How to Grow Weed Indoors (7 Tips)
By Nebula Haze The legalization of marijuana is happening, state-by-state, across the US. 15 states have already legalized medical marijuana (some have even decriminalized non-medical marijuana to some degree) and other states are joining the ranks steadily but surely.In addition, many countries around the world are taking a second look at their marijuana laws.
But as marijuana is legalized in more and more places, a major problem is arising.
Where can patients and marijuana enthusiasts get reliable access to a safe marijuana source?
You see, even in those states where medical marijuana is legal, actually growing marijuana is still very very illegal according to federal law.
In fact, people who grow weed to sell often face life-crushing fines and years in jail if they're prosecuted.
Luckily, marijuana is a plant that can be cheaply and easily cultivated at home, and many marijuana enthusiasts are starting to grow their own buds.
I joined their ranks back in 2004...
But, at least for me, When I started researching how to grow marijuana, I was completely overwhelmed as I tried to decide exactly what to do.
There was so much information out there, and everything seemed so complicated.
It almost seemed like you needed a degree in botany to grow this special plant successfully.
Maybe you know what that's like...
After I started growing marijuana in real life, I realized how easy the whole process can be when you just know what to do.
As time has gone on, I've realized that I worried about a lot of things that weren't very important in the beginning and didn't pay nearly enough attention to the fundamentals.
Back then, I didn't even know what the fundamentals were!
If you want to learn from my mistakes, you'll love today's article, because it breaks down the 7 most important things I wish I'd known about growing weed when I first got started.
Without further ado...
Start Growing Weed Indoors with these 7 Tips:
1.) Growing weed doesn't have to be hard.
People make it seem like you need to understand advanced horticulture to grow weed, but it's actually really simple.
I think a lot of people want to feel like they accomplished a major feat because they were able to grow weed.
For example if all you're doing is growing for personal use, a simple hand-water grow with one plant will easily produce at least 6-8 ounces of buds, even if you make a lot of mistakes.
Each grow after that, you'll learn more and more about what works for you. For many people, just growing 1-2 plants at a time is all they'll ever need to keep a regular supply of marijuana.
If you can dedicate a weekend to setting up, ten minutes a day to care, and then a few hours at the end of each grow to drying and curing your buds, that's all you really need to faithfully grow a few pounds of super potent buds each year.
2.) More nutrients does not equal more buds.
It's tempting to want to give your plants as much "good stuff" as you possibly can.
When I first started growing, the thoughts frantically rushed through my head when choosing nutrients, "Which nutrients are the best?! What supplements do I need to use so I get great yields?"
But I've realized that as long as you're giving your cannabis the basic nutrients it needs, you really don't need to know a lot about nutrients, especially in your first grow.
The most important lesson is that LESS IS MORE. Unless your plant is showing signs of a nutrient deficiency, adding more nutrients is not going to do anything except possibly cause nutrient burn or other
You'll get great results with a wide variety of nutrients. Just choose a nutrient system that is formulated for plants like tomatoes. These will come with a nutrient schedule that takes into account a "Vegetative" and "Flowering" stage of the plant.
I personally love the cheap and easy-to-find General Hydroponics Flora Series (available from any hydro store) which can be used at half strength and works perfectly for growing marijuana.
3.) Generally speaking, more light = more buds
So adding more nutrients isn't really going to help you much but adding more light will definitely make a huge difference!
Honestly, if you really want to get the most monster yields, the thing you can do is get the best possibly light setup you can afford. It's important to maintain a comfortable room temperature, so for extra-powerful light setups, you will need to consider how you're going to ventilate all that hot air.
Surprise fact: Low-heat, low-cost CFL light bulbs (available from any grocery store, Walmart, or Home Depot) are perfectly suited to growing marijuana.
4.) Proper airflow and humidity prevents a host of problems. One of the more common grow room ailments is known as "White Powdery Mold".
It actually looks like someone may have accidentally dropped some flour or other white powder on the leaves of your plant.
Easily remedied with SM-90 if caught early, a bad case of White Powdery Mold can ruin a whole crop if it gets out of control. It is NOT safe to consume or smoke cannabis buds that are covered in WPM.
But WPM is EASILY prevented 95% of the time by ensuring that you have great airflow around your plants. Also make sure that things don't get too humid in your grow room, especially towards the end of flowering when your buds are getting thick and dense.
By maintaing great airflow and keeping the humidity under control, you'll probably never have to worry about white powerdery mold.
5.) The strain of marijuana you choose to grow makes a HUGE difference in your results.
It's often worth it to go out of your way to get strains that Particularly fit your needs (that being said, some of the most awesome buds I've ever grown have been bagseed).
Strains make a huge difference in grow patterns, yields, and final potency of your harvested buds.
I highly recommend the "Northern Lights" strain for your first grow, as this strain of marijuana stays short, is resistant to problems, yields an impressive amount of potent buds, and is ready to harvest after a surprisingly short growing period.
The Northern Lights strain has been refined and perfected over several years, so any true Northern Lights seed will grow with similar qualities.
However, Northern Lights seeds will grow WILDLY different from a Super Lemon Haze seed, for example.
Haze seeds grow long and leggy, and take several months to mature before they're ready for harvest.
Sometimes you don't have a choice, and you grow what you can get, but with reliable cannabis seed banks that ship almost anywhere in the world, most people would have better results getting a proven strain for their first grow.
But hey, bagseed that you find can be a fun experiment to grow, too!
6.) For truly killer buds, wait until the perfect time to harvest your buds, and take the time to properly dry and cure them.
After months of waiting, it's easy to jump the gun and harvest your buds too early. It's also easy to get caught up with life and neglect your newly harvested buds during the curing process.
At GrowWeedEasy.com, I've created a complete guide to harvesting, drying and curing your weed but here's the long and short of it:
Wait until the buds on your plants stop growing new white "hairs" (pistols). At this point you still have 2-4 weeks left. When 90% of the remaining pistols have darkened and started curling in, your buds should be fat and ready for harvest.
7.) Take information from marijuana grow forums with a grain of salt.
Just because someone says something is true in the grow forums, it doesn't means that they actually know what they're talking about.
I remember hearing some people say "Oh you can't do this, or if you do that it will kill your plants."
And they were DEAD WRONG.
So don't take one person's word for anything, no matter how convincing they seem.
But, it's also true that some of the best growers are hiding out in the forums, if you just know how to find them.
The key is being about how to spot a good grower.
Here are a few tips: they have lots of pictures and lots of activity on their profile, they are relatively nice to people, their pictures go back a long time, they have pictures of their dried and curing buds.
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I hope this list helps you as much as it would have helped me when I started growing marijuana!
If you haven't started growing marijuana yet, today is the day!
The following 2-page Stealth Growers Cheat Sheet will teach you everything you need to know to discretely start growing a few pounds of marijuana a year out of a spare closet.
Click here to learn how to grow weed and download cheat sheet: http://www.growweedeasy.com/learn-how-to-grow-weed
If you run into any problems while you're growing marijuana, you don't have to figure everything out alone. Use our handy Plant Doctor tool to get professionally diagnosed by the Grow Weed Easy plant doctors: http://growweedeasy.com/plant-doctor
Wondering where to buy marijuana seeds? There's lot of choices, but learn about the marijuana seed bank I recommend here: http://www.growweedeasy.com/seeds
Nebula Haze founded GrowWeedEasy.com in 2010 after growing her own medical marijuana for 6 years in the California Bay Area. She has published dozens of growing articles in print and online and is dedicated to showing others how easy it is to grow marijuana indoors.