This side-by-side grow journal experiment was originally documented on my Instagram profile. I think you’ll find this side-by-side marijuana grow experiment just as intriguing now as I did then. I copied over all the posts so you can enjoy this grow journal as if you were watching in real-time (that’s why each post is worded as if it’s happening now).

What effect does it have on cannabis clones to grow them in coco coir vs super soil? This grow journal’s results were not at all what I expected. From yields to THC levels to terpenes, there were stark differences between the coco and soil grow tents.

Here’s a sneak peek of the two tents just before harvest. Jump straight to harvest day if you want to skip to the end, but I think it was one of my most riveting grows and you’ll enjoy reading each update as it happens.

Read on to see the Coco Coir vs “Just Add Water” Super Soil side-by-side marijuana grow journal…

Coco vs Soil Setup & Supplies (one set for each tent)

Grow Light

• ES300 LED grow light (discontinued) – I would strongly recommend the Mars Hydro TSL2000 300W LED grow light as a replacement. In our tests, it gets similar or better results and actually costs much less.

Grow Space (tent with exhaust fan)

• Grow tent – 2’x4’x6′ grow tent (also listed as 48”x24”x72”)
• 6″ exhaust fan – AC Infinity Cloudline T6 – Exhaust fans are used to remove heat from the grow space and bring in fresh air for the plants. Any 300W LED makes some heat and it’s good to have an exhaust fan so plants get plenty of CO2 in the air. You also need an exhaust fan if you want to stop smells because a carbon filter doesn’t work without a strong exhaust fan. The AC Infinity is quiet but expensive; the Vivosun 6″ 390 CFM exhaust fan is a cheaper alternative that’s both stronger and louder). Learn how to vent heat with an exhaust fan.
• (optional) 6″ carbon filter connected to the exhaust fan with 6″ ducting – Carbon filters are used to stop smells from leaving the grow space. Learn about carbon filters.

Here’s a picture of a grow in this setup. I’m using the same tent, LED panel, grow medium, pots, nutrients, etc. (the carbon filter is above the light.)

Plant Containers

• 5-gallon fabric pots
• 14″ plant saucers (the circumference of the bottom of the fabric pots is 12″ so this is a little bigger to catch any runoff water ).

Grow medium

• Coco coir tent
  • Mother Earth Coco + Perlite Mix
  • Nutrients: General Hydroponics Flora trio + Calimagic
  • I followed the mixing instructions on the sides of the bottles except cut in half
• “Just Add Water” Super Soil Tent
  • Nature’s Living Soil concentrate mixed with soil for the bottom 1/3 of each pot (this holds the majority of nutrients that will be slowly released through the grow)
  • Coco Loco soil – Topped the remaining 2/3 of each pot with Coco Loco soil (a high-quality soil that has a bit of coco, ideal for “Just Add Water” mixes).
  • Read my full review of Nature’s Living Soil with step-by-step instructions on how to use it

Strains

• Power Africa
• Peyote Critical
• Critical Purple Kush

Peyote Critical is the strain that turned purple in this grow journal!

July 5

This is a clone tent with two little autoflowering solo cup plants finishing up in the back. I’m amazed what this HLG 65 LED grow light can support with only 65 watts of light!

These clones are rooted and recently put in solo cups. I’m going to grow them out a little then they get put into their final homes.

August 20

The top plants are in coco coir (Mother Earth Coco Plus Perlite Mix) and bottom plants are clones in Super Soil (Nature’s Living compost as base and filled the rest of the way with Coco Loco soil).

Here are the clones about 3 weeks from being put into the tents (they were already rooted so they’re bigger than seedlings of similar age).

Top is coco coir (purple stakes). Bottom is Super soil (green stakes). I’ll keep them in this order for the whole grow journal to make it easier to follow along.

Second picture was after some training. Plants were spread out and tied down.

So far the plants in the super soil tent are ahead. It took a little longer for plants to adjust to the coco. However, they’re both starting to grow fast and the differences in growth patterns will soon be more obvious.

September 5

The coco tent is on top, super soil tent on bottom. The clones are in 5-gallon fabric pots with the LED grow lights. They went into the tents on August 1 so they’re a little over a month old. So far the super soil plants are bigger!

Coco on top, super soil on bottom

The super soil plants are also darker green, with signs of Nitrogen toxicity (“the claw”) from getting high levels of Nitrogen from the super “hot” soil. N is stored in dark green leaves and can be accessed by the plant later. That is why lower leaves and then the whole plant turns yellow when Nitrogen gets low.

Top view

Lots of Nitrogen is fine in the vegetative stage (maybe even good), but high amounts of Nitrogen can suppress bud growth in the second half of the flowering stage. All of these plants will get defoliated at the start of flowering, which removes a lot of Nitrogen from the “system”. Since I’m only giving water to the plants in super soil, those plants are also continually using up nutrients in their soil.

It’s a delicate balance because I also want the nutrients in the soil to last until harvest. That’s why I am not washing any nutrients away with runoff water.

Luckily, in a super soil setup, the plant has a greater ability to “pick and choose” nutrients (just like nature) compared to giving mineral nutrients in the water.

The coco plants are about 11 inches tall and the super soil plants are 12 inches tall. I will probably initiate the flowering stage soon because they’ll about double in size and I’d like them to be 2 feet tall at harvest.

I love how easy it is to care for the super soil plants. Plain water every 3 days and they’re good to go! Whenever I mix up coco nutrient water it makes me appreciate the simplicity of a “just add water” grow!

So far the Nature’s Living Soil tent has been great to use and I feel like the plants growing in it are doing better so far.

September 12

Today I defoliate the cannabis plants as they enter the flowering stage.

These 3 plants were changed to a 12/12 schedule a few days ago to initiate flowering. I can already see the first white hairs/pistils appearing on the future bud sites.

I typically defoliate right at the beginning of the flowering stage and again about 3 weeks later.

Before and After Example

Given what I’m going for, this is a pretty light defoliation. I lollipopped the plants, which means I removed lower growth and small branches that will never make it to the top canopy. I also removed all big fan leaves on long stems, and focused on removing leaves blocking light from reaching future bud sites.

I’ll remove more tomorrow (focusing on removing small lower stems and big leaves) but I’m done for today. I don’t want to stress the plants and defoliating over 2-3 days helps prevent that.

This 2-step defoliation process “hacks” the natural plant processes and forces it to spend more energy on developing buds, and less on vegetative growth. Buds never seem to truly get fat if they’re hidden among a bunch of leaves or located at the bottom of the plant. Buds need to be near the top with direct exposure to light and air to fatten up properly.

Some plants (especially certain sativa strains) don’t really get leafy and defoliation is unnecessary, while other plants get so bushy the leaves are covered in wet spots and you have to defoliate them to prevent the chance of mold! Most plants are somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.

Another bonus to defoliation is it helps keep down the humidity during the crucial flowering stage. High humidity in flowering causes loose buds and can trigger bud rot.

September 15

Defoliation in action!

Several growers asked for more tips on how I defoliate my plants after my last post. These plants started a 12/12 light schedule a week ago and are beginning to make flowers/white hairs (sometimes called pistils).

I typically defoliate right after plants start flowering and again about 3 weeks later. I did these lightly a few days ago and finished up today. I’ll go again in 3 weeks.

Today, I focused on removing small stems that will never reach the top canopy. I removed big fan leaves on long stems and “lollipopped” the plants.

Removed big fan leaves on long stems

“Lollipopped” plant by removing growth on the bottom of the plant that would otherwise be in permanent shadow.

This branch is several inches shorter than all the others, plus is on the front outside edge where it’s touching the tent when I close the door. I don’t think it’ll ever make it to the top of the plant. I decided to remove it.

Here’s that branch after I cut it off

For example, this growing tip on the outside edge will never reach the top canopy so I removed it.

Sorry little buddy

Here’s an example of one plant that’s been defoliated and lollipopped (left) and one that hasn’t been touched yet (right). I hope that helps you see how it looks before and after.

And here’s all three plants in the coco tent before (top) and after defoliation and lollipop (bottom)

Top view

Why do I defoliate? A few reasons.

1.) I’ve found that buds only fatten up when they get access to plenty of light and air. Buds lower on the plant or hidden in shadow never get big or dense. By removing bud sites that will never get light or air, I’m helping the plant focus on the best quality buds. As a result, buds at harvest tend to be bigger, tighter, and more dense. When plants are defoliated properly, they produce fewer but higher quality buds.

2.) Some plants get so leafy that their leaves lay all over each other and cause wet spots. That was happening here. Left unchecked, too-leafy plants are more likely to get powdery mildew.

3.) Leaves constantly release water vapor into the air which raises the humidity. High humidity in the second half of the flowering stage causes buds to grow more loose and can trigger bud rot. It gets humid where I live (over 70% RH outside on some days). I already use a powerful dehumidifier when necessary, but defoliating plants also helps keep the humidity down.

4.) Defoliated plants are way easier to trim after harvest.

Does defoliation increase yields? It’s possible to defoliate too much and stunt your plant, so, to maximize yields, only defoliate plants that are bushy. Some strains don’t need to be defoliated. But with bushy plants, this type of defoliation consistently produces bigger buds of higher bud quality compared to cannabis grown like wild bushes. An upcoming side-by-side grow will test defoliation vs wild. Also check out my grow journal featuring autoflowering plants with some being topped, trained, and defoliated while the others were left alone.

September 17

They have been on 12/12 for 10 days so far. I didn’t notice a major difference between the tents in the vegetative stage. The super soil plants look darker and are a little bigger, but the tents have been mostly comparable.

Top is coco, bottom is super soil.

Today I noticed the first notable difference… The super soil buds are more developed so far. I included pictures of each plant’s buds matched with their clones in the other tent. I can’t tell yet whether the super soil plants are flowering faster or the buds are just getting bigger.

Power Africa (coco on top, super soil on bottom)

Peyote Critical (coco on top, super soil on bottom)

Purple Critical Kush (coco on top, super soil on bottom)

I have to admit I’m really surprised!

This last picture shows the leaves under regular light (coco top, super soil bottom)

For some reason, the coco leaves look much lighter under the LEDs, but as you can see they’re similar in natural lighting. In fact, all the leaves look a bit dark. I can’t do anything about the super soil plants since they’re getting their nutrients from the soil but I will slightly pull back the nutrients on the coco.

September 23 – Day 16 of flowering

Here are the plants when I opened the tent this morning (coco on top, super soil on bottom)

Coco plants (purple labels) – With the coco I’m still using the General Hydroponics Flora trio plus CaliMagic as nutrients, given at 6.2 pH.

Super soil plants (green labels) – Super soil is receiving plain tap water at 6.8 pH. I have high-pH tap water so I’ve been adjusting the pH down using Earth Juice PH Down citric crystals (make sure to shop around because usually it’s way too expensive on Amazon).

I have been surprised every step of this grow.

Initially, the super soil plants were growing faster. Nature’s Living Soil seems to produce faster growth than Kind super soil.

I started 12/12 when the coco plants were 11″ tall and super soil plants were 13″ tall.

The super soil buds developed faster. I couldn’t tell whether they were ahead or the buds were simply bigger. Now the super soil plants have mostly stopped getting taller and are fully in flowering mode. They only grew about an inch over the last week. Buds are developing beautifully.

The coco plants are acting completely different. They are obviously in the midst of a major flowering stretch and are growing almost an inch taller every day. They’ve caught up to the super soil plants in size and don’t seem to be slowing down. Their buds are developing, too, but it’s hard to even see how far the buds go down into the plants because they’re getting wild and bushy.

Here’s the view directly from the side so you can better see the difference in height (coco on top, super soil on bottom)

Since these plants are clones in otherwise identical conditions, it seems like the only factor causing these differences is the grow medium and how they’re getting nutrients (from the soil vs nutrients in the water itself).

The super soil plants are growing in a more orderly way and the buds are ahead developmentally, but will the soon-to-be-larger coco plants overtake them for yields once they’ve stopped stretching?

Here they are (with flash on) to help you see the buds and how they’re forming. This also helps you see how bushy/leafy the coco plants have gotten.

What other differences besides yields and plant growth will we discover after harvest? I’m getting the buds lab-tested for terpenes and cannabinoids so we’ll have as many data points as possible at the end to compare.

Just as a side note, this is my first grow with the V2 version of this LED (V1 was great) and so far the grow is going as smooth as silk.

All the cannabis plants are super happy under the LED grow light.

You can never truly rate a grow light until after harvest but at least in the vegetative stage, I noticed that these plants seem a bit less sensitive to problems compared to other LED grow lights I’ve tried.

LED grow lights like the HLG models (@horticulturelightinggroup) get excellent yields per watt with great bud quality. I highly recommend them. But like nearly all LEDs, I’ve noticed that plants tend to be more sensitive to environmental issues, watering, and pH/nutrient problems in the vegetative stage compared to fluorescent lights or HIDs like MH/LEC/HPS.

Not so with the plants under these LEDs. The plants in both tents are spotlessly green from top to bottom. No sign of stress anywhere.

Now that plants are flowering, I’m excited to see how buds continue to develop. So far the buds look great. I can’t wait to see the results after harvest!

September 28

Just hit 3 weeks of 12/12 today and starting to notice some major differences between each grow medium.

Coco plants appear on top in pictures. Super soil on bottom in pics.

This is what they look like in natural light

Differences in plants: Super soil plants didn’t stretch as much as coco after 12/12 so Super Soil plants are smaller overall. Coco plants still stretching. I noticed the Super Soil plant with the biggest buds (Peyote Critical, left plant in tent pics) appears lighter in color around the biggest buds and is starting to lose a few lower yellow leaves like a Nitrogen deficiency. It’s obviously using more nutrients than the others. I want all the Super Soil plants to have plenty of nutrients so they all got top dressed with a sprinkling of Super Soil concentrate to hopefully bring more nutrients down to the roots when watering.

Differences in bud size: Super Soil plants have bigger/more developed buds. I don’t know whether the buds are ahead in development or just bigger. I’ll be able to tell better once the pistils/hairs start darkening and curling in. If Super Soil buds start turning dark sooner I’ll know it’s just ahead. If they start turning at the same time I’ll know that the buds are just bigger.

Here are pictures of all the buds for comparison (from left to right in each tent).

Power Africa (coco top, super soil bottom)

Peyote Critical (coco top, super soil bottom)

Purple Critical Kush (coco top, super soil bottom)

Differences in bud appearance: Two of the clones (Power Africa and Peyote Critical, picture 1 & 2) have significantly more trichomes on the Super Soil plants. One clone (Critical Purple Kush, picture 3) has a a bit more sparkle in the coco tent.

I wasn’t expecting to see noticeable differences so early. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

October 2

Have you ever seen such long stacked buds under a mid-size LED grow light? This bud structure is more typical of big-bulb HID grow lights like LEC and HPS.

The strain is Critical Purple Kush. No sign of purple yet but the buds are dusted in frost already.

I’m beyond pleased with these LEDs so far. The plants weren’t at all sensitive in the vegetative stage, unlike some other LEDs. They grew green and healthy from head to toe.

I supercropped one branch on this plant, but more for visual symmetry than necessity. It was getting tall in a back corner where it would have been fine except that it marred my beautiful flat canopy.

I’ve noticed plants often seem to produce excellent plant structure under LEDs, with nice thick buds, but usually, buds don’t go as deep into the plant as this one.

My coco plant buds seemed to have stretched significantly more than their clones being grown in “just add water” soil under the same LEDs. I continue to be surprised by how differently the clones are growing when the only difference is grow medium.

