Communicated Content – You may have to fail a few times to get it right because marijuana growing is a skill that only most patients perfect. We explain some of the intricacies here.
The word weed may be right or misleading, depending on how you look at it. Is this plant the hardest thing on earth to grow? Not really, if you have the patience and resources. You will find it quite complicated if you don’t have the time to put in. There are enough resources, such as the free interviews with growers on https://askgrowers.com/, that will shed some light if you are willing to invest in some reading, so one cannot say they failed for lack of resources. Before you delve into growth, you may want to look at the strains on the market and know what you want for your patch.
This article will look into what goes into growing marijuana indoors and outdoors.
The Nature of Cannabis
If you are looking at how to grow weed, you have already complied with the laws governing it in your locality. You may now want to delve into the seeds, genealogy, and strains. There are male, female, and hermaphrodite plants. The three known and widely studied categories of strains are Sativa, Indica, and little-known Ruderalis. There is also a hybrid of Indica and Sativa. Sativa and Indica strains are photoperiod, meaning they grow depending on how much light they get. Ruderalis don’t rely on changes in light cycles to flower as they will do so when their maturity comes.
There are three important phases in the growth of a cannabis plant: seedling, vegetative, and flowering phases. The change between the phases is gradual, so you have to keenly watch and respond to the plant’s needs at each stage for a bountiful harvest. The strains yield differently, and their difficulty or ease of growing sometimes determines the product’s price on the market.
Here’s a rough schedule of how a cannabis plant behaves from growth to harvest:
- Germination: 1-7 days;
- Seedling phase: 2-3 weeks;
- Vegetative stage: 2-8 weeks;
- Pre-Flowering: 1-2 weeks;
- Flowering: 6-8 weeks;
- Then, Harvest.
Power Requirements
Each stage will require lighting at certain levels. The germination stage is where the seeds need no light and will preferably be in the dark until they come up. The seedling stage requires more light for 18-24 hours, so indoor growers have to have enough light to keep this going for this long. The flowering phase requires 12 hours of light daily if you grow them indoors and the same number of hours in darkness.
You will need LED lights as they control the amount of light that gets to the plant. A plant requires 200 – 300 Watts of lighting to grow optimally, so you will need to invest in the appropriate number to take care of this sufficiently. Distance matters, too, as the ideal spacing is 12 to 18 inches from the plant. Any closer, and you will burn your plants. As your plants grow, they’ll get longer, and this spacing adjustment will be required. Regarding lighting, you do not want to forget to turn it off or on, as this will affect your plant’s yield immediately. You also want to maintain a routine or schedule for when you turn them on and off.
Fun Fact: If you plan to keep your plants in the vegetative phase so you can grow new plants from the resulting cuttings, keep the lights on longer to prevent them from moving to the flowering stage.
Outdoor or Indoor Growing
Your location could determine this because if you live in areas with few daylight hours or amounts that would not sustain growth throughout a season, you may only have indoor growing as an option. There are arguments in the cannabis community that outdoor products are more flavorful than those grown indoors since no lighting spectrum is better than the sun.
If you are growing marijuana outdoors, your investment will be much smaller as you will use the sun and naturally occurring soil. Positioning is everything as you want the plants to take advantage of the daylight as much as possible. Balconies work well as long as there are no obstacles, but you would be even better off with hills facing the sun so the weed can soak in as much as possible. Naturally, you would have to live in an area with as much natural lighting as possible. The good thing about indoor growing is the control over the light, but it requires a hefty investment, too, as a greenhouse and other lighting needs are not cheap.
While growing, you will need to consider other smaller factors that greatly impact your harvest. Nutrients and pests are look-out-for features that could make or break your yield. Foremost, the soil needs to be rich in Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium as they are the macronutrients the plant will feed on the most. You will also need to supplement Sulphur, Magnesium, and Calcium along the way through fertilizers.
Conclusion
You cannot afford to ignore the market if you are planning on farming cannabis for profits. Factors influencing pricing include strain, genetics, growth method, and location. Even though some people say outdoor plants yield the best flavor, the most intricate details are factored in under-controlled growing. This means you can grow the most delicate hybrid under controlled conditions. Thus, indoor-grown cannabis is costlier than its outdoor counterpart, partly due to the cost of production.
