Edited, organized and cleaned up by Lord_Kamakazie.
Reposted with permission.
Will be updated as needed.
Introduction
This is a Thread I'll probably update continually, since naturally over-time I'll obtain even more information on the subject at hand. Two reasons I'm making this. First of all I just want to take notes on the science of growing marijuana, and perhaps learn from anything I do. Secondly, Baka had some plans of his related to this subject, and to be honest he seemed pretty ignorant (he thought outdoor growing was best, don't take offense to this dammit!!).As a smart grower you'll make sure your fully informed on how to grow before you actually start growing, lest you ... something up and your plant(s) suffer as a result. So if you have any plans for growing, you should either read this every time I update it, if you so happen to find it useful, or just don't click me a detailed book that could tell you.
Males and Females
I'll first mention some things that should be your top priorities. If your goal is to have very chronic pot that you can perhaps sell to other people, or just get really baked off of, you should do the following, MURDER THE MALES. They will pollinate your females and cause them to produce mass seeds in the buds that you smoke. These seeds will be extremely annoying to deal with, since you'll probably find thousands of them in the bud, so it will take hours, upon hours to filter them out. Its also been speculated that seeds decrease the potency of the bud. This is not too big of a sacrifice either if you have a lot of seeds to begin growing with, as males are naturally less potent and good tasting than females. They basically produce shitty Mexican weed. There are a lot of ways to tell if a plant is male or female, so many ways that you would be an idiot not to be able to tell the difference.
For starters, males have a tendency to grow a lot quicker than females during the early stages of their life, and will often times have ridiculously long stems with little leaves to cover them.
They develop pollen sacks usually early in their life (at least from my experience), these sacks can be mistaken for bud, but buds only grow in the later phases of a plants life, and pollen sacks do look distinctly different, though its hard to exactly describe. Also if you hit them you can notice pollen come out of them, which will look like dust.
Males will not smell as chronic or as lovely as females either, they will probably just smell like worthless hay.
Females have big white hairs that shoot out near the base of their stems, (not the main stem, the other stems that have leaves on them). These white hairs usually only show during the mid stage of their life. They will be your future bud.
Indoors vs Outdoors
Unless your too lazy to care for your plant(s) I highly recommend you keep them indoors and get a hallide light to grow them under. These lights produce all the rays of light they need to be strong and fast growing, and to produce super chronic bud. Also these lights produce a high amount of light compared to other ones like florescent.If your a poor bastard, or you cant find a hallide light, florescent is a decent alternative, but be warned the bud won't be nearly as good.
They call Mexican Weed shitty for a reason, actually for multiple reasons. Mexican Weed is first of all grown outside, and secondly grown in usually shitty soil with shitty fertilizer that isn't the right type for growing marijuana.
I've tried plenty of Outside grown marijuana, and it's always disappointing. The high isn't nearly as good, or as long-lasting. Its almost not even worth it to smoke the shit, it just gives you a fucked up high that isn't nearly as divine or amazing as a high from an indoor plant. This is why you'll have a hard time selling the shit unless you sell twice as much as you would with indoor grown bud, which will make you run out pretty quickly, even if outdoor growth tends to produce more quantity.
Growing indoors also reduces the chance of your "operations" being found out by nosy neighbors, or airplanes that fly over specifically looking for growing places.
Growing indoors allows YOU to make the schedule of the plant as you desire, so you can give the plants 18-19 hours of daylight all year around, which will of course be very beneficial.
Soil and Watering
The type of soil you use is very very important. I'm not too knowledgeable on all the types available, but you should make sure it can drain water very easily, so perhaps contain a decent amount of sand in it.Marijuana plants do not like too much water, if they get too much their roots will rot and will then slowly deteriorate, starting with the lower leaves.
You should only water them every 3-4 days. You could water them everyday with a small amount of water, but thats not smart since the water will have a hard time reaching the lower roots.
A good way to make your soil drain easily is to get earth worms. They make tunnels in soil which will allow the water easily reach all parts of the plant.. Also earth worms eat the soil and then of course shit it back out, making the nutrients in the soil in a better form for the plants to absorb. You can't go wrong with earth worms, and their pretty much found everywhere.