October 4

These plants are 4 weeks into the flowering stage (day 28 of 12/12).

Coco tent on top, soil tent on bottom.

In natural light

The differences between the tents is easy to see at this point. The coco plants stretched more and have longer buds, while the soil plants didn’t stretch as much but buds are significantly fatter. Given the different plants structures its hard to guess anything about yields.

The soil plants were looking a bit pale (it’s a lot of hard work making all those fat buds!) with a few lower leaves turning yellow from lack of Nitrogen. They were hungry for more nutrients and must have used up what was in the soil. I top-dressed them with 1 tablespoon each of super soil compost (I had extra Nature’s Living Soil concentrate from when I originally made the soil). The idea was for nutrients would trickle down to the roots with each watering.

After a few days the color is better and no more yellow leaves so it seemed to have done the trick. I’ll probably top dress again before the next watering for another nutrient boost.

It’s adding nutrients to top dress, but still technically “just add water”. What do you think? I think most growers wouldn’t mind sprinkling some compost on the soil in the flowering stage. They’re in 5-gallon pots, and it obviously wasn’t enough soil to last them until harvest. Perhaps next time I’ll put them in 10-gallon pots and see if that has enough nutrients to last until harvest without needing a top dressing.

October 11

Top of each picture is the coco plants, bottom are the soil plants. Week 5 after initiating 12/12.

Here they are in natural light

Next I show each plant with a closeup bud picture from each tent (plants listed in order from left to right in each tent). Since the beginning of flowering, the coco buds have been longer while the soil buds are fatter. That makes it hard to compare them to estimate yields.

Power Africa (coco top, super soil bottom)

Peyote Critical (coco top, super soil bottom)

Critical Purple Kush (coco top, super soil bottom)

A big difference I’ve noticed is the trichome production stays closer to the buds in the soil grow, while the trichomes on the coco plants are spilling everywhere on the plant. The soil buds are trichome-covered but their fan leaves barely have any trichomes at all. With the coco plants, the fan leaves are so sticky it’s kind of annoying.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, I think the coco may be a better choice for a grower looking to do extractions because there are just so many trichomes on the leaves. However, I’m here for the buds! Can’t wait to get results for cannabinoids, terpenes, and yields after harvest.

They’ve been on 12/12 for 5 weeks today, so there’s 5-7 weeks left before harvest. Who knows what will happen next!

October 14

So far, I love these LEDs. They’re easy to use and my plants look great. They’ve been on 12/12 for just over 5 weeks and starting to look chunky!

Here are the coco plants

I’ve also had excellent results with multiple different HLG LED fixtures. Consistently produce potent, high quality buds with great yields per watt. What LEDs should I test next?

I’ve tried just about every other type of grow light over the years. They all have pluses and minuses.

Fluorescents like T5s are perfect for young plants and produce good quality buds, but the plants need to be well trained to get the best density and yields. Even in the best case, I’ve found them to yield about half as much per watt compared to other lights like LEDs, HPS, and LEC/CMH.

MH/HPS are awesome budget lights. MH makes short bushy growth in the vegetative stage, and HPS produces huge yields and dense buds in flowering. MH/HPS fixtures are cheap and produce comparable yields to LEDs per watt. The downside is burning hot bulbs. But with the temperature under control they produce vigorous happy plants. Great in a grow tent with a strong exhaust fan venting hot air out a window. I sometimes still use HPS during winter because I don’t want to add a heater for LEDs. I’ve gotten better yields, density, and bud quality with 150W or 250W HPS than small cheap Chinese blurple LEDs in side-by-side tests. But new LEDs like HLGs, Mars’ and SpiderFarmer perform better in flowering.

LECs/CMH are another HID, and the technology is basically halfway between MH and HPS. They have similar issues with heat and results are heavily dependent on the bulb used. Their blue/4k bulbs get some of the fastest vegetative growth ever, though plants can be a bit stretchy. Used in the flowering stage the 4k bulbs produce more trichomes and terpenes than other lights I’ve tested due to high UV production, with decent yields. The red/3k bulbs in flowering don’t produce quite as much sparkle and terpenes, but get yields as good as HPS or better.

October 17

If you had to pick, would you be Team Coco or Team Soil?

Top picture is coco, bottom is soil

Power Africa. These buds show the greatest difference, especially when it comes to trichome production. The coco buds are absolutely dusted in trichomes (left side is coco, right side is soil)

Peyote Critical. These buds look somewhat different. The sugar leaves next to the coco buds are still totally green while the sugar leaves on the soil buds are starting to look a little purple at the tips. (left side is coco, right side is soil)

Purple Critical Kush. The buds from these clones look almost exactly the same. (left side is coco, right side is soil)

What do you think? In general, the soil buds are fatter but the coco buds are longer (the coco plants stretched more after 12/12 and the stems are all longer overall).

I have to admit I’ve been surprised that the grow medium affects bud development so much on some strains but not others. Even when I’ve grown clones under different grow lights there wasn’t as much of a visual difference between buds as with the Power Africa, especially at only about 6 weeks since 12/12. The plants have only just begun to show their bud “personalities”.

Do you feel like each plant has their own personality when it comes to growth patterns and buds? I know I think of plants that way. When I first started growing I used to actually name each plant.

October 23

Nearly all the leaves on the Peyote Critical plant in the super soil are green on top but purple underneath. Pretty! The sugar leaves around the buds and even the buds themselves are turning purple, too.

What’s interesting is its clone in coco coir isn’t showing any signs of purple yet. The buds on the coco coir clone are a typical green/orange.

Perhaps the properties of the grow medium have an effect on color. It could also be the nutrients (from the soil vs bottled nutrients) and/or pH (pH is close to 7 in soil, but closer to 6 in coco). In any case, the buds are looking good to me!

October 30

Top is coco, bottom is super soil

Here are the bud pictures in order of the plants from left to right.

Power Africa (coco left, super soil right)

Peyote Critical (coco left, super soil right)

Purple Critical Kush (coco left, super soil right) – not much sign of of purple yet

At first the clones looked relatively similar but as we get closer to harvest they look completely different. The grow medium and nutrients are having a huge effect on gene expression in the flowering stage.

Soil buds are more colorful. The coco buds are mostly green with orange hairs while 2 of the 3 soil plants are producing beautiful colors. Bud quality in both tents looks excellent.

The soil plants do look like they’re running out of nutrients in the soil, so some of the color may be the result of nutrient deficiencies. Since this is a “just add water” test I will not add anything. However, if you’re seeing deficiencies like this, I do recommend supplementing soil plants with extra organic nutrients in the flowering stage (low in Nitrogen, high in Phosphorus and Potassium) to ensure nutrients last until harvest. A good example is Roots Organics Uprising Bloom (use this VERY sparingly to avoid burning plants). Or take some of the raw Nature’s Living Soil and make a gentle “tea” and use that to water your plants. If you’re afraid of burning your plants, an excellent ultra-gentle but effective organic bloom booster is Fox Farm Big Bloom. The only downside to Fox Farm Big Bloom is it’s pretty expensive considering you have to use a lot of it at a time.

The coco tent is still winning for trichome coverage while the soil tent is winning for color and smell intensity. It’s hard to estimate yield differences because some clones seem to be doing better in one tent or the other.

I will be reporting yields, smoke reports, and lab results (terpenes and cannabinoids) after harvest. I want you to get as much information as possible on the objective differences between the tents. I’m impatient for harvest time!

November 5

Harvest day!

Here are the coco coir plants at harvest

Coco plant drying

The coco plants were at the beginning of their harvest window (all white trichomes, no clears). I normally would have let them keep growing another week or even two weeks to pack on more weight but the soil plants were done and I harvested them at the same time for the sake of the experiment. It was a tough choice, but in the beginning, I said I would harvest all the plants at the same time and that’s what I’m doing even if it’s not ideal. It’s not a good experiment if you change it as you go along 🙂 If I ever run the experiment again I will harvest the plants when they’re ready instead of at the same time.

Here are the super soil plants at harvest. The Power Africa on the left was really losing color and I was worried the yellowing would start spreading to the buds if I didn’t harvest now.

Super soil plants drying

I do think the soil plants would have faired better if I’d boosted them with nutrients, teas, or another source of PK in early flowering.  However, this experiment specifically tested “just add water” soil so I stuck to the plan and am sharing the results as-is.

Note from Sirius: Defoliation may have played a part in the soil plants’ nutrient problems, too.

The buds will be drying for about 10 days and then buds get lab-tested for cannabinoids and terpenes. The coco plants received only mineral/chemical nutrients, while the soil plants got all their nutrients directly from the grow medium. Since the plants were clones in identical setups, any differences in the buds are likely the result of the grow medium/nutrients. It’ll be interesting to see how the buds were affected!

I’ll also publish the dry weights and smoke reports after buds have been dried and cured for 2 weeks. The soil buds are fatter but the coco plants stretched more and their buds are longer. Just from looking at the drying tents it seems like the coco plants will win for weight overall, but only the scale will tell.

November 18

Finally! Here’s the Coco vs Soil grow journal harvest weigh-in. Over 20 oz for the grow!

Left is the coco harvest and right is the soil harvest.

Coco tent yielded 11.1 oz while the soil tent yielded 9.4 oz, so the coco won for yields but not by a whole lot.

The buds are extremely dense and sticky, with fatter buds in soil but longer buds in coco.

Power Africa in coco weigh-in

Power Africa in super soil weigh-in

Peyote Critical in coco weigh-in

Peyote Critical in super soil weigh-in

Purple Critical Kush in coco weigh-in (I couldn’t fit it all in one bowl so you’ll see it’s 60 g + 59 g for a total of 119 g)

Purple Critical Kush in super soil weigh-in

I thought you might also enjoy this coco vs soil root comparison.

Example of coco roots on left, super soil roots on right

The coco plants were given the Flora trio plus CaliMagic as nutrients. Here’s the coco root ball by itself. The coco root ball weighs less and has a lighter appearance.

The soil plants got all their nutrients directly from the soil. Here’s the soil root ball.  The soil root ball is heavier and has a darker richer color.

Here’s a closeup of the roots near the bottom. I expected to see more differences to be honest.

Next step is to get all the buds tested for cannabinoids and terpenes at a local lab in San Diego.

January 7, 2021

You may have been following my grow journal which pitted clones against each other in coco vs soil. The results are in and I have to admit I’m amazed.

Experiment Details Quick Recap

• Coco: Mother Earth Coco Plus Perlite Mix with Flora trio + CaliMagic as nutrients.
• Soil: Bottom 1/3 of each pot: Nature’s Living Soil Super Soil Concentrate, Top 2/3: Fox Farm Coco Loco soil. All nutrients for these plants came from the soil (no nutrients in the water)

Both sets of plants were in a 2’x4’x6′ grow tent under their own 300W LED grow light.

Results

• Coco won for yields and trichome production
• Soil won for THC percentage and terpenes

Lab report summary

Coco lab reports (PDF)

• Power Africa
• Peyote Critical
• Purple Critical Kush

Super soil lab reports (PDF)

• Power Africa
• Peyote Critical
• Purple Critical Kush

Wow! How cool is that!

Discussion

The soil plants were ready to harvest before the coco plants. As a result, the coco plants were harvested on the early side. The coco tent could have gone on for a few more weeks so chances are their yields and potency would have increased in that time.

However, the super soil plants were at the end of their harvest window, and for the sake of the experiment, I took all the plants down at the same time.

As far as smoke reports, there is no clear winner. Some people prefer the coco buds while others prefer the soil buds. In fact, it seems different for each strain. Honestly, all three of these strains have proven to be really popular regardless of how buds were grown.

I recommend them all (Power Africa, Peyote Critical, and Critical Purple Kush). That being said, Purple Critical Kush has been the fan-favorite so far.

Final Conclusion:

Both grow mediums work great and the real winner is me with all this awesome weed!

Bonus: Check out my full review of Nature’s Living Soil including step-by-step instructions on how to use this soil, a complete watering schedule, and tips I’ve learned over the course of this grow.

The post Super Soil vs Coco Coir – Side-by-Side Cannabis Grow Journal appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Here’s an easy way to water cannabis plants and remove runoff water at home. It’s cheap, simple, and effective!

Instead of a watering can, water your cannabis plants with a battery-powered water transfer pump.

The hose makes it easy to reach all your cannabis plants. Including any plants in the back!

Use plant saucers to catch runoff water…

…or plant trays to catch runoff water. Can be more convenient if you’ve got lots of cannabis plants.

Use a big syringe to suck up the runoff water. Easy and silent!

Idea: Make it easier to remove runoff by putting a tiny waterproof item (water jug caps, plastic game pieces, coins, etc.) under the back of the tray or saucer. This puts the tray or saucer on a slight tilt, so water drains forward.

Just a few centimeters of lift is all you need, and water pools to the front.

This is the watering method I personally use and recommend it for cannabis growers. If you want to go deeper into the topic of watering, keep reading! This comprehensive watering tutorial teaches you everything about how to water your cannabis plants. Plus learn about specialty watering tools you may not know about!

Watering cannabis plants can be a pain… but only if you don’t know what to do.

Watering a plant may seem simple, but when I first started growing cannabis it actually felt like one of the hardest parts. Seedlings drooped, plants got inexplicable nutrient deficiencies, I was breaking my back carrying big jugs of water, and removing runoff water felt like a chore.

Today you’ll learn tactics on how to water cannabis plants perfectly with barely any effort.

Over the years, I figured out how to water cannabis plants perfectly with barely any effort. I also learned an important secret: as long as you start with good genetics and create a nice environment, you can skip almost every part of growing besides proper watering and still produce a great harvest with exceptional bud quality. However, your watering system is key to fantastic results at harvest.

Today I’ll teach you 3 cannabis watering tactics that maximize growth, increase yields, and improve bud quality while reducing time and effort. Stop worrying about watering so you can pay more attention to your marijuana plants and have more fun.

1.) Get the Right Watering Tools

Water transfer pump (battery-powered)

A battery-powered water transfer pump can be used to water plants as long as the hose can reach. These allow you to easily pump water from a container to the base of your plants. They’re also super handy for hydroponic growers who need to pump water in and out of their reservoir.

A water transfer pump moves water from one place to another.

A water transfer pump allows you to give water directly at the base of your cannabis plants.

Struggling to reach the plants in the back? If you’ve got lots of cannabis plants out of reach, get a water transfer pump with a longer hose. The following pump has a longer hose that reaches plants much further away than the model pictured above. However, it does cost a bit more.

Note: Stick around, as you’ll learn the easiest ways to remove runoff water in part 3 of this tutorial.

Automatic watering

If you want to avoid watering altogether, there are several options that allow automatic watering. The most common options are clay stakes (which slowly provide water as the substrate dries out) or drip feeders (which are kind of like your own personal sprinkler system to water plants on a schedule). I’ve used the Blumat brand, which offers great options for both. There are also many generic versions of these tools that are cheaper but I haven’t personally tried yet.

One way to automatically water plants is with Blumat clay stakes connected to your water container via a tube.

Soak the stakes then stick them right into your plant container.

The stakes are connected to tubes that are placed in your water container.

Water is automatically pulled from your container as the grow medium dries. Raise the water container to increase the overall wetness, and lower it to reduce the moisture. I use these to keep plants watered every time I need to leave the house for a trip.

Learn how to water your cannabis plants while on vacation.

