7 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I First Started Growing Weed

by Nebula Haze

When I first started growing weed, I was completely overwhelmed by all the elaborate tutorials about growing…

Everything seemed so complicated.

Maybe you know what that's like.

But after I started growing for real, I realized how easy things 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!

(GrowWeedEasy.com has the basics laid all out right here)

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 started!

You may also want to check out the simplest cannabis grow guide ever!



1.) Growing weed doesn't have to be hard

I think a lot of people want to feel like they accomplished a major feat because they were able to grow weed.

But truthfully, if you just need medicine for personal use, growing can be incredibly easy. Even if all you're doing is a simple hand-watered grow, you can easily end up with several ounces of buds off your first plant, even if you make lots 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 medicine supply.

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 dry and cure your buds, that's all you really need to faithfully grow an abundance of super potent buds each year!



2.) More nutrients does not equal more buds

It's tempting to try to give your plants as much "good stuff" as you possibly can.

When I first started growing I remember the thoughts frantically rushing 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 give your cannabis the basic nutrients needed to grow, you really don't need to know a lot about nutrients. In fact, if you ensure your plants are growing in a perfect environment, you can get incredible results using just basic nutrients, without any special supplements whatsoever!

So for a lot of first-time growers, the most important lesson about nutrients might be that LESS IS MORE.

Going Overboard With Nutrients & Supplements Will Burn Leaf Tips, Not Make Buds Grow Faster!





3.) Light is probably the most important part of the growing equation

Honestly, if you really want to get the biggest yields indoors, the best thing you can do is get the best possible light setup for your grow space.

Questions about grow lights? You're in luck because we have a grow light guide that breaks down the differences between each different type of grow light for growing cannabis!

4.) The strain makes a HUGE difference of your results

It's often worth it to choose a particular strain that best fit your needs. Being able to choose your strain gives you a lot of power over the final effects! That being said, some great buds have been grown from mystery seeds.

If you buy a seed of "Northern Light" strain by a particular breeder, it should grow very similarly to other "Northern Light" seeds from the same breeder. This is most true with trustworthy breeders.

However, a Northern Light seed will grow WILDLY different from a Chocolope seed, or even a Northern Light seed from a different breeder.

For example, while a Northern Light plant (by Nirvana) will stay short and may be ready to harvest in just a few months, a Chocolope plant (by DNA Genetics) tends to grow tall and may take several weeks longer to mature before being ready for harvest, even if the two plants are grown in the exact same conditions!

When you're starting out, if you have a lot of room to grow and if it's not what you're banking your whole grow on, bagseed or other mystery seeds can be a fun experiment.

But if you're serious about growing your own supply, you might not want to wait for months (and pay for electricity all that time!) with the possibility of harvesting subpar quality bud and/or tiny yields at the end.

Because of the unpredictability of mystery seeds, I highly recommend investing in a proven strain by a trustworthy breeder if you want to get superior results, because plants with good genetics are more resistant to problems, often get better yields, and produce more potent buds! Plus you can make sure every single plant produces buds by getting feminized seeds (as opposed to regular seeds where half the plants are male and don't produce buds), and you can also choose the actual mental/physical effects you want instead of rolling the dice and hoping for the best!

This Blue Thai plant was able to produce big yields even though it was ready to harvest just 60 days after it started making buds. This quick flowering time combined with huge yields is only possible because of its fabulous genetics!





5.) For truly killer buds, wait until the right time to harvest your weed, and take the time to properly dry and cure them

After months of waiting, it's easy to jump the gun and harvest your plants too early. It's also easy to get caught up with life and neglect your newly harvested buds during the curing process.

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" (pistils). At this point you probably still have a few weeks left. When 90% of the pistils have darkened and started curling in, your buds should be fat and ready for harvest. You can get even more accurate results by looking at the glittery "trichomes" on the buds under a magnifier, as these turn cloudy white when the buds have reached their highest potency!

This bud is ready to harvest. All the white hairs have darkened and curled in and if you click the picture and zoom in close, you can see that nearly all the sparkly trichomes are milky white, indicating that this bud has reached the highest levels of THC!

6.) Proper airflow prevents a host of problems

Great airflow…

One of the more common grow room ailments is known as White Powdery Mold. It's particularly common when indoor growers put a plant in a closet or cupboard without really doing anything else to enhance the environment, because this often leads to hot, stagnant air near your plants.

When you have bad airflow, you may come across this. WPM 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's left to go 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 and preventing the grow space from getting too humid, especially towards the end of flowering when your buds are getting thick and dense.

Great airflow also prevents the bud killer known as bud rot and even helps prevent some types of bugs from attacking your plants.

And that's not the only benefit, having a nice breeze going around your plants can actually make them grow faster overall!

Great air circulation makes cannabis plants happy!

7.) Seek out experienced growers, but always take every piece of advice with a grain of salt!

It's not worth re-learning everything from scratch, when you could get information from experienced growers to make your plants grow exactly how you want from your very first grow!

But, sometimes even the most well-meaning and experienced growers will give advice based on their genetics, environment or personal grow style, and it might not necessarily apply to your particular situation. I highly recommend to always listen to your instincts if advice just doesn't seem right. No one knows your plants better than you!

These plants were grown together from seed in the same environment. One yielded 6 ounces, the other yielded 9 ounces. Genetics makes a huge difference! Now imagine if they had been grown in different setups with different grow styles. Advice that works for one plant might not be good advice for the other!

All that being said, some of the most experienced and talented growers are sharing their knowledge online, and it's worth seeking out online growing communities during your personal growing journey!

If you're looking for a friendly and safe place to talk to other growers online, GWE has one of the (in my opinion) best cannabis growing communities!

~~~

I hope that helps you as much as it would have helped me when I started growing!

If you haven't started growing marijuana yet, today is the day!<!–

Wondering where to buy marijuana seeds? There's lot of choices, but learn about the marijuana seed banks we recommend here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/seeds

About Nebula Haze

Nebula Haze founded GrowWeedEasy.com with Sirius Fourside in 2010. They have published hundreds of growing articles in print and online, and are dedicated to showing others how easy it is to grow marijuana indoors!

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