Basic Grow Tips For Beginners
Ganja Growing TipsDO NOT Tell People. (Silent Pride)
You can and will be extremely proud of your accomplishments as you successfully harvest your homegrown marijuana. KEEP YOUR SECRET. Ever heard of jealousy? Divorce? Revenge? - People listen and always want to feel important, don't make it their gossip. Protect your investment - Shut-up.
Keep Everything Clean (Spotless)
This means you too! Your tools, your floors, your walls, everything. It pays when there are no bugs, or disease, or an environment for them to spread. This is truly under-rated - wash your hands upon entry everyday.
Ganja Growing Tips
Grow from Quality Seeds
Your final product is 90% dependent upon it's genetics. Be prepared to be disappointed using unknown seeds. Hence the popularity of our website and these first quality marijuana seeds. You can trust us.
Ganja Growing Tips
Develop A Quality Soil
When you begin your garden, develop a soil that works well for you. Start with just Miracle-Growâ„¢ Potting Soil if you wish. PH should balance around 6.5 for most cannabis plants. (see custom soil blend below)
Ganja Growing Tips
DO NOT Over Water (most common mistake)
Too much water can kill young marijuana plants. Following germination, allow the surface to get crusty. Stick your finger 3-4 inches under the soil, if no moisture, then water thoroughly. Sink water should sit open for 24 hours or more to release chlorine among other potentially harmful sediments.
Ganja Growing TipsDO NOT Over Fertilize (2nd most common mistake)
If your soil contains certain nutrients, do not add more of these with your watering schedule. When adding nutrients to your water, - apply every other watering. The vegetative stage likes more Nitrogen, and the flowering stage like more Phosphates and less Nitrogen.
Ganja Growing Tips
Provide A Superior Growing Environment
Temperature, humidity, air circulation and personal attention are all vital areas that can make for a most stress free growing environment (or not). Work to keep these consistent. Play music to your garden and have a mild breeze pass around the room during certain hours. Invest in their individual happiness, and you will prosper greatly in your future satisfaction.
Ganja Growing Tips
Keep Disposal Separate
Keep all of the trash from your garden in separate bags from your other refuse (includes anything). Dispose of all your garden garbage into an available commercial dumpster when needed. Be sure to remove and destroy any paper trail items. A fireplace can be a wonderful amenity to a residential property.
Ganja Growing Tips
DO NOT Harvest Too Early
This can be tough. Be patient, you have waited and nurtured for this long. Your plants can probably gain weight by waiting too. To be sure, wait until 50% of the pistils have turned brown and you know you won't be early. I have also harvested from the bottom or top over a couple of days based on bud appearance to get them at their most mature.
NPK
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium! Plants need more Nitrogen in Veg and less in Bud!
H2O2
basically water with an added oxygen molecule, so adds oxygen to the soil, which healthy roots need. Don't over do it though, aprox two tablespoons per gallon of water.
Lighting Tips
Color rating- Measured in Kelvin (K). The higher the number, the more bluish the light. 4000K-7000K is mostly on the blue side of the spectrum, while 3000K and under goes from a white spectrum, to a redder spectrum.
How much light is needed?
The minimum amount of light required by marijuana plants is around 3000 lumens per square foot. However, it's not 100% accurate, since although you may have a 10,000 lumen light, the amount of light that reaches the plant varies with the distance between the light and plants, and reflectivity of the grow box. The ideal amount is somewhere around 7000-10,000 lumens/sqft, and as long as the plants do not burn, as much light can be used as you want.
(*note, the sun produces about 10,000 lumens/sqft, on a sunny summer day).
Determining lumens for your grow area:
Determine the square footage of your area (example in a 4 foot by 4 foot area, there is 16 square feet)
If you have a 1000 watt High Pressure Sodium, that produces (approx.) 107,000 lumens.
Divide this by 16 (your square footage) 107,000 / 16 = 6687 lumens per square foot.
So just divide the total amount of Lumens, by the total amount of Sq ft, and thats your lumens per square foot.
How far away from my plants do the lights go?
The lights in your grow room should be as close as possible to the plants without burning them. There is no such thing as too much, unless there is sufficient heat to dry out and burn the leaves. A good rule is to put your hand under the light, if its too hot for your hand, chances are that the plants will be too, so move the light up until your hand feels more comfortable. For seedlings and clones, I keep them a little further away from the light, because they are very susceptible to burning and drying out, at these stages.
Efficiency is very important when choosing a type of light. The wattage is not the most important thing, as you can see below, different types of light produce different amounts of lumens per watt. A 300 watt incandescent will produce about 5100 lumens. While a 300 watt Metal Halide (just an example, they do not come in 300 watts), will produce 27,000 lumens. Obviously far more efficient for growing, while still using the same amount of electricity.
Approximate light production:
Incandescents: 17 lumens/watt
Mercury vapor: 45-50 lumens/watt
Fluorescents: 60-70 lumens/watt
Metal halide: 90 lumens/watt
High pressure sodium: 107 lumens/watt
Incandescent lights: Incandescents are the most popular type of lights in the world. They may come advertised as incandescent, tungsten, quartz, halogen, or simply standard. The important thing about incandescents is this: they suck.