The other main automatic watering option is using “drip irrigation” or a “drip feed”. In this setup, water is dripped directly onto the base of cannabis plants as opposed through a stake. Kind of like giving each plant their own personal sprinkling system. Once this is set up, all you have to do is refill your main water container and watch plants for signs they need more or less water.

Read the full tutorial on how to set up an automatic watering system that waters your plants on a timer.

Summary: There are many types of drip irrigation systems, from gravity-based versions to elaborate systems that give water to plants on a timer. I’ve also seen many growers build automatic drip-feed systems using pumps and tubes from the sprinkler section of a hardware store. The sky is the limit!

Learn more about automatic watering in our “how to water plants during vacation” article.

Faucet adapter (connect sink faucet to a garden host)

If you don’t want to lug water back and forth between your water source and grow space, there are adapters you can use to attach a garden hose to your faucet. This lets you add water to a container without having to carry anything. If you struggle carrying big containers of water, this can be a life-saver.

Get a faucet adapter that lets you connect your sink to a garden hose. This lets you fill up your water container in the grow space without needing to carry water between the sink and your garden.

Giant syringes to remove runoff water

Use these syringes (don’t worry, there’s no needle) to suck up runoff water. These are a great choice if you don’t want the noise of a wet vacuum. I started using syringes instead of a wet vacuum ro remove runoff water when we moved to a place with downstairs neighbors.

Make sure to get a convenient container to put your runoff water. Best if you only have a handful of plants or relatively little runoff at a time. You probably don’t want to move a ton of water with a syringe.

I use a 200ml syringe (pictured here) to remove runoff water. However, if you plan to remove a lot of water at a time they come in 250ml and even 500ml (half a liter!) size with tubing so you can remove a lot more water at a time from further away.

A 200ml syringe (pictured here) is an quiet, easy way to remove runoff water!

Get the right size water container

I recommend getting a water container that’s easy to use, move, and carry. I personally like 3-gallon water containers because I can carry them much more easily than a 5-gallon, and 3 gallons is usually enough to water my plants once or twice. You may find it more convenient to use multiple 1-gallon containers.

Use water containers that you can safely carry. Don’t hurt your back carrying too-big containers!

Money-saving tip: Water containers tend to be the cheapest in-person, for example at Wal-mart or a water store. Avoid buying these online as they are often far more expensive due to shipping costs.

If a container feels too heavy to carry comfortably with water, don’t ignore it. Use the suggestions in this section to prevent having to lug water around.

2.) Set Up So Watering is Easier

Take a moment to think about your watering setup. How do you water your cannabis plants now? Keeping that in mind, read through the following tactics. A little forethought and planning can save you a ton of time and effort in the long run.

Make a spot to mix water and nutrients

Set up a table or specific spot to mix up nutrients, check pH, and otherwise prepare water before giving it to your plants.

You should have a convenient place that holds these things within arms reach:

• Your water container
• Bottles (nutrients, supplements, etc.)
• Measuring spoons or pipettes
• Anything else you need to prepare water

Being able to reach everything saves time and effort compared to haphazardly mixing nutrients, especially compared to mixing nutrients on the floor (which is weirdly what I did for years).

Set up a table or other convenient spot to store and mix nutrients.

Rich airy potting mix so water drains easily

Start with a good soil or coco mix. This not only helps cannabis grow faster but also helps prevent problems like overwatering or underwatering. Most importantly, never use dirt you find outside to grow your cannabis plants. Choose potting mixes that appear rich, dark, and fluffy. If your main goal is to water as infrequently as possible, choose soil over coco coir (on average, coco needs to be watered more often than soil). If you see little white rocks in the potting mix, it’s usually a good sign as this is “perlite”, a light airy stone that helps make the soil fluffier, hold more oxygen, and drain easier. Typically good cannabis soil contains 10-30% perlite.

Choose a rich-yet-fluffy potting mix so cannabis plants are harder to overwater or underwater.

Choose the right nutrients

Mixing up nutrients can take up a lot of time if you’re using multiple bottles or supplements at the same time.

Easy Nutrients Option 1: “Just Add Water” soil

If time is of the essence, choose a “just add water” soil. This lets you avoid having to deal with nutrients altogether because all the nutrients are already contained in the soil.

Learn how to grow cannabis with “just add water” soil.

Easy Nutrients Option 2: All-In-One Nutrient Bottles for Vegetative and Flowering Stage

An all-in-one nutrient system is formulated to give everything your cannabis plants need in one bottle for each stage of life. This is different from most nutrient systems which have you use multiple bottles at a time to deliver the right nutrient ratios, and may even have extra supplements to add, too.

I’ve had excellent results using Dyna-Gro Grow and Bloom as a cannabis nutrient time saver. You only use one bottle at a time, and it can be used in soil, coco, or hydroponic setups. Cheap and easy yet great yields and the resulting buds are top tier.

Basic directions for using Dyna-Gro Grow & Bloom with cannabis plants:

• Use 1 tsp/gallon of “Grow” during the vegetative stage.
• Use 1 tsp/gallon of “Bloom” after buds start forming, until harvest.

Read my complete guide to growing cannabis with Dyna-Gro nutrients. Plus get my custom Dyna-Gro cannabis nutrient schedule!

Dyna-Gro nutrients are easy. “Grow” at first. Then “Bloom” once you see buds.

Blunt tip syringe for measuring nutrients

I know this is a second kind of syringe, but these are surprisingly useful for a grower. A blunt tip (not sharp!) can make it easier to quickly and accurately measure out nutrients. Not only can they save time, but they’re also the perfect solution if your nutrient schedule uses metric units and you’ve only got measuring spoons for imperial (US) amounts. I also like to use syringes for certain nutrients (GH Micro I’m looking at you!) that have high “fluidity” (the opposite of high viscosity) which basically means these liquids tend to dribble along the sides of the container instead of pour normally.

These blunt tip syringes are sometimes labeled as printer refill syringes or glue applicators.

Note: Every 5ml (aka 5 cc) is about equal to 1 tsp.

Get 20ml blunt tip syringes for measuring nutrients. The tips are blunted which means they are not sharp. The 20 ml version (sometimes labeled “20 cc”) holds up to 4 tsp.

Regular pots or specialty pots? 

There are a few different types of plant containers for growing cannabis plants.

Hard-sided pots – Your standard hard-sided container needs to be watered the least often as they help prevent water evaporation. Choose standard hard-side plant pots to water as infrequently as possible. Even the cheapest ones are effective. This type often referred to as “nursery pots” since they are often used for plants that are growing. There are also decorative plant pots that are meant more as the final resting place for a plant that’s going to be around for a while. But your cannabis harvest will come before you know it!

Nursery pots – Lets you water less often. Often cheaper to buy in person.

Fabric Pots or Air Pots – There are also specialty containers that let air in from the sides. The most popular are fabric pots and air pruning pots. These tend to increase cannabis growth rates and reduce the chance of overwatering. Although fabric and air pruning pots are common in cannabis gardens and offer great results growing cannabis, that extra air means soil drys out much more quickly and plants need to be watered more often. If you’re looking for ways to water plants less often, sticking to hard-sided pots can help.

Air pots and fabric pots result in slightly faster growth but need to be watered more often because the potting mix dries from the sides.

Fabric Pots – Cannabis grows faster, but needs to be watered more often.

Fabric pots are popular among cannabis growers. Cheap and effective. Any brand works.

Air pruning pots – Fast growth like fabric pots. Made of plastic.

Air pruning pots are more reusable than fabric pots. They are also better for transplanting because they can be popped open to release the plant. No digging around the soil to remove your plant.

Choose a bigger pot to water less often.

While you’re thinking about how often you want to water your plants, also consider the size of the plant pot. If you want to be able to water your plants just once or twice a week, choose bigger plant pots (5+ gallons each). Big containers need to be watered less frequently than smaller ones.

Hard-sided 5-gallon plant pots (often called “nursery” pots) only need to be watered once or twice a week. You can usually find really cheap ones at a local garden center or plant nursery.

Don’t forget to get a matching plant saucer or tray to catch your runoff water!

Use plant saucers to catch runoff water after watering cannabis plants. Get a size that accommodates your pots.

Inclined trays (alternative to saucers)

If your plant trays are on a slight incline, runoff water is easy to collect and dispose of since it naturally pools to the front. You can also do this with saucers, but it can get a bit tippy.

As a bonus, the water typically flows away from under your plants so they never sit in runoff water even if you forget to remove it. Putting plants on trays makes this easiest, but you can also do it on a smaller scale with big saucers.

First, put your cannabis plants on trays to catch runoff water.

This setup use 4 x 1020 trays (10″ x 20″ trays), which fit perfectly in a 2×4 grow tent.

Put something small and waterproof under each tray in the back to put the trays on a slight incline. I used a cap from a one-gallon water container.

What to use to create an incline? Anything small and waterproof works great. A small piece of metal, plastic game piece, or even some coins will work. Use your imagination and look around the house for something small that won’t be damaged by water. Avoid anything too big/tall. Even a tiny amount of incline (just a few cm) is enough to move all the water forward, and too much incline can cause plants to grow off-kilter.

3.) How to Remove Runoff Water

After watering plants, you don’t want to let your plants sit in the runoff water. Roots sitting in water can give plants “wet feet” which causes root disease and stem rot. Another reason is that excess nutrients are typically flushed out in the runoff water, and you don’t want the plant absorbing them back in. The problem is that removing runoff water can be a pain. Inconvenience is the main reason cannabis growers don’t do it. I’ll show you some ways to avoid this problem and make the process more convenient and easy.

Removing runoff water can be easy. Here are 5 common runoff water strategies.

Giant syringes – Recommended

Use these syringes (don’t worry, there’s no needle) to suck up runoff water. These are a great choice if you don’t want the noise of a wet vacuum. I started using syringes instead of a wet vacuum ro remove runoff water when we moved to a place with downstairs neighbors.

Make sure to get a convenient container to put your runoff water. Best if you only have a handful of plants or relatively little runoff at a time. You probably don’t want to move a ton of water with a syringe.

I use a 200ml syringe (pictured here) to remove runoff water. However, if you plan to remove a lot of water at a time they come in 250ml and even 500ml (half a liter!) size with tubing so you can remove a lot more water at a time from further away.

Wet vacuum – Recommended

With your plants on an incline, you can use a wet vacuum to quickly and easily suck up all runoff water for easy disposal.

A wet vacuum is loud but quickly sucks up water for easy disposal.

Inclined trays (or saucers) – Recommended

If your plant trays or saucers are on a slight incline, runoff water is easy to collect and dispose of since it naturally pools to the front. Additionally, the water will typically flow away from under your plants so they never sit in runoff water even if you forget to remove it. Putting plants on trays makes this easiest, but you can also do it on a smaller scale with big saucers.

First, put your plants on trays to catch runoff water. This setup use four 1020 trays, which fit perfectly in a 2×4 grow tent.

Put something small and waterproof under each tray in the back to put the trays on a slight incline. I used a cap from a one-gallon water container.

What to use to create an incline? Anything small and waterproof works great. A small piece of metal or even some coins will work. Use your imagination and look around the house for something small that won’t be damaged by water. Avoid anything too big/tall. Even a tiny amount of incline (just a few cm) is enough to move all the water forward, and too much incline can cause plants to grow off-kilter.

Avoid runoff altogether – Monitor carefully

There are a few techniques you can use to avoid ever dealing with runoff water. With these setups, you basically give just enough water to saturate the grow medium to the base of the container, but not enough that extra runoff water comes out the bottom.

Keep in mind when you avoid runoff…

1. Best when not using nutrients – For example in a “just add water” soil setup. In fact, it’s actually beneficial to avoid getting runoff water in these setups because it can drain away extra nutrients.
2. Can be done when adding nutrients but requires careful monitoring – Since extra nutrients are not getting washed out every watering, you need to watch plants closely for signs of nutrient buildup. If leaves are getting dark or you see nutrient burn, it means that there is more nutrients in the coco or soil than the plant can use. In that case either lower your nutrient dosage or give plants enough water to cause 10-20% runoff. This flushes out buildup. Don’t forget to remove the runoff water so the nutrients don’t get sucked back up.
3. Don’t ignore pH – If you’re adding PH Up or PH Down liquid to adjust the pH of your water, they can build up in the grow medium just like nutrients. If you’re seeing nutrient deficiencies, one of the first things to check is the pH. One of the easiest things to do is capture a few drops of runoff water and check the pH. If it’s much higher or lower than the pH you’re putting in, you have a problem. Give water with pH at the opposite of the acceptable range until it comes out normal. So for example, if using PH Down, which is an acid, you may notice the pH is too low in the grow medium. In that case, give high pH water within the recommended range. In coco, it’s recommended to keep pH between 5.5-6.5, so if pH is coming out low, give at 6.5 until it normalizes. In soil 6-7 pH is recommended so give at 7 pH if it’s coming out too low.
4. Pay attention to moisture level at bottom of pot – If you’re not getting any runoff water, you may not realize if the grow medium is getting overly saturated or drying out. At least occasionally, feel the bottom of the pot after watering to make sure it feels moist but not soaking wet (most effective with fabric). If the bottom feels bone dry after watering, chances are you’re not giving enough water at a time. Giving enough water to get runoff will help prevent this issue, but if not giving runoff it’s up to you to monitor the moisture at the bottom of the pot.
5. Produce runoff when experiencing nutrient problems to help give yourself a blank slate, but typically there is no need to “flush” (give a ton of water at a time).

Some growers try to give an amount of water that saturates the pot but does not result in extra runoff water out the bottom. This saves the step of removing runoff.

Using Evaporation or a Drain – Special setup required

It’s possible to remove runoff water via evaporation or down a drain. You should never allow pots to sit in water (this causes nutrient problems, droopiness, and root rot), so allowing runoff to evaporate isn’t a good choice when plants are in saucers.

This is only an effective strategy if the water is running away from pots, for example when trays are on an incline or above a drain. Chances are you will start to see crusty nutrient buildup where the water is evaporating, so it’s recommended to clean the evaporation area on a regular basis to avoid it getting brought back to the plants.

These cannabis plants are growing in a bathtub. No need to worry about runoff water in a setup like this… it goes directly down the drain!

Pick up plants and water them somewhere else – Too hard, no need!

Some cannabis growers move plants to water them. For example, they might move the plants to a sink or bathtub before watering, so that all the runoff water naturally drains away. This gets the job done, but the process is cumbersome and time-consuming, especially if you have more than one or two plants.

There is no need to pick up your plants and move them to collect runoff water, if you don’t want to. To me this adds unnecessary time and can be a pain compared to the options above.

The bigger plants get, the more annoying it is to pick them up and move them around. They may even “collapse” and branches may fall over like this, especially if buds are heavy.

How Often to Water Cannabis Plants

Now that you know how to water and remove runoff, let’s quickly go over how much water to give, and how often. After this, watering your cannabis plants will never be a challenge again!

Seedling watering tips & tricks

Seedlings are super easy to over-water. Use a cup to give just a little water at a time in a circle around the base of your seedling. Learn how to water seedlings in a big pot so they don’t get over-watered. Check out this page with answers and tips for most common seedling problems.

Water cannabis seedlings with a few cups of water in a circle around the base of the plant. Seedlings don’t drink much so you don’t want to completely saturate the soil just yet.

How much water at a time

We have a complete “how to water” tutorial but check out this example schedule for watering plants in 5-gallon fabric pot.

