Learn 2 Grow

Summary of the Growing cycle of Cannabis:

1. so you have your closet built.

2. your Promix ready and your ventilation set-up.

3. you sprout the seeds. usually takes from 24 hours to 1 week

4. When they sprout you transfer them into small pots filled with Promix. Water Promix with plain water. Add no nutrients unless you want to add B1 or Rizotonic or Super thrive.

5. place the pots 4 feet away from a 1000W light, 3 to 4 feet away from the 400W light, 3 feet away from a 250W light and 1 foot away from fluorescent lights.

6. Wait until you see small leafs and until they are about 2 to 3 inches in height....... and generally the sprouts look like miniature plants. This should take between a week or two..... or three... some cannabis strains may take longer depending how experienced you are

7. After this period you can move the little sprouts closer to the light. This means 2 feet away from a 1000W, 1.5 feet away from a 400W, 1 foot from 250W and 2 to 3 inches away from a fluorescent lights.

8. Make sure you have an oscillating fan to move the air and the plants (set the fan to appropriate speed in order to achieve "gently rocking wind" as oppose to "a hurricane").......

9. When you move the plants closer to the light it is time to add nutrients to your water. Until now you should be watering them with plain water. The first time plants receive nutrients it should be mixed at 50% of whatever your nutrient is recommending. Use Vegetative formula. This period of plants life is called VEG PERIOD (Vegetative), when plants simply grow bigger and bigger but do not produce any bud. Your lights are ON for at least 18 hours a day. Familiarize yourself with point #5, 6 and 7 above on this page.

10. When plants reach 4 to 8 inches in height, you can transfer them into bigger pots (I recommend at least an 8 inch pot or 3 Gallons in volume)

11. If the plants reach about a foot in height but they do not seem bushy enough you can cut the top 2 inches off of each plant. This is called "super cropping" or "pinching". By removing the top 2 inches you force the plant to sprout side branches thus become more bushy. The sooner you do this the better. Remember that when you do this you have to wait at least a week before you bloom these plants. This is because you heed to give them a chance to grow new side branches.

12. Your plants should get no bigger than 2 feet tall before bloom. If you let them VEG longer they will become too big for light to penetrate inside them.

At this point you have 2 choices.

A. You can let them grow (VEG) until they reach 1.5 or 2 feet in height and switch to bloom.

BLOOM PERIOD is a when you switch your nutrients from vegetative formula to blooming or flowering formula (see point no.6). You start bloom by changing the light cycle of your lights to 12 hours ON and 12 hours OFF. This cycle generally lasts about 8 weeks and culminates with harvest. When you purchase seeds the package should state the appropriate time of the bloom cycle. In general however it is usually 8 weeks.

As the bloom progresses, you should check your plants daily for any signs of sex and remove the males as soon as they show, usually within the first 3 weeks or sooner.

On the 6th week of bloom you can add so called Bud-Boosters. A bud booster is a high Phosphorus nutrient with numbers like 10-52-15 or 1-12-13 (NPK number on every nutrient label). Phosphorus is the middle number of NPK. You can add this nutrient on top of your regular watering cycle, twice in one week, on the 6th week of the blooming cycle. This very specific nutrient adds weight to the plant. After the 6th week most plants are generally ready to consume, however if you spend additional week watering with the bud booster and spend another week watering with plain water, you can add a lot of weight to the plant. During the last week of bloom you should use only plain water in order to leach out any salts and nutrient build ups. This will greatly improve the taste after its dry. Some choose to spend up to 2 weeks leaching the plants. This makes the taste cleaner and the smoke lighter in colour.

You then harvest the crop after roughly 2 months.

B. When they are still in VEG take a clone from each plant, place those cones under a fluorescent light inside a cupboard and bloom the clones in order to find sex of each plant. After 2 weeks the clones would show sex, you could then choose to keep a female plant as a mother for cloning or simply remove the males, and bloom the females.

Note: feminized seeds make horrible mother plants.

A clone taken from a female plant is 100% female as well so keeping a mother plant is a nice shortcut when growing long term.

When you have two closets, one used for Blooming and one for mother plants.

If you have a 400W light you can use it for bloom, but your veg closet can be as low as 100W

If you have a 600W light you can use it for bloom, but your veg closet can be as low as 150W

If you have a 1000W light you can use it for bloom, but your veg closet can be as low as 400W