There are some incandescents which are sold as 'grow lights.' They usually have a blue coating and usually come in 60W and 120W sizes. While they may seem like a good choice to new growers, they are next to useless; they produce some light at a usable spectrum, but only have about a 5% efficiency and generate more heat than usable light. Most of us have these in our homes right now. Don't use them for growing, instead opt for a Compact Fluorescent as a cheaper but more efficient alternative.
Fluorescent lights: Fluorescents are a lot more useful than incandescents. Their efficient enough, and cheaper than HID lights. Compact fluorescent tubes are popular with growers because of their good output to size ratio. Compared to standard 4' tubes, compact fluorescent bulbs are smaller, and more can fit into a given area. Fluorescents are good for small grows on a tight budget, and for novice growers, since they do not require any special sort of wiring or understanding of the necessary bulbs for a given fixture, and are very widely available.
Fluorescent lights come in many different Kelvin ratings; often the spectrums are labeled on packaging as being 'cool white' or 'warm white.' Cool white is more blue, and is good for the vegetative stages of growth, and warm white light is more orange or reddish, and is best for the flowering stage.
High Intensity Discharge (HID) Lighting Systems:
Mercury Vapor (MV)
Mercury vapor lights are not the most efficient light for growing. They are very bright, and relatively cheap. They do emit light at the wavelengths necessary to support your plants growth, but not nearly as good as a MH or Hps light. Much of the light emitted by MV lights is bluish-white. Street lighting is what most MV lighting is used for.
Metal Halide (MH)
Metal halide lighting systems are optimal for use in the vegetative phase of growing. They emit mostly blue light, which encourages vigorous growth of foliage. They are very efficient, but can get rather expensive to start with; fluorescents may seem more appealing because of their lower price, and they are not much different when compared on a lumen-to-lumen cost level. These lights can be used through-out the grow, but will most likely result in light, fluffy buds.
High Pressure Sodium (HPS)
High pressure sodium lights emit mostly orange, yellow, and red spectrum light, which is perfect for the flowering stage of the plants growth. They are (in my opinion) the most efficient type of light available for any application. HPS lights can be used through-out the entire grow. They produce more dense and usually larger buds than any other light.
HPS lights are generally a little more expensive than MH systems of similar wattage. They are more commonly used by experienced growers because of their ability to produce tighter buds, higher lumen-output-per-watt, and will produce from start to finish.
I'll also add this graph below, i hope this post helps some of you out.
Lighting Primer
How much light do you need?
A very general rule of thumb is that your garden needs 50 watts of HID lighting per square foot of illuminated area. This rule ignores the shape of your garden, so the following is really a better guide:
A 250 watt HID will illuminate a 2' x 2' garden.
A 400 watt HID will illuminate a 3' x 3' garden.
A 600 watt HID will illuminate a 3.5' x 3.5' garden.
A 1000 watt HID will illuminate a 4' x 4' garden.
From Jackerspackle, here's a different take on watts-per-square-foot/meter (WPSF).
WPSF assumes that the bulb's intensity is equal over the entire grow area.. in other words each square foot/meter receives the same number of lumens. But in reality light diminishes rapidly the farther you go from the bulb (1/4 the intensity for each doubling of the distance). So each bulb has a limited range, beyond which you do not have good growth.
For example, a growspace that's 2 x 10 feet would require 1000 watts if you go by the 50 WPSF guideline that's commonly mentioned.. But a 1000 watt bulb only covers an area about 5 feet across - meaning the edges of your garden will be dark.. A better choice in this case would be three 400s or two 600s.
Another problem with WPSF is it assumes all bulbs have the same intensity. But 1000 watts of HPS is not the same as 1000 watts of fluorescents or (yuk) incandescents. Fluorescents have their lumens spread out over a long tube and are therefore dim.. incandescents have the wrong color spectrum and are also dim.
Nor is a 1000 HPS the same as four 250 HPSs.. 250s don't have anywhere near the intensity needed to penetrate thick canopy or tall, bushy plants. (Don't even think about growing meter-tall plants with a 250.)
I could go on, but here's a basic guideline for lighting a growspace for good growth using common HIDs:
WATTAGE -- COVERAGE
1000 watt - 4 to 5 feet across (1.3 to 1.5 meters)
600 watt - 3.5 feet (1 meter)
400 watt - 2.5 possibly 3 feet (.8 to .9 m)
250 watt - 2 feet (.6-.7 m)
175 watt - small, less than 2 feet
These numbers assume you have a good reflector around your bulb and also reflective wall coverings. You can increase the figures a bit if using multiple bulbs, due to their overlapping effect. You can also increase coverage using a light mover...
I know this won't put to rest the old WPSF idea, but i hope it shed some light on the subject
Lighting and Voltage - Electrical
Each breaker switch in a house or business is 2400 Watts each. Don't overload the circuits or you may cause a fire... All
Spraying for Bugs - Safer Brand
If you leave the raw formula on for too long it will leave a white powdery film on the plant that will burn it. The bottle doesn't say to rinse. But after 8 hours, you should rinse off the plants. All