How To Grow Marijuana
In many states, the Medical Marijuana patient is allowed to grow marijuana. Indeed, growing your own marijuana is a good decision – especially if your rate of consumption is high. Doing so also allows you to have unlimited supply of your favorite strain of weed.
Unless you own a vast estate, your best bet for growing marijuana is to grow it indoors using a hydroponics system. Prices for hydroponics setups range from $300 to many thousands of dollars. The biggest differences between systems are: 1) the amount of automation; 2) one stage only versus all inclusive mother plant area, vegetation area and flowering area. The advantages of the latter are essential: by having a permanent mother plant, you have access to unlimited clones whenever you want them; you can decrease the gap between harvest with the separate vegetation and flowering areas. Stealth Hydroponics has some very efficient low end systems. Their grow tents are great if you don’t have a closet. If you want to go all-the-way extravagant, check out BC Northern Lights, the Rolls Royce of hydroponics.
Your natural tendency is going to be to grow as big of plants as you can. This can backfire on you. Every plant, let it be known, requires at least 3×3 feet footprint. Going below this limit would affect the amount of lighting that gets to your plant. Another issue with trying to grow big marijuana plants is that if you are not watchful enough, they can grow right past the lights. A good rule of thumb to follow is that your plants will grow 1 1/2 feet during the flowering stage…so you must start the flowering process as soon as the plants reach to within 24″ of the lights in their highest position. Depending on the strain, this can be anywhere from three weeks to eight weeks from starting with a clone.
Finding a source for clones is the real secret to successfully grow marijuana. This shall ensure that your plant will be female and that it’ll survive (the most delicate stage in a plant life is the first two weeks). Once you have a clone, then you are automatically assured of a crop growing all-year-round.
Advanced nutrients are essential to a healthy marijuana crop. Miracle Gro and other normal fertilizers won’t work. It’s wonderful that Stealth Hydroponics and BC Northern Lights offer a wide range of this kind of products. If you follow a rigorous schedule of draining and refilling the water every 2 weeks and adding nutrients as required, you really will succeed. Tap water, let set for about 10 minutes is perfect. Of course, give your plants that needed tender loving care: control the pH level, CO2, temperature and humidity. Note that in reality, Marijuana is a weed, so it would take quite a bit to kill it. One caution on nutrients, don’t add the first round until two weeks after you have started your clones in the vegetation stage.
Lastly, regarding lighting… Lighting is critical in growing marijuana. But you have a wide array of lights to choose from: silver halide, CFL fluorescent and other high tech lights. They’ll all work just fine. Vegetation spectrum is in the 6000 Kelvin range while the Flower Spectrum is in the 2700 Kelvin range. Therefore, it’s useful to take note of both spectrums; but of course, focus more on the one that matches the phase where your marijuana growth is at.
Total time from clone to harvest when you grow marijuana is approximately twelve weeks. The usual yield is between 4 and 6 oz per plant.
