by Nebula Haze
When I first started growing weed, I was completely overwhelmed by all the information 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.
Growing weed is easy… especially with today’s tutorial!
In the beginning, I worried about a lot of unimportant things, and didn’t pay nearly enough attention to what actually makes the difference… the fundamentals.
Back then, I didn’t even know what the home grow fundamentals were!
(GrowWeedEasy.com shows you how to grow, in 10 steps, right here)
If you want to learn from my mistakes, you’ll love today’s article, because it breaks down 7 important things I wish I’d known about growing weed when I first started.
1.) A Simple Grow Style Makes Everything Easy
It’s true that being able to grow weed is a useful skill that serves you for life, saving money and giving you unlimited access. Since it is such a useful and relatively rare skill, it can seem like cannabis cultivation must be extremely complicated, difficult, or expensive to get great results.
But truthfully, if you just want great weed for personal use, growing at home can be incredibly easy and straightforward. For example, a simple hand-watered coco grow with basic nutrients can easily give you several ounces of buds off your first plant. Yes, even if you make lots of mistakes.
This simple grow in coco under a Mars Hydro TSL2000 LED with Dyna-Gro nutrients (1 tsp/gallon) gave pro results. Check out the grow journal.
Each grow after the first one, you learn more and more about what works for you. For many growers, growing 1-2 plants at a time is all you need to produce an endless supply of weed.
Shortcut to Mastery: Our 5-week home grow course ensures outstanding results on your very next grow.
What It Takes to Grow Great Weed: Set up in a weekend (with a proven setup). Spend ~10minutes a day on watering and care. At the end of the grow, dry and jar your buds. Those are the key steps to growing an abundance of super potent buds.
10 minutes a day and this could be yours!
2.) Light is the Most Important Part (Not Nutrients!)
A lot of growers focus heavily on choosing the right nutrients and supplements. And it is important to use quality nutrients to get the best results growing weed.
However, if you really want to get the biggest yields, potency, and bud density indoors, light is more important than the specific brand of nutrients.
For outdoor growers, the sun is perfect. But for indoor growers, the best thing you can do for your setup is get the best possible LED grow light for your grow space. A great LED grow light with meh nutrients gets amazing results, but great nutrients with a meh grow light gets subpart results. Don’t skimp on your grow light!
The best cannabis grow lights produce dense, sticky, fat buds, covered in trichomes.
Small grow lights produce small, low-quality buds no matter what you do.
Not sure which grow light to get? Check out this list of the 5 Best LEDs for Growing Weed (beginner-friendly).
A small, cool, relatively cheap LED grow light that gets great results with cannabis plants (5-11 oz per harvest) is the 200W Spider Farmer SF-2000. Check out a full setup with the SF-2000.
For those who want power and huge yields (up to 14 oz, or almost a pound), one of my favorite LED grow lights right now is the 350W HLG 350R. Plants stay healthy and the buds get thick. The only downside is the grow light is super powerful and needs to be turned down for vegetative plants. Bud quality is top-notch. Check out a full setup with the HLG 350R. Here’s my grow journal using this light in a 4’x4′ grow tent.
The HLG 350R is a ridiculously overpowered grow light.
It produces long, fat buds with excellent density and potency.
3.) Proper Airflow Prevents a Host of Problems
Great airflow…
- can help plants grow faster
- strengthens stems
- helps prevent mold and bud rot
- defends against certain bugs like fungus gnats and spider mites
- like most things, just don’t go overboard
Great air circulation makes cannabis plants happy!
Hang your exhaust fan in the tent (pointed out) to reduce fan noise while drawing in tons of fresh air.
Make sure your exhaust fan is pointed out, constantly removing excess heat and humidity.
Don’t go overboard with fans or you’ll give your plants wind burn. Leaves should be gently rustling but not waving around.
Too much wind stresses leaves.
Great airflow, especially with a fan venting out hot air, makes it easier to maintain a great temperature in your environment. Young plants like it on the warmer side (up to 85°F/30°C). But flowering plants love it a bit cooler. In fact, using fans and keeping buds relatively cool in the flowering stage (under 80°F/27°C if possible) helps maximize your overall bud quality, bud appearance, smell, and potency.
