New to Growing Cannabis? Here Are Some Helpful Instructions.

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This page is dedicated to providing a foundation for learning our approach for beginners starting one of their first few grows. This is a start to get you off on the right path. It is by no means the only approach one can take. There may be some conflicting information between what is listed here and what you may have found on other sites or on You Tube, we are not declaring that this is the best way to grow or that others are wrong, this is just our collection of knowledge and experience that we are passing on to you. We do not suggest mixing approaches as what is working for one person is part of their entire process and missing some key points of another person's process could be detrimental to your grow if you try and incorporate it into the information presented here. That is, until after your first couple of grows and all this starts making more sense, then you are going to do a lot of your own experimenting!

The below information is the basics of how to grow. There can be a lot of options at any one step for media, nutrients etc. Therefore we just offer the basic guidance below. Please see our other page, Product Guidance for Beginners, for details on what we suggest for soil, nutrients, lights and kits, and what your options are beyond the below topics.

At this stage you have planted the seed and you are anxious for it to sprout! Have patience, it will breach in due time.

Once it breaches the surface, you are in the seedling stage. We suggest keeping low light on them 24/7 for 10 days or until the first set of leaves are at least 1 inch long each. Somewhere between 300 and 500 PPFD. (PPFD is a measure of the intensity of your light) Start at 300 for at least 6 days, you can increase to 400 for the next 4 days and 500 at day 10 or 11. You should have a method to measure the intensity of light, we do not suggest using a phone app as most people do not have cameras that can do a good job of reading it. We suggest using an inexpensive 3 in 1 soil meter. You need this to test your soil moisture as well. But at this stage, you can just brush a small bit of soil away from the spot you watered in to see if it is still damp, feed water when needed. 

Only a very small amount of water is needed at this stage, less than 4 ounces is generally used as only the spot where the seedling breached is going to be watered. You can use nutrients specific for the seedling stage like iBEX Grow Seed or just use PH balanced tap water, PH to 6.0 to 6.5. We also suggest using spray at this stage so as not to disturb the root. Nutrients are not required during the seedling stage as the first two leaves, called cotyledons, have enough nutrients in them to grow the first two real leaves that will take over photosynthesis. Any nutrients you give the plant at this stage should be to help the roots develop. So products like the afore mentioned iBEX Grow Seed or iBEX Catapult, you can even just mix up some light bloom and micro nutrients like Advanced Nutrients' Sensi Bloom product. Mix it at about 25% of what is recommended for bloom on the bottle. After the 10 day 24 hour light cycle is up, switch to an 18 hours on and 6 hours off schedule.

To start the flowering cycle, if you are growing autoflower seeds, there is no need to change your lighting schedule. If you are growing photoperiod seeds, you will need to change your light schedule to 12 hours on and 12 hours off in order to trigger flowering. And make sure there are no light leaks. If you have to go into the tent after lights out, use a green light to see in a completely dark room. Otherwise, your photoperiod may return back to veg stage. Even if it's just 15 seconds of light, that could trigger a photoperiod to revert back to veg. (We know this from experience)

When you see the first white hairs coming out of the center of each cola or bud site, you are entering the flowering stage. This is what many people refer to as preflower. During this transition period as your grow changes from veg into flowering, it typically takes about a week to two weeks depending on your cultivar and your environment, mainly your environment. This is also a sensitive stage that is often overlooked. It is important to start transitioning over to bloom stage nutrients but not all at once. 

Consider that each day or so over approximately a week, the nutrient needs of veg become reduced and the nutrient needs of flower increase. If you do not do this then there is a fair chance of getting a Phosphorus or Potassium deficiency or if you switch abruptly, you could get a Nitrogen deficiency. You have a few options on how you want to manage this transition. 

A base starting point is to mix a half gallon of your grow nutrients and a half gallon of your flower nutrients and pour them into the pot separately. The first two feedings, feed 3/4 of your normal feed of grow and 1/4 of bloom. The next two feedings, feed 1/2 and 1/2. The next two feedings feed ¼  grow and ¾ bloom, after that feed full bloom and discard or use in another plant any remaining grow mix. (This schedule is assuming you are watering every day. If not then assume an every other day feeding and each feeding should increase so as to ensure the transfer happens over about a week time)

Another option is to buy a PK additive like PK from Athena Ag, Bud Ignitor from Advanced Nutrients or Ultimate PK from Mills. Adding this to your grow mix will help bridge the transition. 

This is also your final sign that you should use an insect and pest repellant as you don’t want to spray anything on your flowers once they start developing. Here you have multiple options. 

Optic Foliar has a spray concentrate named EVIOS that is good for preventing insects, Organicide is another good option but it makes your plant smell a lot like a fish pond for a bit, Captain Jacks from Bonide is really good but we mostly use this after an infestation, or IPM from Athena is also a good solution.