• Day 1 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant
• Day 3 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant
• Day 6 – Give 2 cups (500ml) water per plant
• Day 8 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per plant (every 3 days after this)
• Day 11 – Give 3 cups (750ml) water per plant
• Day 14 – Give 4 cups (1 liter) water per plant
• Day 17 – Give 4 cups (1 liter) water per plant
• Day 20 – Give 5 cups (1.25 liter) water per plant
• Day 23 – Give 6 cups (1.5 liter) water per plant
• Day 26 – Give 6 cups (1.5 liter) water per plant
• Day 29 – Give 8 cups or 1/2 gallon (2 liter) water per plant
• Continue giving 1/2 gallon (2 liters) per plant every 3 days. You may need to give more at a time or more often as plants get bigger. If you’re getting a lot of runoff out the bottom (more than 20%) or plants droop after watering, it means you should be giving less water at a time. If plants get droopy before being watered, you should give more water at a time, or water more often.

Note: This is the schedule that I use for a 5-gallon fabric pot, but your environment will affect how much plants drink. If plants are in hard-sided pots as opposed to fabric pots, you may need to water less often. If you would like to water less often than every 3 days, you’ll need to give more water at a time.

How often to water (tips)

General idea: Water when pots feel light or the top is drying out. Don’t let plants run out of water, but make sure roots get access to plenty of air. If the grow medium is waterlogged and looks super wet, the roots likely aren’t getting enough oxygen for the fastest growth. With over-moist soil, you should give less water at a time or water less often.

• For coco, water when you start seeing dry patches. Never let pots fully dry out. Check out this watering tutorial for coco.
• For soil, wait until the top is mostly dry before watering again unless the plant pot feels light. Read the complete watering tutorial.

Know the Signs of Overwatering/Underwatering

Droopiness is the main sign. Here are examples of leaf symptoms that also commonly appear when cannabis plants are over-watered vs under-watered.

This seedling is droopy and getting nutrient deficiencies due to overwatering.

Sometimes brown edges can be mistaken for nutrient burn. If you’re seeing the edges turn brown, that may be a sign of overwatering, especially if combined with droopiness.

Example of an underwatered plant. Underwatering is very similar in appearance to overwatering. The main clue is the plant is getting droopy before being watered (not after).

If you’re seeing droopiness, it almost always means there’s some sort of issue with the roots or watering.

How to avoid nutrient deficiencies

Nutrient deficiencies can be really hard to pin down at a times. It often has to do with watering habits (and occasionally your environment).

5 ways to prevent nutrient deficiencies:

1. Avoid over/under watering (this is surprisingly the most common reason for nutrient deficiencies in younger plants)
2. Give the right nutrients for the grow medium (don’t give soil-specific nutrients to plants in hydroponics, etc.)
3. Check the root pH if you notice spots or discoloration on your leaves. Learn what symptoms are caused by pH (with pictures).
4. Be aware of light burn, which is the result of the grow light being too close, but is sometimes confused for a nutrient problem.
5. Use the free plant doctor tool whenever you’re stuck!

Today you got a crash course in watering your cannabis plants so it’s easy, doesn’t take much time, and gives you the flexibility to have more fun with your plants. Contact us if you have any watering tips you’d like to see added to this tutorial!

The post The Easy Way to Water Plants & Remove Runoff appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Growing cannabis in coco coir is similar to growing in soil, but also a little different. Considering all the opinions about watering out on the internet, it can be difficult to know how to water plants properly. When exactly do you water plants in coco? How much water do you give them at a time? How often should you give water to your coco plants for the best results? This coco watering tutorial for marijuana aims to take the confusion out of all that!

How Often to Water Cannabis in Coco Coir

Here are some quick guidelines to help you know how to water your plants perfectly every time.

1.) Aim to give water every 1-2 days.

Cannabis plants grown in coco tend to grow the fastest when they’re getting water every 1-2 days, as long as they’re not getting too much water at a time.

2.) Give enough water to get at least 10-20% runoff water out the bottom.

When growing cannabis in coco coir, as a grower you need to provide nutrients in the water. However, nutrients can get built up in the coco if you only give just enough water to wet the medium. By ensuring you get a little runoff water each time, you’re helping make sure that any nutrient build-up gets flushed out, so your plants don’t get nutrient burn and are always getting fresh nutrients in the proper ratios.

To prevent overwatering or nutrient buildup, make sure to always remove runoff water after watering. That way the water doesn’t get sucked back up or start growing things!

A big syringe is a silent way to easily remove runoff water.

As long as a little noise is okay, a wet vacuum is an extremely fast and convenient way to remove runoff water.

3.) If coco is drying out in less than 1 day, here are 5 options.

If your coco is drying out in less than a day, you may need to take action.

5 options if your coco is drying out in less than a day:

1. Just water more often – If your plant is healthy and you don’t mind watering your plant all the time, you can continue what you’re doing.
2. Give more water at a time – If you’re only getting a little runoff each time, try giving more water at a time. Coco tends to stay wet for longer if you water the plant very thoroughly as opposed to only getting a little runoff out the bottom.
3. Transplant to a bigger pot – If you’re getting plenty of runoff water and the containers are still drying out too quickly, you can transplant your plant into a bigger container. With more coco to hold more water, it should dry out much more slowly. However, transplanting can cause stress, especially if the roots get disturbed.
4. Break the rule about runoff water – If you can’t transplant, another option is to break the cardinal rule of watering and allow some runoff water to stay in the saucer or tray to act as reservoir. Plants typically stop drinking as much by the second half of the flowering stage, so sometimes if you can hold on, things take care of themselves and you won’t need to do this for long. This isn’t ideal, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Along the same lines, consider getting an autopot, which hold a reservoir of water, but protects the water from light and uses wicking to ensure roots never just sit in water.
5. Put fabric pot inside a hard-sided pot – Another option if plants are in fabric pots, is to put the fabric pots inside a hard-sided pot. This helps hold more water in, since it prevents evaporation from the sides.

Transplant your plant into a new container by digging a hole the size of the original container, and gently placing your plant in the new hole without disturbing the roots at all if possible, like this!

Pat down the soil gently around the plant and give it a good watering!

4.) If coco is taking 3+ days to dry out, give less water at a time until plant starts drinking more.

If your coco is taking a long time to dry out between waterings, chances are you are giving your plant more water than it can drink in a reasonable amount of time. Try giving a little less water at a time until your plant is bigger. Once the coco is drying out more quickly, you can up the amount of water you’re giving until you’re getting 10-20% runoff each time.

Small plants in big containers can take a long time to dry out. Until plants get bigger and start drinking more, you may want to give just a small amount of water at a time in a circle around the plant.

These seedlings were being watered too often, which is why they’re a little droopy. Young plants don’t need a whole lot of water for the first few weeks.

Overwatered cannabis plants in coco.

If you see green stuff growing on the top of your coco (algae) it’s often a sign that you’re watering too often. Although algae won’t hurt your plants directly, it only appears when the top of the coco has been constantly wet for a long time.

These plants ended up getting fungus gnats from being watered too often. The first sign of overwatering was all the green algae growing on the top layer of coco. If you start seeing little bugs buzzing around the soil, it usually means you’ve been giving too much water for a while.

Tips for watering cannabis plants in coco:

• Remember, coco is forgiving – Coco coir is actually pretty forgiving, which is why it can be a good choice for beginners. As long as coco doesn’t dry out completely or get utterly soaked all the time, your cannabis plants will probably be fine.
• AIr pots and fabric pots dry out faster – Plants grown in Air Pots or Smart Pots (fabric pots) typically dry out faster and need to be watered more often than plants grown in containers with hard sides.
• Seedlings only need a little water at a time – Seedlings drink much less water than bigger plants and only need a few cups of water at a time at first. Water seedlings in a circle around the base of the plant, instead of soaking the whole pot.
• Don’t let coco dry all the way out – Plants seem to do better when you avoid letting the coco dry out all the way (as opposed to in soil where plants like to dry out a bit more between waterings). The top of your coco should never appear dusty and dry.
• Don’t let coco be soaking wet all the time – On the flip side, don’t water plants so often that the top of the coco is always completely dark and wet. Watering plants too often can cause the symptoms of overwatering and can sometimes attract fungus gnats or cause algae to grow. It also raises the humidity in the grow space. Higher humidity isn’t a big deal for growers who are starting with dry air, but it can cause problems with mold or bud rot if your environment is getting too humid (above 50% RH), especially in the late flowering stage.
• Too much water is better than too little – I don’t want to encourage overwatering, but if you’re not sure, it’s better to give too much water than not enough. Just don’t go overboard!

How to Know When to Give Water Again

It’s time to give water to your plant in coco when….

1. Top appears lighter – The color of the coco has begun to lighten from dark brown to medium brown
2. Coco feels cool but not soaking wet – If you touch the coco, it feels cool instead of moist. If the top of the coco actually feels dry, you should definitely give water.
3. Container feels light – Most of the weight of your plants is actually the water in the grow medium. That means when the container feels light if you try to lift it gently, it’s time to give more water. Plants in coco with lots of water will feel heavy like there’s a brick inside, but plants in dry coco are much easier to pick up.
4. Consider the “napkin method”
   1. Take a napkin and unfold it so there is only a single ply.
   2. Press it gently but firmly on top of the coco.
   3. If you can see the napkin getting wet, give the plants a little more time to dry out.
   4. If the napkin comes back mostly dry, plants need to be watered.
5. Check pictures below – Look at these pictures for examples.

Pictures of Wet Coco (don’t give water yet!) – Dark brown coco, may be growing green algae.

Pictures of Coco Coir That is Ready to be Watered – Medium brown color with some dry spots.

Some growers prefer to water their coco coir every day regardless of how wet the medium is. Coco is a very forgiving growing medium, and it has unique properties that make it really accommodating to roots. For some growers in some setups, this works well, especially in a controlled environment with perfectly sized containers and relatively low humidity in the air. However, for beginners I recommend waiting until the top dries out at least a bit!

Let us know how you water your cannabis plants in coco coir!

The post How Often to Water Cannabis in Coco Coir appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

GrowWeedEasy.com teaches you how easy it is to grow weed. Growing weed can be easy when you know what to do, but most “how to grow marijuana” tutorials make it seem like you need a degree in horticulture.

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Even first-time growers produce great harvests when they follow our tutorials.

Who Made GrowWeedEasy.com?

Grow Weed Easy.com was started in 2010 by home growers Nebula Haze and Sirius Fourside. Together, they built a free online “encyclopedia of cannabis home grow” with 650+ expert home cannabis cultivation tutorials about every aspect of growing weed.

GrowWeedEasy.com is now the biggest and most comprehensive source of free home grow information in the world.  We show you how easy it is to grow your own marijuana at home.

The GrowWeedEasy.com Ethos

Our Goal: You grow as much top-shelf weed as possible, with as little time and effort needed to grow your desired yields and cannabis bud quality.

Whether you’re a total beginner who wants to start growing cannabis indoors for the first time, or an experienced grower who wants to upgrade your skills to Pro level, this website was built for you.

Looking for a complete harvest system?

If you want dense, beautiful, great-smelling weed, our new digital book gives you our complete harvest system. Follow the straightforward instructions and massively upgrade your results every harvest. A few small changes can make all the difference.

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If you’re reading this right now, you want to grow great cannabis at home.

Cannabis plants isn’t a regular house plant, but learning how to grow isn’t as complicated growers make it seem. We’ve spent the last 16 years breaking down the home grow process so anyone can learn it.

The key to consistent harvest results is simple: follow a proven system developed for home growers.

You could waste an entire grow learning through trial and error…

Or take the shortcut and harvest a sea of fat, dense, beautiful buds that smell great. At home!

Follow our 5-week course and get walked through each part step-by-step. Build by experienced home growers and honed with hundreds of students since 2019, we ensure you achieve great results on your very next harvest.

Learn How To Grow Top-Shelf Weed at Home!

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You may be asking yourself these common growing questions:

“How do I grow marijuana indoors?”

Read this guide on how to grow marijuana indoors. Or check out this article to learn what materials you need to get started growing your own marijuana!

Luckily, it’s really easy to get a cannabis seed to sprout!

“How much money will it cost to get started?”

If you’re considering growing weed, it costs as little as $300 to get started growing or a bit more for a semi-automatic, high-yielding bubbleponics grow system. See examples of yields to expect, electricity use & startup costs for different setups. Read this article to see even more growing styles with different price ranges.

“Where can I get marijuana seeds?”

Check out our How to Buy Marijuana Seeds Online Guide (with delivery to every state of the USA) to safely get your hands on good genetics. Starting with good seeds lets you choose the looks, smell, and effects of your buds!

Learn where it’s safe to buy cannabis seeds online (2026 update).

What do good cannabis seeds look like?

Learn about the best marijuana beginner strains and how to research and find the right strain.

Cannabis buds are generally green, but can also be pink or purple with certain strains.

“How much will electricity cost each month?”

If you’re just growing a few marijuana plants for personal use, it will cost you $20-$100+/month for electricity, depending on what grow lights (electricity) and nutrients you use. On average, I’d say a hobby-size grower might pay about $50/month to grow, but it depends greatly on your setup and local electricity costs! How much will electricity cost each month?

“How can I increase my marijuana yields?”

We have quite a few techniques to choose from or combine! See some of our most popular pages:

• Super Cropping – A simple technique to bigger yields
• Simplest Guide to Growing Short & Bushy Marijuana Plants
• LST (Low Stress Training) – Training your plants can easily double your harvest!
• Or check out our page on the controversial defoliation technique

Even More Ways to Increase Cannabis Yields

1. Increase Light Intensity (plus choose right light for desired yields & possibly add CO2)
2. Manipulate How Plants Grow (a free way to yield more bud indoors)
3. Provide Right Nutrients (low Nitrogen in the flowering stage, and remember sometimes less is more!)
4. Control Growing Environment (let the growing environment work for you)
5. Harvest Plants Properly (most importantly, don’t harvest early!)
6. Lastly, it’s important to remember that the strain has a major effect on yields!

Two small cannabis plants can yield several ounces of premium weed!

“How can I grow weed privately?”

Read guide on growing weed indoors without anyone knowing. But remember the most important factors to stealth growing: “No tell, no smell, no sell.” Never tell anyone, not even your best friend, that you’re growing. Be on top of preventing smells, and never ever sell cannabis. Breaking one of those 3 principles is how 99% of growers get found out!

“What if my plants get sick?”

The most common issue a grower runs into is a pH imbalance. Barring that, your marijuana plants likely either have a nutrient deficiency, heat or light stress, or are being attacked by some sort of marijuana mold, pest or bug. Whether you call it weed, cannabis, sinsemilla, skunk, pot, marijuana, or something else, the plant known as Cannabis Sativa is a hardy weed in the wild and can actually be easy to grow indoors at home when you know what to do.

Growing Medical Marijuana

“Medical marijuana” has become a household name. The body of evidence for medical marijuana in the treatment of cancer and other illnesses is growing every day. And for those who need medical marijuana, growing weed indoors is the perfect way to ensure a safe, regular supply of buds, for cheap.

In fact, when you grow weed indoors for personal use, you often end up with way too much. If you catch the growing bug like I did, and if you start enjoying the process of tending your cannabis garden just for the sake of gardening, you’re going to have to find a way to press, cook, freeze, and concentrate all your extra buds. 🙂

As you probably know, both medical marijuana and recreational cannabis have been decriminalized or legalized in many places around the world and weed is becoming legal in more places every day! Yet there still aren’t many simple indoor “how to grow weed” guides for beginners (even for those who legally grow, such as medical marijuana users and those who live in places where marijuana is legalized for personal use).