And it’s not just buds that benefit. One common grow room ailment 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. WPM loves hot, humid, non-moving air.
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!
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. Prevent WPM by ensuring that you have great airflow around your plants. Keep the grow space from getting too hot or humid, especially towards the end of flowering when your buds are thick and dense.
Great airflow also prevents the bud killer known as bud rot. It even helps prevent some types of bugs from attacking your plants.
And one last benefit: having a nice breeze going around your plants can actually make them grow faster overall.
4.) Strain Makes a HUGE Difference
Even if you grow two strains with the same grow light, grow medium, nutrients, and care, the plants can grow WILDLY different from each other.
These strains were grown in the exact same conditions. The Amnesia Lemon produces big green buds of medium potency, while the Pacific Punch produced purple and sparkly buds that stayed smaller but were incredibly potent. I did nothing different between these plants. The differences are 100% from the genetics.
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. As long as you’re not banking your grow, bagseed and other mystery seeds can be a fun experiment. But 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.
Due to the unpredictability of mystery or found seeds, I highly recommend investing in a proven strain by a trustworthy breeder. This ensures you get superior results every time. Plants with good genetics germinate faster, are more resistant to problems, tend to get better yields, and produce buds with the exact potency/effects you want.
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). Researching strains lets you choose the actual mental/physical effects you want instead of rolling the dice and hoping for the best.
If you look at the description of a strain, you should get a good idea of what to expect, especially with trustworthy breeders.
It’s not just the buds, the plant growth patterns of each strain can produce utterly different beasts, like these OG Kush and Sour Diesel plants grown in the same setup.
It’s helpful to take a little time when buying seeds to…
- Read the strain description – Take a moment to read the details about a strain. That info can be helpful!
- Match strains on height and flowering time – Try to get plants that are the same expected height and flowering length. You usually don’t want one plant to stay short while the other gets tall. It also helps if all the plants need the same amount of time in the flowering stage, which makes it easy to harvest them all at the same time. The more strains you grow at a time, the crazier things can get if you don’t make sure to match strains.
- Pay attention to THC – The THC percentage has a huge effect on how “potent” buds are. The following numbers are not set in stone, but here’s a quick guide of what to expect:
- Under 5% THC – no psychoactive effects, or very small effect
- 5-10% THC – a little psychoactive but not too strong, a “touch of weed”
- 15-20% THC – you feel it but it’s typically not overwhelming, tends to be relaxing and “chill”
- 20-25% THC – medium-high effects, can be overwhelming for some people
- Above 25% THC – usually extremely potent, often best for experienced weed enthusiasts
Good weed starts with good genetics.
Bonus tips for finding good seeds…
- Research the strain – Type “[NAME OF STRAIN] grow journal” (like “Zweet Inzanity grow journal”) into Google.com and see if you can find examples of other people growing the strain. You can learn a lot from the experience of others about both how the plant grows and how the buds will turn out.
- Research the breeder – Take a look at who made the seeds, and go to their website to check them out. Many great breeders have a website with pictures and information about their strains (they may even sell seeds directly). A trusted breeder is much more likely to put out good genetics.
- Listen to other growers – One of the best ways to get solid information about a particular strain. And often pictures, too!
Sometimes you won’t be able to find much about the strain, but usually, you can find out some information about the breeder. One breeder that has been dazzling me lately is Happy Valley Genetics with their Ethos collaborations, including Candy Games #38 (check out my grow journal that included this strain).
I grew two Critical Purple Kush plants under different grow lights (one big, one little) and although they didn’t turn purple for me, both came out amazing. Huge yields, potent smooth buds, and just super easy and forgiving to grow.
Peyote Wifi is a new sparkle monster strain by Seedsman (grown by our student prairie_homegrow)
Learn where to get great cannabis genetics!
5.) More nutrients does not equal more buds
It’s tempting to try to give your plants as much “good stuff” as you possibly can. And it’s true that if you don’t provide enough nutrients to your cannabis plants, they will grow slowly and produce poor yields. However, a lot of growers take this too far.
I totally get it. 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 the truth is, 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 decent environment with base nutrients, you get incredible results without any special supplements whatsoever.
All you need for incredible cannabis yields, growth, and bud quality are base nutrients.
