MarijuanaCannabis Growing Guide Part 5A Marijuana Garden At HomeTable of contents [Overview] [Genetics And The Marijuana Plant] [Germination] [Growth Stage] [Flowering Stage] [Grow Lights][Male And Female Plants] [Sinsemilla] [Growing With Hydroponics] [Soil Growing Indoors] [Shelf Growing With Soil Indoors] [Soil Growing Indoors And Outdoors] [Growing Outdoors] [Guerrilla Growing] [Harvesting] [Storage] [Security] [Odors] [Pests] [Nutrients] [Foliar Feeding] [pH] [Carbon Dioxide] [Temperature] [Venting] [Transplanting] [Pruning] [Cloning] [Breeding] Growing OutdoorsGrowing outdoors means you don't have to worry about light leak problems, dark periods that keep you out of your grow room, electricity bills. Outdoors, outside of a greenhouse, there are many factors that can kill your crop. Deer will try to eat them. Chipmunks and rodents too. Bugs will inhabit them, and the wind and rain can whip your little buds to pieces if they are exposed to strong storms. Wind can blow trichome resin away (leaving a low potency crop). For these and other reasons, good indoor hydroponic marijuana is usually superior to anything grown outside. You might have to put up a fence and make sure it stays up. Visit your plot at least once every two weeks, and preferably more often if water needs demand. It's a good idea to use soil if you don't have a green house, you can use hydroponics outdoors but it will be less reliable in the open air, due mostly to evaporation. Light exposure is all important when locating a site for a greenhouse or outdoor plot. A backyard grower will need to know where the sun shines for the longest period, privacy and other factors will enter in as well. Try to find an innocuous spot that gets full winter sun from mid morning to mid afternoon, at least from 10-4, preferably 8-5. This will be really asking for a lot if you live north of 30 degrees latitude since days are short in winter. Since most gardeners will not want to use the greenhouse in the middle of the winter, you can still use winter sun as an indicator of good spring and fall lighting exposures. Usually the south side of a hill gets the most sun. Also, large areas open to the sun on the north side of the property will get good southern exposures. East and west exposures can be good if they get the full morning/afternoon sun and mid-day sun as well. Some books say the plants respond better to morning-only sun, verses afternoon only sun, so if you have to choose between the two, morning sun may be better. Disguise your greenhouse as a tool shed, or similar structure, by using only one wall and a roof of white opaque plastic, PVC, fiberglass, or glass, and using a similar colored material for the rest of the shed, or painting it white or silvery, to look like metal. Try to make it appear as if it has always been there, with plants and trees that grow around it and mask it from view while allowing sun to reach it. Filon (corrugated fiberglass) or pvc plastic sheets can be used outside to cover young plants grown together in a garden. Buy the clear greenhouse sheets, and opaque them with white wash (made from lime) or epoxy resin tinted white or grey and painted on in a thin layer. This will pass more sun than white pvc or filon, and still hide the plants. Epoxy resin coats will preserve the Filon for many more seasons than it would otherwise last. It will also allow you to disguise the shed as metal, if you paint the clear filon sheets with a thin layer of resin tinted light grey. Paint will work as well, but may not protect as much. Be careful to use only as much as needed, to reduce sun blockage to a minimum. You may want to keep outdoor plants in pots so they can be easily moved. A big hole will allow the pot to be place in it, thus reducing the height of the plant, if fence level is an issue. Many growers find pots have saved a crop that had to be moved for some unexpected reason (repairman, appraiser, fire, etc.). It's always best to put a roof over your plants outdoors. When I was a lad, we had plants growing over the fence line in the back yard. We started to build a greenhouse roof for them, and a cop saw us hauling wood, thought we were stealing it (which we were not) and looked over the fence at us and our lovely plants. We were busted, because he saw them. If he had seen a shed roof instead, there would never have been a problem. Moral of the story is build the roof before the plants are sticking over the fence. Or train them to stay well below it. When growing away from the house, in the wild, water is the biggest determining factor, after security. Water must be close by, or close to the soil surface, or you will have to pack water in. Water is heavy and this is very hard work. Try to find an area close to a source of water if possible, and keep a bucket nearby to carry water to your plot. A novel idea in this regard is to find high water in the mountains, at altitude, and then route it down to a lower spot close by. It is possible to create water pressure in a hose this way, and route it to a drip system that feeds water to your plants continuously. Take a 5 gallon gas can, and punch small holes in it. Run a hose out of the main orifice and secure it somehow. Bury the can in a river or stream under rocks, so that it is hidden and submerged. Bury the hose coming out of it, and run it down hill to your garden area. A little engineering can save you a lot of work, and this rig can be used year after year. Contrary to popular belief, marijuana grows well in many places on the North American continent. It will flourish even if the temperature does not raise above 75 degrees. In fact many strains prefer temperatures under 80 degrees. I've smoked some excellent marijuana (grown outdoors) from places as far north as Alaska. Marijuana plants do need a minimum of about 12 to 16 hours of sunlight per day during the first stages of growth. 