Marijuana
Cannabis Growing Guide Part 9
A Marijuana Garden At Home
Table 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] Pruning
Plants that are regenerated, cloned and even grown from seed may need to be pruned at some point to encourage the plant to produce as much as possible and remain healthy. It is best not to prune plants at all but in some cases you may have to. See this article for more info.
Cloning
Cloning is asexual reproduction. Cuttings are taken from a mother plant in vegetative growth, and rooted in hydroponic medium to be grown as a separate plant. The offspring will be plants that are identical to the parent plant.
Cloning preserves the character of your favorite plant. Cloning can make an ocean of green out of a single plant, so it is a powerful tool for growing large crops, and will fill a closet quickly with your favorite genetics.
When you find the plant you want to be your buddy for the rest of your life, you can keep that plant's genetic character alive forever. Propagate and share it with others, to keep a copy, should your own line die out. A clone can be taken from a clone forever, so don't worry about myths of reduced vigor.
Cloning will open you to the risk of a fungus or pests wiping out the whole crop, so it's important to pick plants that exhibit great resistance to fungus and pests.
Pick the plant you feel will be the most reliable to reproduce in large scale, based on health, growth rate, resistance to pests, and potency. The quality of the high, and the type of buzz you get will be a very important determining factor. See this article for more info.
Breeding
It is possible to breed and select cuttings from plants that grow, flower, and mature faster. Some plants will naturally be better than others in this regard, and it is easy to select not only the most potent plants to clone or breed, but the fastest growing/flowering plants as well.
Find your fastest growth plant, and breed it with your best high male for fast flowering, potent strains. Clone your fastest, best high plant for the quickest monocrop garden possible. Over time, it will save you a lot of waiting around for your plants to mature.
When a male is starting to flower (2-4 weeks before the females) it should be removed from the females so it does not pollinate them. It is taken to a separate area. Any place that gets just a few hours of light per day will be adequate. Put newspaper or glass under it to catch the pollen as the flowers drop it.
Save pollen in an air tight bag in the freezer. It will be good for about a month. It may be several more weeks before the females are ready to pollinate. Put a paper towel in the bag with it to absorb moisture.
A plant is ready to pollinate 2 weeks after the clusters of female flowers first appear. If you pollinate too early, it may not work. Wait until the female flowers are well established, but still when the hairs are white (before they turn red/brown).
Turn off all fans. Use a paper bag to pollinate a branch of a female plant. Use different pollen from two males on separate branches. Wrap the bag around the branch and seal it at the opening to the branch. Shake the branch vigorously. After a few minutes, carefully remove it.
Large plastic zip-lock bags can be used also. Slip the bag over the male branch and shake the pollen loose. Carefully remove the bag and zip it up. It should be very dusty with pollen. To pollinate, place it over a single branch of the female, zipping it up sideways around the stem so no pollen leaks out.
Shake the bag and the stem at the same time. Allow to settle for an hour or two and shake it again. Remove it a few hours later. Your branch is now well pollinated and should show signs of visible seed production in 2 weeks. One pollinated branch can create hundreds of seeds, so it should not be necessary to pollinate more than one or two branches in many cases.
When crossing two different strains, a third strain of marijuana plant will be created. If you know what characteristics your looking for in a new strain, you will need several plants to choose from in order to have the best chance of finding all the qualities desired.
Sometimes, if the two plants bred had dominant genes for certain characteristics, it will be impossible to get the plant you want from one single cross. In this case, it is necessary to interbreed two plants from the same batch of resultant seeds from the initial cross. In this fashion, recessive genes will become available, and the plant character you desire may only be possible in this manner.
Usually, it is desirable only to cross two strains that are very different. In this manner, one usually arrives at what is referred to as hybrid vigor. In other words, often the best strains are created by taking two very different strains and mating them. Less robust plants may be the result of interbreeding, since it opens up recessive gene traits that may lead to reduced potency.
Hybrid offspring will all be very different from each other. Each plant grown from the same batch of seeds collected from the same plant, will be different. It is then necessary to try each plant separately and decide it's individual merits for yourself. If you find one that seems to be head and shoulders above the rest in terms of early flowering, high yield, and high, that is the plant to clone and continue breeding.
In depth genetics is beyond the scope of this work. See marijuana botany and/or the cannabis breeder's bible, for more detailed info in this area.
Safety And Privacy
Utility companies can tell your bill is way off from the same time last year, and police are finding growers this way. More than 500 watts in the family home running constantly will show up as a regular monthly increase in electricity use.
You can claim space heaters, more people living on the premises, too many television sets, and late hours, if they happen mention it to you (innocently). If the police knock and ask you about it, don't let them in, and move your plants to another location during the wee hours in a vehicle not your own.
Upon moving into a new place, it may be desirable to immediately establish high electricity use, so that your electrical use history won't reveal your activities in the future...
Light leaks, open windows, heat expelled from rooms that would normally be cool, and rip-offs are all serious issues to be concerned about. Don't use a burglar alarm on when your away from the house.
People are busted this way when the kids try to rip off the garden and the police come. Lock the house up well, and let them take it if they need it so bad. It's not worth getting busted for a burglary...
Think ahead to any situation that will require outsiders to visit sensitive areas of the house. Repairmen, solicitors, meter readers, neighbors, appraisers, and pets should all be considered and contingency plans made in advance.
Distilled Water
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. Use only the amount of hot water needed to make the water the correct temperature (70-80 F).
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 Reverse Osmosis or Distilled, don't bother buying it. It could still have the same dissolved solids and heavy metals your tap water has.
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Books Grow Great Marijuana:
An Uncomplicated Guide to
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If you find instructions and books about growing hydroponic marijuana overly technical and hard to follow, this book is a very good choice for simple and accurate instructions. It does not cover advanced techniques so if you already know how to grow, this book would be of little value. But if you are a first time grower with no experience, this is the first book to look at.
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Grow Great Marijuana Marijuana Horticulture:
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Over 500 pages with more than 1000 color images. If you were only going to get one book about growing, this book would be the best choice. Describes growing marijuana outdoors and indoors (with hydroponics or soil).
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Marijuana Horticulture The Cannabis Grow Bible:
The Definitive Guide to Growing Marijuana
for Recreational and Medical Use
A very good source of information covering all aspects of growing, from seed selection to harvest, curing and more. Over 300 pages with almost 200 color and black-and-white photographs, charts, and tables. Recommended reference book for indoor and outdoor growers.
A great marijuana growing and breeding guide. Includes chapters on seeds, propagation and germination, growing indoors, growing outdoors, hydroponics, pre-flowering and flowering, predators, pests and plant fungi, breeding, and more.
The Cannabis Grow Bible
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