl.com/

One Reply to “A Beginners Guide to Starting Your Own Cannabis Grow

  1. Always wanted to grow the stuff but the police in the uk think different, myself I take cannabis oil.

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