18 to 24 hours of sun everyday during this phase of life is recommended but not possible in some areas. If you are going to grow marijuana outdoors in a place where the temperature gets lower than the freezing point of water in winter, you should plant in early spring. But definitely, plant after the last frost of the year. In countries that stay mild all year, plants can be started earlier. There are two schools of thought about starting the seeds. One says you should start the seedlings for about ten days in an indoor starter box. The other says plant them in the ground. That is a choice you will have to make. The plants should be planted at least three feet apart, getting too greedy and stacking them too close will result in stunted plants. The plants like some water during their growing season, BUT not too much. This is especially true around the roots, as too much water will rot the root system. Marijuana grows well in corn or hops, and these plants will help provide some camouflage. It does not grow well with rye, spinach, or pepperweed. It is probably a good idea to plant in many small, broken patches, as people tend to notice patterns. Marijuana plants can reach a height of twenty feet (especially sativa strains) and obtain a stem diameter of 4 1/2 inches. Marijuana soil should compact when you squeeze it, but should also break apart with a small pressure and absorb water well. A nice test for either indoor or outdoor growing is to add a bunch of worms to the soil, if they live and hang around, it is good soil, but if they don't, change it. Worms also help keep the soil loose enough for the plants to grow well. There are three types of cannabis. The two that are grown for producing marijuana, they are Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. There are many different strains of marijuana, but most strains are either sativa or indica (or a cross between the two). Sativa strains are ideal for growing outdoors. Look for an outdoor sativa strain that will produce a big yield. Sativa strains produce more THC than indica strains. Some growers like to grow indica outdoors if they are going to produce their own hand rubbed hash. The third member of the cannabis family is called ruderalis but it is not grown for its THC content. To grow good marijuana, you will have to start with the right seeds. Make sure to get seeds from someone who can tell you the origin of the seed (indica or sativa), expected yield size, expected flowering time, and if the seed is meant to be grown indoors or outdoors. If you are going to start the seeds outdoors, plant them by dropping them in the place you want them to grow and cover them with a half inch to a inch of good potting soil. The soil should be kept damp but not wet until you see the plant start to grow. Once the plant has started to grow you can let nature take its course. If you are going to start the seeds indoors, follow the directions located here to germinate your seeds. After the seeds have germinated and the root is about a quarter of an inch long, place the seed, root down, in the soil of your sprouting box. A good all around sprouting method is using a sprouting box (cheap, very common, sold in nurseries, and stores with a garden section). The sprouting soil should be designed to be used during germinating and seedling stages of a plants life. When ready to transplant, you must be sure and leave a ball of soil around the roots of each plant. This whole ball is dropped into a baseball-sized hold in the permanent soil. If you are transplanting outdoors, you should time it about two hours before sunset to avoid damage to the plant. Always wear cotton gloves when handling the young plants. After the plants are set in the hole, you should water them. It is also a good idea to use a commercial transplant chemical (also purchased at nurseries) to help then overcome the transplant shock. Guerrilla GrowingGuerrilla growing refers to farming away from your own property, or in a remote location of your property where people seldom roam around. It is possible to find locations that for one reason or another are not easily accessible or are privately owned. Try to grow off your property, on nearby public property, so that if your plot is found, it will not be traceable back to you. If it's not on your property, nobody has witnessed you there, and there is no physical evidence of your presence (footprints, fingerprints, trails, hair, etc.), then it is virtually impossible to prosecute you for it, even if the cops think they know who it belongs to. Never admit to growing, to anyone. Your best defence is that your just passing thru the area, and noticed something you decided to take a look at, or carry a fishing pole or binoculars and claim fishing or bird watching. Never tell anyone but a partner where the plants are located. Do not bring visitors to see them, unless