If so, I know how you feel. It can be hard to weed out all the bad information on the internet and find well-researched, free tips or instructions on how to grow your own cannabis. That’s why Grow Weed Easy.com aims to be a simple online resource that explains from start to finish what you need to do when growing cannabis so you can learn how to grow cannabis with great yields and potent buds, even if you only have a small grow space like a closet or even a computer case.

We’ve grown cannabis out of closets and have gotten ounces of buds and you can too. Grow Weed Easy.com covers many popular cannabis cultivation topics, including:

• A comparison between different cannabis grow lights including experience-based information about LED grow lights
• A page that teaches you the basics of how to grow weed
• Detailed how-to weed growing tutorials
• How to start growing weed tomorrow  (simplest cannabis growing guide!)
• Grow 4 oz with a 100W LED <– An Easy Way to Start Growing!
• Our famous grow guide that teaches you how to grow weed using bubbleponics (hydro).

Start Growing Weed Today!

Grow Weed Easy is run by a panel of experienced cannabis growers, including the founders Nebula Haze and Sirius Fourside, who originally teamed together to bring you GrowWeedEasy.com. Due to the demand for more marijuana growing information, we’ve also started an inbox magazine all about how to grow weed, with additional tutorials, tips, and tactics sent to you each week. Simply sign up to start getting free expert growing articles delivered to you! All the information available at GrowWeedEasy.com is completely free and we regularly update the site and make new additions.

Looking for a growing book?

If you are interested in doing a bit of reading or would like to know more about the science behind marijuana hydroponics or horticulture, I strongly recommend viewing our page of Marijuana Grow Book Reviews. Read reviews of marijuana grow books. We would love to hear about your experiences with growing cannabis. Whether you are a pro grower already or are just starting your first plant, we have learned so much from our readers both beginners and masters! If you have any suggestions, comments, concerns, or just want to ask some questions about your marijuana grow, please contact us!

Happy Growing!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside

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The post Grow Weed Easy – Learn How to Grow Cannabis Tutorials appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

What Makes Nutrients “Good” or “Bad” for Growing in Coco Coir?

What makes Coco Coir nutrients “good” or “bad?”

In other words, why are some nutrients better than others for growing cannabis in coco coir? What kind of coco nutrients need to be avoided when growing marijuana? Do you need expensive nutrients to get good results, or will cheap nutrients get the job done?

With all the different bottles of marijuana nutrients out there, how do you know which one is best for your coco coir growing setup?

When it comes to choosing nutrients for growing weed in coco coir, there are a few considerations that are really important!

Best Nutrients for Coco

• Nutrients that are specifically made for coco or hydroponics tend to be the easiest to work with
• Coco does well with either mineral nutrients or organic nutrient sources. With mineral (hydro) nutrients the plants tend to grow bigger and faster because the nutrients get delivered to the plant in the most efficient form. It’s often said that organic nutrients result in buds with a more complex smell, but organic-grown plants are a little slower to grow. Both types of nutrients produce very high-quality weed, and any differences in the final product are relatively small and often very hard to pin down. In our growing forum, the side-by-side grow tests with organic vs hydroponic nutrients have given inconclusive results as far as bud quality! The most important thing to pay attention to when growing in coco is good watering practices and paying attention to pH.
• Contains rich sources of micro-nutrients (to make up for what might have been found in the soil)
• Optimum NPK ratios (more info below)

Poor Nutrients for Coco

• Made specifically for soil, especially if you look on the back and don’t see Magnesium, Calcium, Sulfur and other micronutrients on the label. A lot of soil-made nutrient systems will work for cannabis, but they often skip out on micronutrients which would normally be found in soil, but might not be available in coco coir. If you’re using filtered or RO water, it’s even more important to use nutrients designed for hydro or coco since there will be basically zero traces of other nutrients in the water.
• Low in Calcium – Cannabis is prone to Calcium deficiencies when growing in coco coir unless you supplement with extra Calcium and Magnesium (it’s important to always add Calcium and Magnesium at the same time because they rely on each other and too much of one will cause a nutrient problem with the other). Most coco-specific nutrients already have high levels of Calcium, but it’s also really common to add a Cal-Mag supplement to your regimen when growing weed in coco coir to add extra calcium just in case. Any Cal-Mag supplement will work, but it’s always good to get a Cal-Mag supplement from the company who makes your nutrients jf available. Sticking with the same company for all your nutrients helps ensure they will be compatible with each other.

You can learn a lot about nutrients by looking at the label!

Optimum NPK Ratios for Coco Cannabis Nutrients

N-P-K stands for Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium, which are the three most important plant nutrients. These are what the 3 numbers listed on the front of all nutrient bottles stand for (Potassium is represented by “K” because chemists use the symbol K in the periodic table for potassium).

So what are the optimum NPK values for growing cannabis in coco? It depends on the plant’s stage of life (N-P-K are the 3 numbers on the front of nutrient bottles, like this)

In order to get the best results growing cannabis in coco, it’s important to give the right ratio of these crucial nutrients so the plant gets what it needs at the right time. For example, if you give too much Nitrogen in the flowering/budding phase, it actually surpresses bud production and reduces your yields even if the plant is completely healthy! You don’t want that!

The most important thing is high Nitrogen in the vegetative stage, and low Nitrogen in the flowering stage

Cannabis plants grown in soil are not that picky about P & K. As long as there is an abundance of each, the exact ratio isn’t as important as the amount of Nitrogen compared to the others. Additionally, coco nutrients should always include….

• Magnesium
• Calcium
• Iron
• Sulfur

Nice but not necessary micro-nutrients (these are contained in most water sources, but if using RO or very soft water you definitely want to add these nutrients to prevent possible nutrient deficiencies)

• Boron
• Cobalt
• Copper
• Manganese
• Molybdenum
• Zinc

The main difference between NPK ratios for coco and soil are….

• Coco nutrients usually contain more micro-nutrients (in trace amounts), to make up for what the plant would have been able to find in the soil
• Soil nutrients tend to have higher levels of Phosphorus, because microorganisms in the soil (as well as clay “colloidal” particles) can ‘steal’ some of it

When set up right with good nutrients, coco can produce some beefy buds!

Optimum pH of 5.5-6.5 <—- Sooooo important in coco

No matter which nutrient brand you’re using, even with chelated nutrients, cannabis roots are better able to absorb some chemical forms of nutrients than others. This is where pH comes into play. When the pH at the roots is too high or too low, it actually changes the chemical form of the individual nutrient compounds, making it more difficult for your plant to absorb the nutrients it needs.

With coco cannabis nutrients, they’re designed to be most available to your plant when the pH is between 5.5-6.5. If you let the pH get higher or lower than this, you will start getting nutrient deficiencies even if literally everything else is dialed in!

Learn how to adjust your pH to prevent nutrient deficiencies
(It’s easy! It’s kind of like a supplement you add to your reservoir to get better growth)

Stay skeptical of companies that say their nutrients will “automatically” adjust the pH of your water. Although some nutrient systems may be better than others at stabilizing pH, you still need to check the pH regularly if you want to get the best results in coco. Seriously, this is really important!

Depending on your starting water, “PH Perfect” nutrient systems sometimes aren’t able to correct the pH to the right levels, at least not consistently throughout the grow.

This could happen for various reasons. For example your source water likely contains minerals and other “stuff” that will change the pH of your water. If you start with highly purified water instead of tap water, it can actually make pH swings worse because there is no “buffer” in pure water to stabilize pH.

Plus, the amount of nutrients you use changes depending on your plant and its stage of life, and changing the nutrient levels will almost always change the pH, too!

If you check the pH and it’s in the right range, that’s perfect and there’s nothing else you need to do. But don’t skip checking the pH just because the bottle says you don’t have to!

At the very least, make sure pH is the first thing you check if you start seeing nutrient problems!

If you think you have the best coco cannabis nutrients, tell us about your results!

The post Best Coco Coir Nutrients for Cannabis? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

How to Germinate Marijuana Seeds So They Grow Fast

Plus, how to care for new cannabis seedlings…

We have a cannabis seedling germination page that includes everything you need to know about all the different germination methods, but this tutorial is different. In this tutorial, I’m going to share exactly how I do my seeds from beginning to end. Just follow these instructions and you’ll end up with healthy, fast-growing plants that germinate in just a few days. It’s basically fail-proof.

Quick Guide: Why aren’t my cannabis seeds sprouting?

Turn your cannabis seeds…

…into seedlings!

This step-by-step tutorial will teach you how to germinate seeds and provide basic seedling care

Soon you’ll have healthy cannabis plants to admire

Supplies Needed

• Seeds
• Soil or Coco (learn how to germinate seeds in hydro)
• A plant pot or container to put plants in
• Cheap paper towels (the lower quality the better for this purpose)
• Rapid Rooters (optional but nice)

1.) Get Cannabis Seeds

There are a few different ways to get cannabis seeds, with the most common being ordering seeds online and growing seeds you find in weed that you buy. Learn how to research and find the right strain.

If you’ve found seeds, learn how to tell if they’re good to grow.

Here’s a picture showing several healthy and viable cannabis seeds

2.) Prepare Your Soil or Coco Containers

Before you start germinating your seeds, set up your soil or coco. It will still be a few days until your seedlings arrive, but you want to have everything ready before the seedlings need to be planted.

Get your containers ready before you start germinating

What type of growing container should I use?

What kind of coco should I use?

Which soil is good for growing cannabis?

3.) Germination

When it comes to new growers, it seems like the most fool-proof method (at least for me, and many of the new growers who write in) is the Paper Towel Method! It’s so simple, but there’s something about wet paper towels that a young seedling loves 🙂  Learn About Other Ways to Germinate Seeds.

Paper Towel Method – Place your seeds inside a folded wet paper towel (Important: use cheap brand!)

This method is hard to mess up if you follow the instructions. Place your seeds inside a folded wet paper towel, and put that between two plates. The purpose of the plates is to prevent the seeds from drying out. Don’t let any part of a paper towel hang out the edges or it will wick away all the moisture and dry out. Keep everything totally contained between the plates.

Surprisingly, the really cheap paper towels work the best because the seeds and roots lay on top without getting stuck to anything. This is important. The more expensive “cloth-like” paper towels (like Viva brand) aren’t good for germination because the roots actually grow into them instead of laying on top.

Wet a paper towel (use the cheapest brand you can find). If growing multiple strains, you may want to label the paper towel so you know which is which. Place each seed on the wet paper towel next to their label.

Cover with another wet paper towel

Add another plate on top to keep the paper towels from drying out. Make sure now paper towel is sticking out the sides.

Tips

1. Check on your seeds every 24 hours but try not to disturb them. When they’ve germinated, you’ll see the seeds have cracked and there are little white roots coming out.
2. They should germinate in 1-4 days, though some seeds can take 7 days or longer (especially older and smaller seeds).
3. Keep them warm if possible. Seeds germinate a little faster is to keep them in a warm place (75-80°F). Some people use a seedling heat mat but in most cases that’s unnecessary. I leave mine near a sunny window. I usually put a thermometer in the same place to make sure it’s not too hot or cold (or just check the plate with your hands)

Here are those seedlings about 2 days later. Be extra careful when removing the paper towels. Don’t let the seeds roll around or you won’t know which is which. This is when you’ll be glad you used cheap paper towels, as they are much easier to peel off without disturbing your seedlings.

You can see some of the seeds sprouted, but some of them haven’t yet. That’s totally normal! Each seed is different. If this happens to you, you have two choices. You could plant the ones that have already sprouted and let the other ones stay in the paper towels until they germinate. Or you could just put all the seeds in Rapid Rooters now, and hope for the best as far as the slow-sprouting ones. It’s up to you. Letting the unsprouted seeds stay in the paper towels longer improves the germination rate in my experience, but it’s simpler (easier) to move them all at once.

Seeds often germinate at different rates even if they get the exact same conditions

4.) Place Germinated Seed in a Rapid Rooter

Now it’s time to get your Rapid Rooters! Alternatively, you could place your sprouted seeds directly in the final growing medium (coco or soil). I think these help them get started, but I’ve grown many successful plants by just putting the germinated seed directly in its final home.

Rapid Rooters are nice, but not necessary

The Rapid Rooter should be cut open lengthwise. I use big scissors but you could also use a knife.

Gently place the germinated seed inside, root down. Place the seed close to the surface so it doesn’t have far to go.

If you have a root that is curved or bent, don’t try to straighten it out. Open the Rapid Rooter and lay the germinated seed down gently. It will naturally lay on its flattest side. When you slowly close the Rapid Rooter, the bent parts of the root will end up in the “crack” of the Rapid Rooter that you cut to split it open from the side.

Most seedling plugs will go back into place easily, and you’ll barely be able to tell it’s been opened. I love Rapid Rooters because their texture causes most seeds to stay in place and not “fall down” further into the hole once you’ve got the Rapid Rooter closed.

5.) Water the seedling in the Rapid Rooter until you see a root come out bottom, 1-2 days.

Make sure to always keep the Rapid Rooter moist but not soaking wet and give plain water.

Since your seed has already sprouted and been in placed into the right growing position, it’ll often pop its head out within just 12-24 hours! Sometimes you see just the leaves, but often you actually see the seedling push the shell above ground.

Don’t touch the shell if possible because a tiny tug in the wrong direction can pull the seedling out of the plug and break off the taproot.

Try to let the seedlings break free if possible. But if you have a seedling that’s stuck in a shell after a day or two, and doesn’t seem to be getting any better, you need to go in and help.

I’ve found that pointy tweezers are perfect to pry open a shell that’s stuck. Just close the tweezer, stick it inside between the shell halves, and let it slowly open to pull the shell apart without you ever touching the seedling.

Sometimes a “film” from inside the shell gets stuck on the leaves. If that happens, try putting a drop of water on the film a few times a day to soften it. If the seedling doesn’t push it off on its own, hold the stem between your fingers (so it doesn’t pull at the root) and use tweezers to gently tug at the membrane and release the leaves.

Don’t use a dome on seedlings unless it’s very dry where you live. If you do use a dome, consider keeping a vent open and watching the humidity. A young seedling doesn’t require as high humidity as clones (which are what the domes are designed for), and seedlings tend to get “wet feet” and stop growing as fast in constantly wet conditions.

Water your seeding in the Rapid Rooters until you see a root coming out the bottom. Keep Rapid Rooters moist but not wet. During this time, give seedlings bright filtered light. A CFL or LED light bulb kept several inches away works well. I’ve left mine on the kitchen table next to a sunny window, and that’s also worked fine for me as long as it doesn’t get too hot.

You should see a root come out the bottom in just a day or two!

After you see your first root, it’s time to…

6.) Put Seedling in its New Home

You are about to water your seedlings for the first time, so prepare your water now.

• Coco – Prepare water with seedling-strength nutrients, and make sure to pH your water to 5.5-6.5 right before giving it to plants. Unlike soil, coco does not naturally contain any nutrients so you must provide nutrients in the water from the first watering.
• Soil – Prepare plain water at 6-7 pH. You don’t need to add nutrients for the first 3 weeks or so because your plants will live off what’s in the soil. Adding extra nutrients at this point might overload and burn the seedlings.

Now that your water is ready, dig a hole that’s a little smaller than the Rapid Rooter, and place your seedling plug inside. The idea is to let the Rapid Rooter stick up above the soil a little to help the roots get more oxygen. It’s okay if the plug goes in flat with the soil, but don’t bury the stem as that can cause stem rot in some cases. Even if you’ve got a tall seedling, you usually won’t notice the extra length once the plant is bigger.