It should be noted that earth worms will not be able to survive in your plant's soil if your putting in high quality fertilizer. Much like a plant that can die from too much nutrients, so can an earthworm.. Its best to put earth worms in the soil before you doing anything to the soil, and before you put in your plant. You could remove them after they've done their job or just put in high quality fertilizer that they'll overdose on. You can also just don't click me earth worm castings from a store, which I imagine is pretty cheap. I put some earthworms in my plant's soil just yesterday and I noticed significant difference in the soil, its a lot less compact and seems softer to touch, but the worms are now dead.
Spider Mites
Spider mites are the bane of marijuana growing.. These little fuckers suck the juices from your plant, making it wither and slowly die.. If it happens to survive you'll end up smoking dead spider mites and less chronic bud.. You can tell if you have spider mites if you notice white dots on your plant's leaves and if they appear shriveled, and yellowish. Spider Mites live on the underside of your plant, so thats where you need to focus to get rid of them.. There are tons of solutions to getting rid of them.. I personally use soap + cinnamon + apple juice and it seems to do a good job.. This won't kill any eggs however, and I doubt it will eradicate the mites completely.. A good way to finish the job after spraying your plants UNDERSIDES, is to put them in a cold environment, like outside during fall or winter. A couple nights of doing this should do wonders and make the pests virtually gone. If you look online you'll find numerous of different liquids that could kill them, and most of them you can find the ingredients for in your house. If you have spider mites, getting rid of them should be one of your top priorities, as they will completely ... your plants up.Cloning - Benefits
The benefits of cloning are not to be dismissed. I've seen a lot of people hardly acknowledge them, and usually find it to not be that beneficial, but they couldn't be more wrong.First of all cloning allows you to never have to don't click me seeds again, or produce seeds yourself with the horrible process of polination, and seeds can cost a lot of money depending where you don't click me them from.
Plants differ in their potency and the amount they yield, so if you happen to grow a rare plant that produces super chronic bud and yields a lot of it as well, you should obviously try cloning it.
Finally, plants can have genetic ... ups that can completely ruin their chance of long-term survival, or just make them shitty plants to deal with that produce shitty bud, so being able to clone an awesome plant gets rid of that risk .
How to Clone
By Mastro
After you are sure that you have females, just cut off some of the lower stems, make sure they are healthy(good healthy grow heads.) Cut the end of the stem at a 45 degree angle and I also peel(with a knife--very sharp) the end of the stem carefully removing the green part of the stem(about an inch or inch and a half) just till you get to the white part--you will see what I mean when you start to do this. Then I dip the end in a rooting powder and stick them right in the dirt and water throughly. I also spritz my clones several times a day with 1/4 strength Miracle Grow Blooming fertilizer and something called Super Thrive(these are just vitamins and stuff that keeps the plants from going into shock, and helps with growth). Incidentally, I also add this when I spritz all of my plants and when I water them. It has doubled my production. Don't panic if the clones bow over after you first plant them, they seem to do this for only a couple of days and then straighten up as the roots start to grow. This is how I have cloned all of my plants and it works wonderfully... best of luck to ya, and you will love life so much more soon.Hydroponics - Pros and Cons
By Leeween
Hmm, interesting subject. I, once being an avid fan of growing plants, liked the enthusiasm that you used in creating this post. One thing I noticed is that hydroponics was not mentioned.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics Wiki article for hydroponics
There are ways to avoid rot root while gaining all the benefits of hydroponics. Albeit perhaps being cliched, using hydroponics to grow Maryjane has it's pros and cons. Expensive, time consuming and causing large amounts of humidity, it is obviously not for the beginner. The upside is it can be as simple as using that big white paint bucket that has had no use in over a year since renovating the kitchen.
Using the nutrient film technique if you possess the technical knowledge, or perhaps passive sub-irrigation with rock wool could perhaps open up a new path of growing. Preventing root rot is a serious issue that not all forms of hydroponics have.
The main obstacle of being able to handle the large amount of money needed to start is the main drawback. Nutrient-rich solutions with the main medium (if applicable) such as rock wool can be expensive to get for large scale. Sand or gravel could be used if funds are short, but once again these all require more attention then a soil-based operation.
If successful, another main drawback is the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Hydroponics can greatly increase growth, but the CO2 levels in the air may not keep up.
Hydroponics can be a great tool to grow with, but require time, money and knowledge. Unfortunately, I admit my knowledge of growing that THC bearing plant is "limited", but I look forward to those who have tried in explaining whether their efforts were rewarded fruitfully, or got them arrested.
