Tips Growing Weed
Light, air, water and feed together are the most important ingredients to cultivate plants. They take “carbohydrates and chlorophyll from these ingredients. In converting these, oxygen is formed. This process is called photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is essential to cultivate plants in a natural way. Because of the lack of natural light indoors you have to rely on artificial light. Artificial light consists of those parts of the light spectrum which are important for the development of the plant.
Outdoors Grow Tips
Most cannabis plants cultivated in the Northern Hemisphere begin to flower by late July. The plants are harvested from October to November. In much of the North and high-altitude areas, many varieties will not have time to complete flowering before fall frosts. To force the plants to flower earlier, give them longer night periods. If the plants are in containers, you can simply move them into a darkened area each evening.
Plants growing in the ground can be covered with an opaque tarpaulin, black sheet plastic, or double or triple-layers black plastic trash bags. Take advantage of any natural shading because direct sunlight is difficult to screen completely. For instance, if the plants are naturally shaded in the morning hours, cover the plants each evening or night. The next morning you uncover the plants at about eight to nine o’clock. Continue the treatment each day until all the plants are showing flowers. This usually takes two weeks at most, is the plants are well developed (about four months old). For this reason, where the season starts late, it is best to start the plants indoors or in cold frames and transplant outdoors when the weather is mild. This in effect lengthens the local growing season and gives the plants another month or two to develop.
Outdoor growers should always plant several varieties, because some may naturally flower early, even in the northern-most parts of the country. By planting several varieties, many of you will be able to find or develop an early-maturing variety after a season or two. This, of course, is an important point, because it eliminates the need for long-night treatments.
Fertilizer Grow Tips
The main nutrients that a plant needs to grow are Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. Most plant fertilizers contain these elements and a good, easily available, one is called Grow More.
If you really want to then here are the some effective ratios of the three elements to be used through the two growth stages.
Early growth stages: 7-9-5 or 5-10-5 or 4-5-3.
For the flowering stages use 3-10-4 or 5-20-5 or 4-30-12.
It is best to build up the amount of fertilizer you use to what is making the plants look healthily green as too much fertilizer can kill the plant.
Water Grow Tips
Some growers report purified or distilled water helps their plants grow faster. Perhaps due to sodium and heavy metals found in hard water that are not present in purified water. Hard water tends to build up alkaline salt deposits in soil that lockup trace minerals, and cause iron, copper and zinc deficiencies. There are several types of purified water, but many are not free of minerals that could be causing salt buildup over an extended period of time.
Tap water comes in two flavors. Hot and cold. The cold pipe has less calcium and sodium buildup in it, and should be freer of sediment once the water has been turned on and allowed to flow for 30 seconds. Hot water will have rust, lead deposits, and lots of sodium and calcium, so much so, you will see it easily. Tap water filtered through a carbon (charcoal) filter will be free of chlorine and most large particles, but will still contain dissolved solids such as sodium and heavy metals (lead, arsenic, nickel, etc.).
Purified bottled water will be either Reverse Osmosis or some form of carbon/sediment filtered water. When purchasing water at a store, unless it says RO or Distilled, don not bother buying it. It could still have the same dissolved solids and heavy metals your tap water has.
Indoor Grow Tips
You must have either a 400 watt or 600 watt grow lamp. Soft white bulbs will NOT work.
Ratio
1 400 watt lamp = 1 squire meter of plants( +/- 25 plants). First up you will need a small space. A wooden closet of approximately 100*100*200cm would be good. This size can be varied depending on the number of plants but this is good for 25. Remember to make sure that your lights will fit inside the closet. The inside of this closet should be painted with flat white paint or coated with aluminum foil (or Mylar is you have it).
This will increase reflectivity and will make your lights more effective.
Now you need to put lights inside the cabinet.
Natural Light Grow Tips
The growing season lasts all year. The night period is much easier to control. Sometimes people grow plants in their windows for more than a year without any female flowers ever forming. This is because household lamps are turned on sometime at night, illuminating the plants. Under natural light exclusively, indoor plants flower at about the same time they would outdoors (sometime a bit sooner because it is warmer
indoors or the plants may be shaded).
When plants are well developed and you want them to flower, make sure that no household lamps or nearby street lamps are shining on them. During late fall and winter, the natural day-length is short enough for the plants to flower naturally, if you simply keep off any lights at night that are in the same room as the plants. If you must use light, use the lowest wattage possible, such as a six-watt bulb. (The hormone is also least sensitive to blue light.) Shield the light away from the plants. Or shield the plants from any household light with aluminum foil curtains.
Once the flowers are forming clusters, you can discontinue the dark treatments, especially if it is more convenient. However, if it is too soon (when you see only a few random flowers), household lights can reverse the process.
By using natural light, you can grow indoor crops all year. The winter light is weak and the days are short, so it is best to use artificial lights to supplement daylight, as well as to extend the photoperiod. The extra light will increase the growth rate of the plants and hence size and yield. You should allow winter crops to flower during late January or February, using the natural photoperiod to trigger flowering. If you wait until spring, the natural light period will be too long and may prevent flowering.
Artificial Light Grow Tips
Under artificial light the photoperiod is, of course, any length you wish. The most popular way to grow with artificial lights is the harvest system. Start the plants under long light periods of from 16 to 18 hours daily. After the plants have reached a good size, usually between three and six months, shorten the light cycle to about 12 hours to force flowering.
To decide exactly when to force the plants to flower, let their growth be the determinant. If male plants are showing their flowers, then the females are physiologically ready to flower. Most of the plant’s overall height is achieved during vegetative growth. Some varieties, of course, are smaller and grow more slowly than others. Wait until the plants are nearing the limits of the height of the garden or are at least five feet tall. This is large enough to support good flower development and return a good yield. If you turn down the light cycle when the plants are young and small, you’ll harvest much less grass because the plants simply can’t sustain a large number of flowers.