Gently pack the nearby soil/coco to hold the Rapid Rooter in place so the seedling is stable.

Your seedlings get a little extra oxygen if you let the Rapid Rooter stick up into the air slightly as opposed to burying it.

Example of cannabis seedlings growing in coco coir, about to get seedling-strength nutrient water. If they were in soil, I would give plain water for the first few weeks.

Water immediately in a small circle around your seedling. For most grow mediums and containers above 1 gallon, you can give 2 cups (500 ml) of water immediately without overloading your seedling. If the grow medium feels moist (for example coco that was recently re-hydrated), give 1 cup (250ml) of water this first watering.

Give 2 cups (500 ml) water in a circle around the seedling. If the grow medium is already wet, give just 1 cup (250 ml)

How to Water Seedlings in the Beginning

Two Main Goals

• Seedling roots never dry out (most important)
• Seedling roots aren’t staying soaking wet (roots need oxygen)

Seedlings “drown” and die due to lack of oxygen if they get too much water too often. To avoid this, try to provide an amount of water that lets you water seedlings every few days. Avoid giving so much water that the seedling roots are in a super wet grow medium for days as this causes “damping off” and root problems. Some grow styles like high-frequency fertigation call for watering more frequently. Just remember that the more often you water your plants, the less water you should give at a time. Also, keep in mind that a smaller container tends to dry out fast while a bigger container holds onto the water for longer

Try to maintain a schedule that lets you water your plants every few days without them looking droopy

• Water in a small circle around the base of the plant at first
• If the growing medium feels dry within 1 day, give more water next time. Otherwise, give the same amount again next time you water
• Repeat, until you can give enough water to get at least a little runoff, and have it dry in a few days

If the medium is drying in less than 2 days, it means you need to give more water to the plant at a time, or possibly transplant to a bigger container if the plant has outgrown its current one.

If your growing medium takes longer than 3 days for the top inch to dry, it means the soil is staying wet too long, and plant roots aren’t getting enough oxygen. It also puts your plants at risk of getting fungus gnats. Try giving less water at a time until the plant is drinking more. It’s possible you may have a problem with drainage in your medium (what is good soil?) or there are no drainage holes so extra water can’t come out the bottom of the container. Always remove any runoff water instead of letting the plant sit in it.

More seedling resources

How to water cannabis plants perfectly every time

How can I tell if my seedling is over or under-watered?

Guide to common seedling problems

How to transplant cannabis seedlings into a bigger pot

Some growers like to put seedlings in solo cups and then into their final container. When done right this can increase the rate of growth by providing more oxygen to the plant’s roots. If you go that route, I recommend paper cups as they’re not as bad for the environment.

Autopsy: Why Aren’t My Marijuana Seeds Sprouting?

If your seeds still aren’t sprouting and growing properly, consider the following factors.

If there’s no germination at all…

• Temperature may be too hot or cold – aim for 75-80°F
• Too wet – seeds and seedling roots should always be moist, but should not be soaking wet
• Too dry – if a root dries out the seedling can die
• Bad seeds – It might not be you, it could be the seeds themselves. Even if you purchase from a good breeder, sometimes you still get duds. How can I tell if seeds are viable?

If seeds sprout, but then stop growing…

• Temperature is too hot or cold – aim for 75-80°F
• Too wet – new seedlings don’t like “wet feet” so make sure your Rapid Rooter or growing medium never looks shiny or muddy, as that means there’s too much water! For this reason, it’s also usually recommended to avoid using a humidity dome with seedlings unless your air is dry. Although clones love humidity domes (they need water from the air because they don’t have any roots to get water), seedlings like it a little drier or roots tend to get mushy.
• Too dry – less common unless you live in a very dry area, but sometimes your medium dries out too fast if you’ve got a heavy-drinking, fast-growing seedling!
• Too much light – if the seedlings get blasted with high levels of light right away, it can shock them. They may need some time to adjust to higher light levels. Simply starting your grow light a little further away than normal is usually enough. Think sunny window at first, and start ramping up after a week of healthy growth.
• Not enough light – if seedlings are growing long and stretchy without growing new sets of leaves, it means it wants more light.
• No light for more than a day – if the sprouted seed doesn’t get light within 24 hours after sprouting, it may die. Once seeds are sprouted, get them in a Rapid Rooter and under at least some amount of light as soon as possible!
• Roots damaged – If somehow your roots got damaged, it can sometimes stop the seedling from growing

Don’t forget to check out our complete guide to common seedling problems.

Read an alternative guide to starting seedlings in coco or soil.

Unfortunately, sometimes you will never know why certain seeds just don’t thrive. It’s all part of nature.  But if you follow this tutorial you will get the best results possible.

Jump to…..

What Causes Marijuana Seedlings to Grow Tall and Stretchy?

How to Avoid Common Seedling Mistakes

Why Are My Seedlings Yellow?

How to Start Seedlings in Hydroponics

The post Fail-Proof Cannabis Germination Method in Soil or Coco appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

A Complete Tutorial on Bud-Based Flowering Stage Defoliation

What is cannabis defoliation, and why/how does removing leaves from a cannabis plant increase yields?

This THC Bomb cannabis plant was defoliated according to this defoliation tutorial.

The point of defoliation is to “hack” your plant’s natural processes in the early part of the flowering stage to cause it to grow its buds and colas differently.

You’ll notice in the picture examples that the defoliated plants seem focused purely on bud development. Growers achieve this by removing fan leaves from healthy marijuana plants during early bud development. As a result, plants put more energy on growing buds rather than leaves.

Defoliation is the only way to achieve plants that are ALL buds, like this Aurora Indica plant.

Blue Dream is another strain that responds especially well to defoliation.

Growing auto-flowering plants? Use this defoliation tutorial instead.

In the wild, your plant will spend some amount of energy on buds, as well as some amount of energy making and maintaining leaves. However, if you defoliate your cannabis plants early in the flowering stage, you change the plant’s natural growing patterns.

Without as many leaves at the moment buds are first forming, your plants puts more energy into making colas, and the colas will be longer, thicker, and go down further into the plant.

Theories Why Bud-Based Marijuana Defoliation Works…

• Wind-pollinated plant – Cannabis plants are wind-pollinated, and therefore don’t fatten any buds that lack access to wind. Defoliation exposes more buds to a breeze.
• Buds get more direct light – Cannabis buds grow fatter when exposed to strong, direct light. Defoliation exposes buds to more light.
• Energy diverted to buds – A defoliated cannabis plant focuses on bud sites during the initial part of flowering. It simply doesn’t have leaves to put energy into!

Did You Know? There are other commercial crops, like cotton, which also need to be defoliated early in the flowering stage to produce the best quality and yields!

Whatever the reason, defoliation works to dramatically increase your cannabis yields and bud quality when you do it right!

Only buds that get exposed to direct light ever get a good size. If your plant is very bushy like this one, you are losing out on potential yields because the hidden buds stay small. The buds would have been longer and bigger further down into the plant if it had been defoliated in the early flowering stage.

A non-defoliated plant – buds are smaller than they could be.

Here’s another example of cannabis plants that would have benefited from defoliation. Notice how short all the buds are. They end where the bushiness begins. If the grower had exposed the colas, they would have fattened much deeper into the plant!

A non-defoliated plant – buds are small and don’t go deep into the plant.

Many growers write in to tell us how defoliation was the secret sauce they needed to take their growing skills to the next level. In our growing forum we have some growers that are conducting defoliation and have taken the technique to new heights!

Ready to learn how to incorporate defoliation into your own cannabis garden?

THC Bomb plant grown by Ricky (a first time defoliator!)

Step-by-Step: How to Defoliate Cannabis Plants to Increase Yields

It’s pretty well-accepted in the cannabis growing world that defoliation can increase yields in some situations, but what’s the “best” way to defoliate? That’s a common question without an easy answer.

The truth is that many growers have their own ideas about the best way to defoliate. If you ask 10 different growers, you could possibly get 10 different answers! And you’ll probably find at least one grower who claims it doesn’t work at all.

Today, I’ll share my own personal defoliation timeline and tactics which I’ve developed over the last several years.

Note: Some equatorial Sativa and Haze strains naturally grow tall and “leggy” with thin leaves and lots of exposed stem. These strains may never produce enough leaves to get bushy even in the best environment, and may look like they’ve naturally defoliated themselves. When this happens there’s no need to defoliate plants further. However, many (if not most) strains produce some amount of leafiness that needs to be removed for optimal growth indoors.

You may not need to defoliate if you see lots of stem and bud sites are already exposed. Some strains naturally grow leggy enough that they don’t need much, if any, defoliation to expose bud sites or increase air circulation!

Step 1: Vegetative Stage Defoliation

I don’t remove leaves in the vegetative stage to the same extent I do in the flowering stage.

Most defoliation in the vegetative stage is used to thin out the plant if it starts getting really bushy. Making sure there’s always airflow through the middle and under the bottom of the plant will help plants grow better. Good airflow also prevents White Powdery Mold (WPM), a common problem when you have leaves laying on top of each other.

In my opinion, if you can’t see through the plant, and/or there’s no light getting through to the bottom, it’s too bushy for proper airflow!

These vegetative stage plants are too leafy! Notice how the floor is in shadow? They’re ready for a haircut!

When it comes to plant training, the focus in the vegetative stage is on getting the shape of the plant correct (flat and wide like a table), and making sure there’s multiple main stems/colas under the grow light.

When I’m growing my own cannabis plants, I don’t start defoliating aggressively until I’m in the flowering stage.

Step 2: Flowering Stage Defoliation

Right before the switch to the flowering stage, I remove any leaves and tiny growth tips on the bottom parts of the plant that aren’t getting light anymore (sometimes called “lollipopping” the plant).

It is important to do right this before the switch to flowering so the plant is putting all its effort into the top bud sites instead of the lower bud sites that will never grow into big buds no matter what you do.

Some growers call the technique “lollipopping” because you’re making the bottom bare like a lollipop stick 🙂 Though some growers also remove bud sites while lollipopping, for you first grow, I recommend removing all the leaves below the line, but leaving the bud sites (growth tips at the base of each leaf) alone. This helps ensure you have as many places to make bud as possible. I’ve found that leaving extra bud sites doesn’t seem to reduce your yields as long as you’ve defoliated the plant properly, but removing too many bud sites definitely hurts your yields!

This grower stripped all the buds sites from the bottom of the plant while lollipopping, resulting in shortened colas. I’ve done this, too! His yield would have been bigger if he’d allowed those bud sites to continue further down on each stem!

To prevent the problem with the plant above, avoid removing or damaging future bud sites whenever defoliating. It’s easy to accidentally damage bud sites when they’re just tiny pre-flowers like this one, so be extra careful when removing leaves!

After you’ve stripped all the leaves from the bottom your plant, it’s time to remove most of the remaining biggest fan leaves (though you’re not going to completely strip the top part as much as before). You’ll be leaving any small fan leaves as well as the top few pairs of big fan leaves of each cola completely untouched. After this step, the plant will be almost all “bones” and bud sites, with few big fan leaves except at the top.

Flowering Defoliation #1 (Immediately Before Switch to 12/12)

Before Defoliation

After Defoliation

I leave a few extra full size fan leaves at the top of each cola because I believe it helps power the growth of the colas during the flowering stretch so they get as long as possible. Make sure to remove only leaves during defoliation, but not bud sites! I have found after trying it both ways that removing bud sites while lollipopping/defoliating often hurts your yields!

Flowering Defoliation #2 (Last Major Defoliation) – Week 3 of Flowering Stage

This is what that plant looked like 3 weeks later. I didn’t remove any leaves in that time. The plant has gotten far taller due to the flowering stretch, and is completely covered in leaves again!

Usually by around week 3, a bunch of budlets have formed. At this point I remove all of the major fan leaves one last time. You’re forcing the plant to focus on the buds during this crucial phase of their development!

After that, I’m done with the majority of defoliation! From week 3 and on, I only remove leaves if they’re covering a bud site (and I can’t tuck the leaf away) or if the plant starts getting too bushy through the middle and bottom. Each leaf provides energy to the plant, and I cherish them… unless they get in the way! 🙂

Step 3: Harvest

Wait until buds have matured and appear ready to harvest. Then it’s go time!

7 Weeks Later I Harvested This!

Each bud dwarfed my hands!

The above pictures featured a single plant but I’ve used the same technique successfully with dozens of cannabis plants in soil, coco coir, and hydro.

More Examples of Defoliated Cannabis Plants

Here are examples of other harvests where I utilized this defoliation technique.

Grown in coco coir

I probably could have defoliated these ones a bit more, but results were still great.

Grown in soil

These are auto-flowering plants that were defoliated. Get instructions on how to use defoliation with autoflowering plants to increase yields. It’s pretty much the same, but in that defoliation tutorial I included some extra explanation on exactly when and how much to to defoliate considering you don’t have a specific day that you initiate 12/12 like with photoperiod plants.

These two hydro plants also utilized the manifolding technique in addition to defoliation to increase bud size.

Bonus Tips for Successful Defoliation

• Always use nutrients alongside defoliation – Defoliation works best when you’re providing cannabis-friendly nutrients in the water. Supplementing with nutrients help the plant replace nutrients lost in the leaves. If you’re growing in a “just add water” super soil setup (where you’re not adding extra nutrients), it’s recommended to avoid much defoliation. If you remove leaves without adding more nutrients, it increases the chance the plant runs out of nutrients early, starving it of precious nutrition during bud formation.
• Light should hit the floor – Defoliation is most effective if the plant is so leafy that light isn’t making it through the plant. If the floor underneath is in shadow, that’s a sign that no air or light is getting through the plant. After defoliation, there should be some amount of light getting to the floor under the plant.
• Err on the side of taking fewer leaves – You can always take more leaves, but you can’t put them back. Especially as a beginner defoliator, it’s recommended to remove fewer leaves than you might think, and see how the plant responds. Even a little defoliation can make a significant difference to yields.
• Only defoliate healthy cannabis plants – You should never defoliate a plant that is sick or unhealthy. If a plant has nutrient deficiencies, or otherwise seems stressed, “tuck” leaves to expose buds instead.
• Tuck leaves to expose buds – The goal of tucking leaves is to ensure they don’t cover any buds from the grow light. If the plant is not particularly leafy, showing signs of stress, or you’re not adding nutrients in the water, you can still achieve a lot of the benefits of defoliation simply by tucking big fan leaves out of the way.

If you want to copy the results for yourself, refer to the following quick summary!

Nebula’s Bud-Based Defoliation Technique (Quick Summary)

So basically, my (personal) cannabis defoliation technique could be summed up like this:

Vegetative Stage

• Plant Training – Train plant(s) to grow into a generally flat and wide shape, so they fill your grow space like a table. This makes it so you have multiple colas located at the top of the plant and close to the light. Or choose a Sea of Green setup (growing many small plants) and skip the training!
• Defoliate the middle and bottom of your plant(s) whenever you can’t see light coming through them. When the middle is completely dark it means the plant is too bushy.

Right Before Switch to 12/12 – What about autoflowering strains?

• Do this step when plant is about half the final desired height (since it will about double in size after the switch to 12/12)
• Lollipop the plant (completely strip the lowest leaves on the plant that will never get light, leaving the bud sites intact)
• Remove big fan leaves on the upper part of the plant (making sure not to damage bud sites) until plant is not leafy. If you can easily see your plant’s stems it’s a good time to stop.