So for a lot of first-time growers, the most important lesson about nutrients might be that LESS IS MORE unless you’re seeing the plant get pale from lack of nutrients.
Going overboard with nutrients & supplements will burn leaf tips, not make buds grow faster!
Not sure which nutrients to get? Try SUPERthrive Foliage Pro (vegetative stage) & Bloom (flowering stage) by Dyna-Gro. These two bottles can be used from seed to harvest to produce amazing results
Use at 1 tsp/gallon. Any grow medium. Super simple cannabis nutrients.
These plants are the result of following the bottle instructions with a SF-2000 LED. Easiest nutrients I’ve ever used. I just smoked some of these buds and it took me an hour to get back to this article.
6.) Double-Check Advice from Forums / Youtube / Social Media (especially diagnosing sick plants)
It’s not worth learning everything from scratch, especially since experienced growers have figured out so much already. Learning from other growers is how you make your plants grow exactly the way you want from your very first grow. That’s the reason we created GrowWeedEasy.com as a comprehensive resource of all home grow discoveries and tutorials for all methods. We also have a free plant doctor to diagnose your sick plants for free.
But when you are listening to grow advice, always make sure they can grow great plants first, or take their advice with a grain of salt. Sometimes, even the most well-meaning growers make mistakes, especially when it comes to newer growers with diagnosing sick plants.
For example, they may give you advice based on their genetics, environment or personal grow style. 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. Just like you should listen to your instincts if a medical doctor tells you something that just seems wrong. No one knows your plants (or body) better than you.
Be extra careful of advice if a user doesn’t have healthy pictures of their cannabis plants.
Seek out experienced growers, but don’t believe everything you hear. Double-check!
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, GrowWeedEasy.com has one of the (in my opinion) best cannabis growing communities!
7.) Harvest and Cure Properly (it’s worth it!)
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 drying and curing process. For truly killer buds, wait until the right time to harvest your weed, and take the time to properly dry and cure them.
Learn how to harvest weed to perfection with our brand new book, HARVEST!
Or check out our free online 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/stigmas). At this point, you probably still have a few weeks left. When 90%+ of the hairs 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 the bud itself appears solid. These are signs the harvest window is open.
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.
Dry buds upside down in a space that’s not hot, humid, or overly dry. After small stems crack instead of bud and buds “pop” off without leaving strings, they are fully dry.
At this point, trim and jar buds. The bag here contains the “trim” (all the leaves I trimmed off before jarring the buds, which will be used to make extracts or edibles). “Burp” the jars daily for 2+ weeks. This “curing” process increases potency, smell, and smoothness.
The buds looked like at the end. Deliciously potent.
Bonus: What to Do If Plants Get Sick
Got a sick cannabis plant?
It happens to every grower. So don’t beat yourself up about it.
Luckily, many problems are easy to fix once you know what you need to do.
GrowWeedEasy.com has a Nutrient Problems & Symptoms page as well as a Bugs & Pests page so you can learn how to diagnose and treat the problems yourself.
Or… get your sick plant diagnosed by our free online Cannabis Plant Doctor!
~~~
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 are lot of choices, but learn about the marijuana seed banks we recommend here: https://www.growweedeasy.com/seeds
About Nebula Haze
Nebula Haze co-founded GrowWeedEasy.com, the most comprehensive home cannabis cultivation resource in the world. Launched in 2010 with her husband Sirius, the website covers every aspect of growing weed at home.
The GrowWeedEasy mission: Simplify the grow process so anyone can grow weed.
Nebula has over a decade of home cultivation experience, and her work has been featured in print and online, helping countless growers achieve a successful and outstanding harvest. She’s grown hundreds of plants and authored hundreds of in-depth articles, guides and tutorials. Don’t miss her side-by-side grow experiments..
Her passion is teaching people how easy it is to grow marijuana indoors. Growing weed doesn’t have to be hard or intimidating! Follow her simple, straightforward guides to grow your own top-self weed at home!
Happy growing!
~Nebula Haze
Jump to…
Beginner Guide: The Basics of Growing Marijuana Indoors
Simplest Cannabis Growing Guide Ever! (if you want something even quicker than the basics guide!)
How Long Does It Take to Grow Weed?
Check These 7 Things & Cure 99% of Marijuana Growing Problems