Some leaf growers prefer a continuous growth system, emphasizing leaf growth and a continuous supply of grass. The light cycle is set for 18 to 24 hours a day. This prevents flowering and the plants continue their rapid vegetative growth. Growing shoots and leaves are harvested as used, and plants are removed whenever they lose their vigor and growth has noticeably slowed. New plants are started in their place. In this way, there will be plants at different growth stages, some of which will be in their rapid vegetative growth stage and will be quite potent. Male plants and some females eventually will form flowers, but the females will not form large clusters. People often use this system when the lights are permanently fixed. Small plants are raised up to the lights on tables or boxes. This garden never shuts down and yields a continuous supply of grass.
Air and Ventilation Growing Tip
If the air tube to the ventilation opening is very long, place a tube ventilator in order to limit the reduction in power. The turf in the Amsterdam Arena footbal stadium is a good example of the importance of light and air to the healthy growth of plants. Lack of these will result in an inferior quality of turf. Apart from good lighting in your growing space, good ventilation is therefore of great importance to get healthy plants and a high return. The air we breathe contains nitrogen (N), carbon dioxide (CO2) and oxygen (O2).
Oxygen is important in the process of burning hydrocarbons. Carbon dioxide is indispensable for the process on photosynthesis. Without carbon dioxide the plants will definitely die. Plants use more carbon dioxide than oxygen. For mammals, which include humans, it is the other way round.
Remember that fresh air is not only necessary for the ventilation of your laboratory but also to get rid off the well known smell that flowering plants produce, especially during the period of drying and cutting. Most growers have been caught during that period because of the smell.
Tips On Plants
Plants use a fundamentally different “life strategy” from animals. Animals are more or less self-contained units that grow and develop to predetermined forms. They use movement and choice of behavior to deal with the changing environments. Plants are organized more as open systems – the simple physical characteristics of the environment, such as sunlight, water, and temperature, directly control their growth, form, and life cycles.
Once the seed sprouts, the plant is rooted in place and time. Since growth is regulated by the environment, development is on accordance with the plant’s immediate surroundings. When a balance is struck, the strategy is a success and life flourishes.
Behavior of a plant is not a matter of choice; it is a fixed response. On a visible level the response more often than not is growth, either a new form of growth, or specialized growth. By directly responding, plant in effect “know,” for example, when to sprout, flower, or drop leaves to prepare for winter.
Everyone has seen how a plant turns toward light or can bend upward if it its stem is bent down. The plant turns by growing cells of different length on opposite sides of the stem. This effect turns or right the plant.
The stimulus in the first case is light, in the second gravity, but essentially the plant responds by specialized growth. It is the same with almost all facets of a plant’s live – growth is modified and controlled by the immediate environment. The influence of light, wind, rainfall, etc., interacts with the plant (its genetic make-up or genotype) to produce the individual plant (phenotype).
The cultivating and flowering behavior of a plant is determined by the balance between light and darkness. To successfully grow a plant the cultivating stage is very important. The cultivating stage is also called the vegetative stage. In this stage the cutting develops into a grown plant. Depending on the sort of plant, this takes approximately 10 to 14 days. During this stage the plant requires 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness. During the flowering stage the ratio is12:12 hours. The flowering stage is the period in which the plant forms its buds, the product that you ultimately want. The duration of this stage is again, depending on the sort of plant, between 8 and 10 weeks.
The life cycle of Cannabis is usually complete in four to nine months. The actual time depends on variety, but it is regulated by local growing conditions, specifically the photoperiod (length of day vs. night).
Cannabis is a long-night (or short-day) plant. When exposed to a period of two weeks of long nights – that is, 13 or more hours of continuous darkness each night – the plants respond by flowering. This has important implications, for it allows the grower to control the life cycle of the plant and adapt it to local growing conditions or unique situations. Since you can control flowering, you control maturation and, hence, the age of the plants at harvest.
General Grow Tips
- Hydroponics culture is cultivating on a sterile medium.
- Switch the lights on and leave them on. Plant 10-15 seeds.
- Water the plants once a day and feed the plants twice a week with a standard miracle grow product in the water.
- Dip your clone cuttings before planting them into a preventative solution. That gives you a head start in vermin control.
- Measuring is knowing. Especially when using the hydroponic method, it is very important to know the exact pH value. So do not economize on the purchase of the measuring equipment. Measuring is knowing. This saying definitely applies to the cultivation of marihuana, because it is important to know the pH and EC values.
- Try to use a high nitrogen plant food during vegetative growth (at the start) and a low nitrogen plant food during flowering. When the plants get to the height you want them (about 60cm is good) set the timer for 12 hours of light and 12 of dark.
Only water once every two days around the time when the lights come on. - This will halt vertical growth and after a few weeks the plants will start to show either male or female characteristics. Males: pollen balls. Females: stems and branches.
- Don’t check on the plants in the dark periods (night time of the plants), not even for a little while. Just take it that if everything is ok during the day, it will be ok during the night.
- During the dark periods absolutely no light should be allowed in.
Cut out the males before they release pollen. - Reduce the number of plants down to the best 5 females.
These females will now grow outwards. - The whole thing takes 4 months. 4-6 weeks in vegetative growth stage,
2 weeks differentiation to split males and females and 8 weeks for
the females to flower. - Harvest when the large leaves begin to yellow and drop off.
- Cut the leaves off and let dry on a flat surface.
Trim the leaf near the buds and hang the buds to dry for about a week.