In the flowering stage it is important to control that humidity, flowers as they stretch and thicken can easily grow moldy, have white powdery mildew or even just prevent your buds from becoming the healthiest they can be. Keep your humidity under 65% but also try and keep it above 50% as your plants do like some humidity. Many sources for learning will say to keep it above 40% but we find that 40% changes our rate of evaporation on feedings and can dry our soil out before we expect it.

Now we just sit and watch our plants every day in fascination of how the cannabis plant forms, we always watch for any issues like drooping, leaf tacoing, leaves flipping over or discoloration. Also keep an eye out for pests, small sliver streaks, small discolored grouped leaf spots or any small damage on the underside of leaves. 

As beginner growers you will tend to want to jump on an issue right away and will typically make drastic changes or multiple changes. Be patient, make small changes never large changes, make one change at a time, never multiple changes. And I cannot stress this enough, on YouTube you will hear people telling you to cut off any discolored leaves. I recommend you do not do this, leave them, see if a pattern develops over a few days or even weeks. When a leaf becomes discolored it is most likely because of one of three things, it is turned off to suck nutrients from, if we cut off the leaf, we remove the plant’s food source and in the instance of a nutrient deficiency we just make the effect worse. Next reason is because it is not getting light, if you look down at the plant from the top and you can see that it indeed is not getting light then it is OK to cut the leaf off as in this instance the plant is not feeding off the leaf it is just not performing any photosynthesis. And third reason is issues with temperature and lighting. Obviously there could be more issues but these are the top three issues we generally see and why we recommend to wait and see what the pattern is so you can correctly diagnose any issues before diving in with too much of a change or too many changes. You should easily be able to see a pattern in two or three days after you first notice it.

When there is about two weeks left of your grow you are going to want to do a flush. Some people take this to the extreme and dump gallons and gallons of water through the soil. If you have been providing the correct amount of nutrients you will not need to dump gallons through. At most we suggest pushing 2 gallons of water through 5 gallons of soil. The purpose of flushing is to remove nitrogen and sulfates, you might hear from others that you want to remove all nutrients, this is a common misconception. You still want to feed your plant micro nutrients like calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, manganese and zinc. So we recommend finishing the final two weeks-ish with a product like Advanced Nutrients Flawless Finish or Athena’s Fade product after the water flush. These continue to provide the essential nutrients for a strong finish to your buds.

Now, we just have to sit again and wait, watching our beauties. You want to get a strong loupe 60 x or digital microscope to see the trichomes. You will see clear, cloudy and finally amber or other colored trichomes. You want to generally harvest your buds when you have about 20% amber trichomes. You will of course learn to adjust this to your own liking, but this would be a good place to start. 

When curing we have found that using Ball Mason jars are the best way for home curing without spending $1600 on a Cannatrol drying and curing system. The second best method would be a curing bag from Boveda. There are other curing bags out there too but we only have experience with the Boveda bags. 

Curing can take weeks or months so we know you want to dip into the new harvest but we need just a little more patience. This step is similar to allowing wine or beer to ferment. 

Place your harvest into the proper size jar or bag and keep about 25% of the jar open for air. If you fill it up too much and don’t leave that air then it won’t cure properly which could cause mold problems or slow curing.

We also suggest putting a Boveda moisture pack and a humidity meter in the jar. You want to keep the humidity around 62% relative humidity. A range between 58% and 64% will be OK but that perfect point is about 62%. 

At first you will want to burp the jar after 2 days, this is just opening the lid and letting it breathe for a minute or two. We suggest burping every 2 days for the first 8 to 10 days. Then burping once a week after that unless you see it sitting at 64% or higher, then burp as needed to try and keep that RH level down. 

We have tried our harvest at 2 weeks after and up to 6 weeks after jarring. Each strain, each nutrient program etc. is different. As of writing this up, we have one strain that we grew two different ways with two different nutrient programs. One plant was put into a ½ gallon jar the other into three 32 oz jars. The ½ gallon jar was ready after 2 weeks of being “canned”, the other is almost done. But the general consensus is that it takes about a month to cure. 

There is no real good way to know when you are done curing but a good cue is, does it smell green still? There is a smell along with your juicy terpenes that is similar to what we describe as a tea smell. In the beginning that smell will be strong but as you get closer to a finished cure, that tea smell gets smaller and smaller and your terpenes get stronger and stronger. When you smell the terpenes more than the tea, it might be a good idea to try your harvest and see if it needs more time. 

Once done curing, enjoy the fruits of your labor and make sure to invite some friends over for a taste testing session! Congrats on your first of hopefully many grows to come! And it only gets better from here my friends!