Week 3 After Switch to 12/12

• One Last Defoliation at Flowering Week 3 – Now that you’re three weeks into the flowering stage, do another major removal of just about all the fan leaves. Make sure to especially take any big leaves with long stems, or leaves that are covering bud sites! Again, avoid removing or damaging any developing buds!

After Week 3, I only defoliate huge fan leaves that can’t be tucked away. Otherwise I just wait until harvest and reap the rewards!

Defoliation is a technique, but it is also an art! The above instructions should get you started but cannabis plants are like big bonsai trees and you’ll eventually learn how to defoliate without hesitation. It’s fun to try to alter the growth patterns of cannabis plants and I encourage you to experiment with your own plants and develop your own particular defoliation style and rhythm!

Defoliation done right makes big, dense, potent marijuana buds at harvest!

Have you tried defoliation on your cannabis plants? Send us pictures!

You Might Be Interested in One of the Following Cannabis Plant Training Tutorials…

• Simplest Plant Training Guide Ever!
• Complete Plant Training Guide
• How Can I Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• 7 Unfortunate Plant Training Mistakes

Detailed Breakdown of Training Techniques​

• Low Stress Training (LST) Tutorial
• Topping vs FIMing Tutorial
• LBH’s Famous ScrOG Tutorial
• Supercropping: Simple Secret to Bigger Yields
• Sea of Green (SoG) Tutorial
• 12-12 from Seed – Flowering Plants Early
• Nebula’s Manifold Tutorial
• How to Manifold Clones
• Alternate Defoliation Tutorial ​
• What is Re-Vegging / Monstercropping?

Diagnose Your Sick Plant!

The post “Defoliation Deep Dive” Cannabis Yield Multiplier appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

The following symptoms are for when your cannabis leaves are “clawing” or curling up or curling down. Sometimes known as “The Claw”. I’ll give a short explanation with pictures of each problem, plus links to the solutions! Fix this common (but hard to diagnose) marijuana problem today!

Nitrogen Toxicity

A Nitrogen toxicity is the result of the plant getting too much Nitrogen (usually from too high levels of nutrients overall, or by using a Vegetative nutrient in the flowering stage). It causes dark green leaves and curled tips (“the claw”).

One of the main symptoms of a Nitrogen toxicity is curled tips (“the claw”)

A plant with a Nitrogen toxicity tends to be dark green all over

​

Learn more about a cannabis Nitrogen Toxicity

Wind Burn

Caused by too much wind. You’ll notice that the leaves further from the fan don’t have symptoms.

Example of too much wind on your leaves

Learn more about cannabis wind burn

Bad Soil / Overwatering / Underwatering

You can help prevent over and under-watering your cannabis plants by always starting with good soil or coco coir.

Bad Soil

Bad soil is usually thick and muddy. Plants in poor soil will droop (often with unhappy curly leaves) no matter your watering practices.

Avoid thick soil that stays wet for a long time and doesn’t drain well

Overwatering

Overwatering makes leaves fat with water, and they tend to curl down and droop

Overwatering (especially when combined with heat) can also cause leaves to curl up

This plant was grown in muddy soil, and the curling, unhealthy leaves kept getting worse and worse over time!

​

Underwatering

Underwatering causes symptoms that often look like overwatering, but you’ll know it’s underwatering if the plants perk up each time after you water them.

Root Problems

Although often caused by overwatering, once the roots are sick you’ll see symptoms for a little while even after you start watering your plants properly.

Unhealthy roots can cause all sorts of problems including curling and clawing!

Unhealthy Roots in Soil/Coco

This plant’s roots were damaged from being overwatered and too hot for several days. As a result, the leaves took on a strange, blistery appearance.

This plant suffered from heat combined with overwatering for several days. This damaged the roots and gave it this odd leaf curling.

Learn more about root problem and symptoms

Root Rot

Root rot is something marijuana hydroponic growers can suffer from if pathogens attack the roots. It is often triggered by heat and/or lack of bubbles near the roots.

Root rot can cause curling leaves and brown patches as well as sometimes other nutrient deficiencies

Rootbound

If a plant stays in the same container for too long, the roots will eventually start wrapping around the edges of the pot. This is known as being “rootbound” and causes symptoms similar to other root problems.

A rootbound plant has been in the same container for too long. Roots wrap around the edges and “choke” the plant.

Rootbound plants often droop, appear yellow, get nutrient deficiencies, and stay small. Even if you’re caring for them perfectly!

If you see tons of white roots when transplanted, that means the plant was in that container too long

When this happens, the main solution is to transplant the plant into a bigger container. Another solution is to grow in fabric pots or air pots. These types of pots let air in from the sides, killing the circling roots (“air-pruning” them) and prevents the plant from getting rootbound for months.

To help a rootbound plant, transplant to a bigger container with fresh potting mix

Or start with air pots or fabric pots in order to prevent plants from getting rootbound at all

Heat Stress

If plants are experiencing a lot of heat, it can make leaves droop and/or curl. Some strains can handle a lot of heat, while other strains tend to droop when it gets warm.

Heat can cause leaves to curl up

Read more about heat and growing weed:

• Cannabis Heat Stress Guide
• Air Circulation and Exhaust Tutorial
• 5 Ways to Deal with Heat While Growing Cannabis
• 3 Proven Supplements that Help with Heat Stress

Light Burn

Plants can get light burn (sort of like a sunburn) even if the temperature is completely under control. The symptoms are usually concentrated close to the grow lights. Sometimes this can cause leaves to claw and curl downwards.

Light burn can cause the leaves closest to the light to turn yellow

Learn more about light burn

Bugs & Pests

Often a bug infestation caused general plant unhappiness, but these are some of the most likely to cause curling or clawing leaves.

Broad Mites

Usually, you can’t see broad mites because they live inside the plant. The main symptom of an infestation is strange leaf curling that is specific to this pest, as well as “wet” looking leaves.

Hemp Russet Mites

Hemp russet mites can also cause drooping and other strange symptoms, but the bugs are so small many growers don’t realize what they’re dealing with.

Hemp russet mites cause drooping and yellow mold-like growth on the tops of plants

A closeup of the hemp russet mites

Learn how to get rid of hemp russet mites!

Fungus Gnats

Fungus gnats look like tiny flies buzzing around your topsoil. Although a few fungus gnats won’t really hurt your plants, a big infestation can damage the roots, causing symptoms similar to other types of root problems.

Learn about other types of bugs and pests that can attack your cannabis plants!

Jump to…

7 Step Fix to 99% of Cannabis Growing Problems

Pictures of Marijuana Plant Problems

What does pH have to do with nutrient deficiencies?

10-Step Quick Start Guide to Growing

The post Why are Leaves Curling or Clawing? (“The Claw”) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Perfect Setup for Beginners & First-Time Growers

• 250W HPS Grow Light
• Coco Coir
• Auto-Flowering Strains

Getting Started

• Get Supplies
• Get Set Up

Seedling Stage

• Time Germinate Your Seeds!
• Seedling Care
• Common Seedling Problems

Vegetative Stage

• Daily Care & Tips
• Plant Training for Bigger Yields (Optional)

Flowering Stage

• Daily Care & Tips to Increase Yields

Harvest Time

• When to Harvest
• How to Dry & Cure (Make Buds More Potent!)

Introduction for First-Time Growers

Hundreds of cannabis growers have written in over the years and it seems that many, many growers are looking to produce about an ounce a month. There are lots of ways to achieve that yield, but how do you do it using the least amount of time, money and effort? How can you get to harvest as fast as possible?

Today’s step-by-step tutorial uses a 250W HPS, coco coir as a growing medium and auto-flowering cannabis strains. This combination makes it easy and relatively cheap to produce 4 ounces in 4 months…or even more!

You don’t have to know anything about growing cannabis to follow this beginner’s tutorial

This tutorial will give you a green thumb even if you’ve struggled with plants in the past, or just never grown anything! Everything that needs to be done will be explained step-by-step for each stage of your plant’s life. You’ll get a list of supplies with everything you need to grow, from measuring spoons to rope ratchets to seeds to your grow tent!

I have links to every item so you get exactly the same setup and get exactly the same results as you see in this tutorial. Once you’ve completed this grow, the next ones get easier and easier!

Here’s the breakdown:

• $652 Setup – Total setup cost for 1st grow including grow tent, seeds & all supplies (cost breakdown). Your 2nd grow will only cost about $112 for seeds and supplies.
• $30-60/Month Electricity – Average Cost of Electricity (based on $0.12/kWh – $0.25/ kWh). You may pay more or less depending on where you live; 12¢ is the overall US average, 25¢ is the big city average – (electricity breakdown)
• 4-7 Ounces – Average Yield/Harvest – if you follow all the instructions on this page and get the full setup you could possibly get even better yields!
• 3.5 Months – Average Time from Seed to Bud
• 1+ Ounce/Month – Comfortably grow this much (and probably a lot more) without needing advanced knowledge or experience!

Why a 250W HPS Grow Light?

A lot of cannabis growers think they need big grow lights to get the yields they’re looking for, and for some growers that may be true! But for growers looking for about an ounce a month, a 250W HPS may be the best grow light available. A 250W HPS doesn’t get even close to as hot as the bigger HPS grow lights like the 400W and 600W, but it still gets the improved yields, density and appearance of buds grown under an HPS.

A 250W HPS can easily produce 1+ oz/month. If you follow this tutorial you can expect to harvest 4-7 oz every 3-4 months.

Example Harvest in This Setup – 6.7 ounces
(plants pictured above – view the grow journal)

Why a 250W HPS is a Great Choice for Marijuana Growers:

• Bigger Yields for the Same Electricity – For the same amount of wattage, an HPS grow light gets (on average) 10-20% higher yields than LEDs, and 25-50% higher yields than CFLs or T5s
• Longer & Denser Buds – Buds grown under HPS are usually longer and often more dense than buds from other types of grow lights
• Low Setup Cost – HPS grow lights usually cost quite a bit less to get started with than LEDs, and the cost is similar to starting with CFLs or T5s. The entire grow setup from today’s tutorial including seeds and supplies will cost less than $700, which is cheaper than many similar-wattage LED grow lights are by themselves, and similar to what you’d pay for an equivalent CFL or T5 setup (at least on this scale; small CFL setups can be really cheap!).
• Manageable Electricity Cost – With a 250W HPS and the 3 fans recommended in this tutorial, you can expect to pay around an extra $30-60 in electricity/month (electricity breakdown).

Big HPS grow lights have a reputation for getting very hot, but a small one like the 250W is a lot easier to keep cool. In fact, a 250W HPS doesn’t put out more total heat than an LED that pulls 250W out of the wall!

A strong exhaust fan recirculates and constantly replaces all the air in a sealed environment like a grow tent. This keeps a small 250W HPS grow light cool enough without ducting. This technique works with both air-cooled hoods and “wing” style reflectors

What about outside the grow space? If venting into a closet, a 250W HPS could raise the temperature by 5°F (3°C) degrees or more. In a regular size room it has less of an effect and may only raise the temperature of the room by a few degrees.

I have my grow tent in my bedroom and a window fan keep temps cool enough to almost completely mitigate the heat created by the HPS.

In my experience a 250W light will raise the temperature of a large room by a few degrees. If you use a window fan to blow out hot air, that can help keep the room cooler.

In an ideal world it’s probably a good idea to set up your 250W light with a “real” exhaust system with ducting going from your light to a fan to a window, but in a pinch you can do without and upgrade later (that’s what I did!). Every grow you can make your setup a little bit better, but in the meantime you can harvest lots of beautiful and potent bud!

Why No MH (Metal Halide) bulbs in the Vegetative Stage? Many growers start plants under a metal halide (MH) bulb while the plant is vegetating, then switch over to HPS once their plants start flowering. MH encourages short bushy growth while HPS encourages long/stretchy growth and flowering. I personally use an HPS grow light from seed to harvest because it’s easier and I like how plants grow, but it definitely works either way!

Why Use Coco Coir for Growing Cannabis?

• Feels Like Growing in Soil – Coco coir is a soilless growing medium which gives the feel of growing in soil. Plants are kept in regular containers, and growers simply water their plants with nutrient water. Coco coir can be treated basically the same as (non-amended) soil for growing cannabis.
• Great for Plant Roots – Coco coir is effective at holding onto moisture and nutrients for roots, but also has a lighter texture that lets it hold onto more oxygen. This helps prevent over and under-watering. Coco coir tends to promote healthy and fast root development compared to other potting mixes.
• Does Not Attract Insects – Coco coir does not make a good home for many garden pests that affect soil growers. As such, cannabis growing in coco coir is much less likely to be attacked by pests or bugs.
• Benefits of Hydro – Hydroponics (growing plants directly in water while pumping in air to provide oxygen) is effective at making plants grow faster because it gives oxygen and nutrients to the roots in the most easily accessible form, saving the plant precious energy. However, hydroponics takes extra preparation compared to growing a potted plant and for those looking for a hand-watered experience, coco coir gives many of the benefits of hydro. This results in a quicker harvest and bigger yields compared to growing in soil, without having to manage a water reservoir.

Why grow an auto-flowering strain?

Auto-flowering strains are like regular cannabis plants except an auto-flowering plant will automatically start making buds around week 3-4 of its life (“regular” strains need a special light schedule to make buds). Most auto-flowering plants will be ready to harvest by the time they are 3-4 months old, making them one of the fastest ways to get to harvest.

Learn more about auto-flowering strains!

One nice feature of auto-flowering buds is they tend to be more relaxing and anti-anxiety because they naturally have slightly higher levels of CBD. This is because the ancestor of auto-flowering strains produced a lot of CBD. Although the original auto-flowering strains from years ago were not as potent as regular cannabis plants, the modern strains by trustworthy breeders are as potent as any non-auto (photoperiod) plant!

Auto-flowering strains are also really neat in the way that they act exactly how you’d think a plant should act if you’ve never grown cannabis before.

You plant a seed, water the plant while it grows, and harvest after it finishes making buds on its own. This simplistic approach can help get rid of some of the complication of learning how to grow cannabis. By the time you get to the end of your first grow, you’ll be expert enough to tackle any strain!

This bud is from an auto-flowering Lemon OG Haze plant

Getting Started

Ready to start growing an ounce of bud a month? If you follow this tutorial step-by-step I can almost guarantee you will have at least 4 ounces in your hands in 4 months, and probably more!

Supplies

4 Seeds – Get Seeds for 4 Feminized Auto-flowering Plants

The most important thing about choosing strains to grow is they should excite you! Learn more about picking the right strain for your needs. Below I recommend a few breeders and strains because I know these will work for you, but don’t feel stuck if you want something else! Any auto-flowering strain will work in this setup if you follow all the instructions 🙂

Make sure to get “feminized” seeds! That means that all the plants will be female and make buds. Non-feminized seeds have about a 50% chance of being male plants which don’t make buds at all (they’re only good for breeding)! Nearly all auto-flowering seeds are feminized, so they will usually say specifically if they’re “regular”/”non-feminized” seeds. Learn more about ordering cannabis seeds online.

Auto-flowering cannabis plants thrive under an HPS grow light!

You want to get seeds for 4 plants for this setup. If something happens to one or two of them, you’ll still be on track to get a nice harvest! That being said, if you follow this tutorial you shouldn’t lose any plants.

You can grow 4 of the same strain, or 4 different strains, it’s up to you. Generally it’s easier to grow all the same strain because they tend to grow more like each other, but if you’re willing to put in a little extra effort to control any unruly plants you can easily grow 4 different strains at the same time (that’s what I do).