it is harvest time, and the plants will be pulled the same or following day. Make sure your plants are out of sight. Take a different route to get to them if they are not in a secure part of your property, and cover the trail to make it look as if there is no trail. Make cut backs in the trail, so that people on the main trail will tend to miss the cut-back to the grow area. Don't park on the main road, always find a place to park that will not arouse suspicion by people that pass on the road. Have a safe house in the area if you are not planting close to home. Always have a good reason for being in the area and have the necessary items to make your claim believable. Briar and poison oak patches are perfect if you can cut through it. Poison Oak must be washed away before an allergic reaction takes place. Tecnu Try to plant under trees, next to bushes and keep only a few plants in any one spot. Train or top the plants to grow sideways, or do something to prevent the classic christmas tree look of most plants left to grow untrained. Tying the top down to the ground will make the plants branches grow up toward the sun, and increase yield, given a long enough growing season. Plants can be grown under trees if the sun comes in at an angle and lights the area for several hours every day. Plants should get at least 5 hours of direct sun every day, and 5 more hours of indirect light. Use shoes that you can dispose of later and cover your foot prints. Use surgical gloves and leave no fingerprints on pots and other items that might ID you to the fuzz...in case your plot is discovered by passers by. Put up a fence, or the chipmunks, squirrels and deer will nibble on your babies until there is nothing left. Green wire mesh and nylon chicken fencing net work great and can be wrapped around trees to create a strong barrier. Always check it and repair every visit you make to the garden. A barrier of fishing line, one at 18 inches and another at 3 feet will keep most deer away from your crop. When growing away from the house, in the wild, water is the biggest determining factor, after security. The amount you can grow is directly proportional to the water available. If you must pack-in water, carry it in a backpack in case your seen in-route to your garden (you will appear to be merely a hiker, not a grower). Transporting vegetative starts to the growing area is a most tricky aspect of growing outdoors. Usually, you will want to start plant indoors, or outside in your garden, then transport them to the grow site once they are firmly established. It may be desirable to first detect and separate males from females so that no effort of transporting/transplanting/watering males is incurred. One suggestion is to use 3 inch rockwool cubes to start seedlings in, then put 20 of them in a litter pan, cover it with another pan, and transport this to the grow site. The cubes can be planted directly into soil. One outdoor grower we know has given up on seeds. He has several strains he likes to clone, so he starts 200 clones in his closet, then transports them outdoors in boxes to the grow site. No males, no differentiation, no weeding, no germinating seeds, no genetic uncertainties, no crops grown for seed, no transporting/transplanting/watering plants your just going to pull up later, no pollination nightmares, no wasted effort. HarvestingAfter about 8 to 12 weeks of flowering it will be time to harvest. It is very important to harvest at the right time. The best way to tell if the plant is ready is to examine the bud. In the paragraphs below, the terms pistil and stigma refer to the white hairs in the center of the female bud. The term calyx refers to the pod that would surround the seed (were the plant to be fertilized). Many growers elect to pick each bud individually, as it reaches it prime. Buds are at their peak potency about one week after flower formation slows...Harvest the plants when about half the stigmas in the buds have withered... In the primordial calyxes the pistils have turned brown; however, all but the oldest of the flowers are fertile and the floral clusters are white...Many cultivators prefer to pick some of their strains during this stage in order to produce marijuana with a clear cerebral, psychoactive effect. Eventually the pistils start to turn color from pale white to red or brown...When the glands have swelled and the pistil has receded into the false pod, the bud is ready to pick. At the peak of florescence, all but the oldest of flowers have white pistil development...Another indicator is bouquet. When a plant is at the peak of florescence, it has a sweet and musky fragrance. Later, it loses the sweetness. The best way to harvest is to examine the resin glands on each bud. As they turn from clear to amber, that is the optimum time to pick. Buds usually mature from the top down, if grown under artificial light, and you will end up with more high quality pot if you pick each bud when ready. Additional harvesting directions can be located here. Once the plant has been harvested, it should be dried by following the directions here. © toon - updated by www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/ Books Grow Great Marijuana: |
is a special soap solution that will deactivate poison oak before it has time to create a reaction. Apply Tecnu immediately after contact and take a shower 30 minutes later.