Get seeds for 4 plants so you can grow a forest under your grow light!

Just try make sure that each strain you choose is ready to harvest within 3-4 months. That will help make sure they all stay about the same size. Breeders always list estimates about how long each strain needs to flower before harvest.

A Few Trusted Auto-Flowering Breeders (highly rated by auto-flowering growers)

These aren’t the only great auto-flowering breeders, but I know these ones get great results every time! Each one has strains that have been refined over many generations to lock in good genetics and make sure the plant grows exactly how the breeder tells you.

• Buddha
• Dinafem
• Dutch Passion
• Nirvana

When you’re growing auto-flowering plants from a trusted breeder, you know what to expect because the plant will grow exactly how the breeder tells you it will. With lesser-known auto-flowering breeders it’s more of a gamble. Sometimes you get great plants, but unfortunately sometimes you get something unexpected that you don’t want.

A Few Suggested Auto-Flowering Strains

These are some of my favorite auto cannabis strains, but there are hundreds of great strains to choose front. Learn more about researching strains!

• Dinafem Auto Critical Jack – This is one of the prettier autos with colorful buds that become covered with trichomes, and it also has very strong mental and body effects!
• Dinafem Auto Sour Diesel – Good yields and although buds are average looking, the effects were out of this world – this is my favorite auto that I’ve grown so far!
• Nirvana Auto Bubbleicious – Buds have a sweet smell that is almost like bubblegum, plus this strain is very easy to grow!
• Dutch Passion AutoBlueberry – Purple or blue tint to buds, amazing blueberry smell and above average potency.

Growing Medium – Coco Coir

• Pre-Made Coco Coir Potting Mix – You can also mix your own with dehydrated coco coir bricks, which is a bit cheaper since it’s easier to ship
• 4 x 3-gallon Smart Pots – If you need to spend longer than a day or two away from your plants at a time, you may want to get 5 or even 7-gallon pots. Plants grown in 3-gallon containers grow a little quicker for the first few weeks but you’ll have to water them more often than a bigger container.
• Rapid Rooters – to start seeds (these can be kept in the fridge between grows)

Environment Setup – Get a Grow Tent

• 2’ x 4’ x 5’ Grow Tent

• Air Circulation: Two small clip-on fans circulating air around and over plants

• Exhaust: Can Max 6″ Fan – 334 CFM. (You can use a window fan if the room gets hotter than outside. Temps should stay around 75-85°F (24 – 29°C) in the grow tent. Ideally, the temperature should stay closer to 75°F(24°C), but some areas just don’t allow for this without lots and lots of air conditioning.

250W Grow Light

• You need a Reflector, 250W Ballast & 250W Bulb.

• Any 250W HPS grow light set will work for this setup, even super cheap ones. However, these days I’ve noticed many grow light companies have stopped carrying 250W HPS lights in favor of 315 LECs (not the same as LEDs, these are a type of HID light). LECs can be a great alternative to HPS, but they initially cost quite a bit more (usually around $500 for a kit) and need to be kept a little further away than a 250W HPS (18″ away vs 12″ away). However they perform extremely well for growing cannabis and have some other neat benefits. Learn more about growing cannabis with LECs.

• Perhaps the easiest option is to get a dimmable 400W HPS ballast and dimmable 400W HPS bulb with your reflector. Although a 400W HPS light can get pretty hot, you will be able to dim the grow light to 50 or 75% to help keep things cool. This will also allow you to follow through with the tutorial, and you can always turn up the intensity later.

Get this Reflector, 250W Ballast & 250W HPS Bulb (Premium Equipment) – The light from an HPS appears yellow or orange, which happens to be the perfect light spectrum to encourage plants to make bigger buds.

Consider a 315 LEC grow light if you want an alternative to HPS. These newly-popular grow lights are still in testing, but so far they’ve been getting really great results with cannabis!

Get a dimmable 400W HPS ballast, dimmable 400W HPS bulb and a reflector, then turn ths grow light down to 50 or 75% to follow this tutorial. You’ll be able to increase the intensity later. Click pictures for closeup of a ballast with dimming options.

Nutrients

• General Hydroponics Flora Trio

• CaliMagic (Cal-Mag supplement, essential when growing in coco coir)

• Here’s the exact nutrient schedule I use (PDF) This is basically the regular General Hydroponic coco schedule for the Flora trio, but I cut the dosages in half and converted everything to imperial measurements (tsp, etc), along with a few small tweaks for auto-flowering strains in coco. With these alterations, you can use this schedule exactly as is for growing auto cannabis plants in coco coir.

Watering Your Plants

• 1-gallon water jug

• Trays to Catch Runoff Water (put these on a slight incline so all the water pools to the front so you can easily collect it

“How do I collect the water from the runoff tray?”

• Wet/Dry vacuum
• Water transfer pump

I use the “Bucket Head” attachment at Home Depot which costs about $25 and can be attached to any standard bucket, turning it into an ultra-cheap wet/dry vacuum.

Other Random Grower Tools

• Thermometer & Humidity Monitor

• Power strip & electrical timer

• Rope Ratchets to hang light

• Measuring spoons (I got this particular set because it goes down to 1/32 tsp)

• Dropper/Pipette (for pH testing)

• General Hydroponics pH Kit

• Plant Twist Ties for (optional) plant training

Environment – Setting Up “Exhaust” 

For some people this may be a good temporary solution until a real exhaust system can be made. And for some people, this might be a permanent solution to get your grow area temps the way you’d like.

What You Need

• Grow tent in a room with access to a window. I actually keep mine right in the bedroom with me, pictured below, because I don’t have a suitable closet.

• Exhaust fan – Can Max 6″ Fan – 334 CFM

• Window Fan – I use the Holmes Dual 8″ Blade Twin Window Fan because it moves a lot of air and actually fits my huge windows, but any strong window fan will work.

The main idea is to vent hot air out of your grow tent, then get the hot air out of your room via a window fan.

When it’s just a grow tent without any ducting, it doesn’t really look suspicious in your bedroom. Only a few people have seen my grow tent and every one of them thought it’s some sort of storage or way to hold clothes, if they even notice it at all.

Here’s what to do:

1. Set up your grow tent with grow light inside

2. Install your exhaust fan at the top of your tent, blowing air out. Make sure there’s an intake hole for new air to get in. The intake hole should be bigger than your exhaust, and should be located on the bottom of the tent on the opposite side of your exhaust fan. This way, the coolest air is being pulled in and the hottest air is being exhausted. This isn’t always possible, but ensures the best results. Most grow tents already have a suitable intake hole, so this is another reason I like grow tents – less work needed on your part to make a good environment for your plants

3. Install a window fan blowing air out in the same room as the tent. This window fan will be most effective if you have an intake hole, just like your grow space. The best way to accomplish this is to simply open another window in the room, or even a window or door outside the room somewhere else in the house as long as the fan gets access to new air. This causes the fan to blow all the air out, sucking in new fresh air to replace it. The window fan listed above can also be configured so one is moving air out while the other is moving air in, which is an option in a room with just one window. It’s super important to note that the smell of your cannabis will still be an issue! More on that below…

This may not be a permanent solution, but it gets air moving through the tent and keeps the air moving out of the house.

You’re basically building an exhaust system without the ducting. It’s not as efficient as using ducting, but for a lot of growers with just a few plants, it’s all that’s needed to control temps in the grow room and tent. As long as it’s cooler outside than inside, the window fan will cool down the room.

The window fan I use is called a “Bionaire BW2300 Twin Window Fan,” but any strong window fan will work. They’re available in hardware stores, Best Buy, Walmart and on Amazon.com. They have extenders so they’ll fit any window snugly, without gaps on either side.

What about smells? All the normal techniques used to control smells will work for this system. The best option to control odors is to create an exhaust system that gives your tent good suction/negative air pressure. Then have your air pass through a good carbon filter just before going through the fan and leaving the tent. With a good strong exhaust system and a quality carbon filter, this will prevent smells in the bedroom or outside except when you actually open the tent. Learn more about carbon filters and controlling smells
Setting Up Your Coco Coir

Fill your containers about 85% full of coco coir, then water the coco coir thoroughly in their pots before you start your seeds. It can be hard to get the coco wet all the way through if it’s completely dry, and it will get you ready for when you do it for your seedlings the first time!

Place your containers on your trays. If you want, put a block of wood or something sturdy under one side of the trays in the back. This will put them on a slight incline so that when you water them, all the runoff water will pool at the front. This will make it a lot easier to collect water after it runs through your plants.

Watering Your Coco Coir With Nutrient Water Before Using It

• Fill your 1-gallon container with tap water
• Add nutrients to your water following the nutrient schedule (PDF) for seedling strength
• Check the pH of the water with your pH test kit.
• If the pH is higher than 6.5 or lower than 5.5, you’ll want to adjust it. Just add a little bit of PH UP or PH DOWN so it’s between 5.5-6.5. This tiny step takes less than 5 minutes and will make your plants grow much faster and healthier! Learn more about checking the pH.
• For now, pour the water slowly over your containers, trying to wet the entire top of the coco. Keep adding water until you get about 30% runoff out the bottom, just to make sure you got everything.
• You want the coco to be evenly damp when you germinate your seeds; this will “charge it” with some extra nutrients so your new seedlings take off in growth!

Germination & Seedling Stage

Before starting this part, make sure your entire setup is ready for your new plants! You don’t want to start them if your setup isn’t ready yet 🙂

Make sure that you’ve set up your electrical timer so that it’s on for 18 hours a day, and off for 6 hours a day. You will plug your grow lights into this so your plants get a “night” every day. All the fans should be on 24/7. The light should start 3 feet away from the tops of the containers.

Checklist before you start:

• You’ve watered your coco coir thoroughly in their pots and removed all the runoff water
• Lights are on 18/6 timer
• Fans are set to be on 24 hours a day
• 250W HPS is 3 feet away from the tops of your pots

How to Germinate Your Seeds

It’s time to get your Rapid Rooters and your seeds! This is one of the most exciting moments in every grow!

Each cube or plug already has a hole specifically for you to place your seed. Just stick your seed into the precut hole. The seed should be about a half inch away from the surface so it doesn’t get too much light before it sprouts. Don’t worry, you really can’t mess this part up 🙂 As long as the seed makes it in there, you should be good!

Stick seeds in the hole in the Rapid Rooter, and make sure the seed goes at least 1/2″ down. That’s it! It’s started!

Place your Rapid Rooters on top of your coco coir, or dig a little hole in the coco and put the Rapid Rooters inside.

Now it’s time to turn on your grow light! It should be several feet above the tops of your containers, near the top of the tent. You want your seedlings to have light to grow towards, but if you keep the lights too close it will dry out your Rapid Rooters. You’ll move the light lower after you see the seedlings appear 🙂

At this point, the inside of your grow tent should look something like this

Make sure your grow light is set so that it’s on for 18 hours and off for 6 hours each day. Choose whatever time is most convenient for you to check on the plants.

Your fans should be on 24/7, even when the grow lights are off, to make sure your plants are getting a constant supply of fresh air. Make sure not to point any fans directly at your seedlings just yet as the Rapid Rooters will dry out too fast. As they get a little bigger they’ll be able to handle a lot more wind.

Check Rapid Rooters twice a day to make sure they stay moist (but not soaking). Water with more pH’ed seedling strength water if you need to re-moisten. 

Your new sprouts should show their faces in a few days!

Seedling Care

Seeing those first few leaves is exhilarating! The very first two leaves you see will be round (called “cotyledon” leaves) but all the leaves after that will be “real” leaves with serrated edges.

After you see those leaves peak above the surface, it’s time to move your grow light down, so it’s about 2 feet above your plants.

Checklist:

• Move grow light to 2 feet above seedlings after they appear
• Watch for any signs of discoloration or drooping (refer to common seedling problems list below to fix most seedling problems)
• Make sure Rapid Rooter never dries out all the way

During these first few weeks of a young marijuana plant’s life, you want to be careful. Make sure you’re checking on your plants every day! Once you get used to growing, you can check less often, but in the beginning you will get the best results by checking on your plants at least daily. That will let you react quickly if you somehow run into any problems.

Marijuana seedlings, especially seeds from some of the most potent strains, tend to be a bit delicate and you want to make sure you’re taking care of them as best you can.

When the Rapid Rooters feel like they are starting to get dry to the touch (they should be a little moist at all times), it’s time to water your plants for the first time!

Watering Your Plants the First Time

• Fill your 1-gallon container with tap water
• Add nutrients to your water following the nutrient schedule (PDF) for seedling strength
• Check the pH of the water with your pH test kit.
• If the pH is higher than 6.5 or lower than 5.5, you’ll want to adjust it. Just add a little bit of PH UP or PH DOWN so it’s between 5.5-6.5. This tiny step takes less than 5 minutes and will make your plants grow much faster and healthier! Learn more about checking the pH.
• For now, pour the water slowly in just a little circle around the plant. Pouring slowly will help the water absorb into the coco better. You want to make sure the Rapid Rooter gets nice and moist, and wet the coco coir for at least a few inches around the edges of the Rapid Rooter so that seedling roots are getting plenty of water. You want to avoid giving too much water at a time just yet, as your seedlings can’t drink much water until they get a little bigger, and if they keep getting “wet feet” it can stunt their growth. As long as you share  the 1 gallon between all four plants, over-watering shouldn’t be a problem!

Fixes to Common Seedling Problems

Here are the 5 most common seedling problems:

   1.) Overwatering

• Symptoms:  Drooping, yellow leaves, not growing and/or damping off (dying)

   2.) Underwatering

• Symptoms:  Drooping leaves and/or wilting

   3.) Nutrient Problems

• Symptoms:  Leaves are yellow, burnt, discolored, crispy or have spots

   4.) Too Much Heat

• Symptoms:  Leaves fold in the middle so they look like canoes/tacos, leaves turn up at the edges, wilting, strange spotting, symptoms usually appear after temperature starts climbing

   5.) Light Too Close or Too Far

• Symptoms ( light too close): burned or crinkled leaves
• Symptoms (light too far): seedlings are too tall with too much space between nodes. Looks stretched/leggy and tends fall over

Vegetative Stage

The “vegetative” stage is the stage of life where you cannabis plant is growing only stems and leaves, without any buds. Once your plant has grown 3-4 sets of leaves, you can consider it officially in the vegetative stage!

When plants have a few sets of leaves (nodes) move 250W HPS to about 1 foot above plants. Place the back of your hand over your babies for 30 seconds to make sure it’s not too hot.

For an auto-flowering plant, the vegetative stage only lasts for about 3-4 weeks before the plant starts making buds. However, even after buds start forming the plants will still grow vegetatively and increase in size until they’re 5-6 weeks old.

Now that your plants are a little bigger, you should start watering your plants this way from now on:

• Wait to water plants until the top of the coco is dry up to your first knuckle
• Alternate each time between giving plants nutrient water and plain water
• Water plants thoroughly (always check pH right before watering plants even if using just plain water), until 10-20% extra runoff water comes out the bottom
• Remove all runoff water about 5 minutes later (to give it all a chance to get out)

Learn more about how to water cannabis plants
Daily Care & Tips for the Vegetative Stage

• Follow the nutrient schedule when watering plants, but make sure you’re giving plain pH’ed water every other watering. Always check the pH of water immediately before giving to plants.
• Check on plants daily – look over the plants for problems, discolored leaves, droopiness or any other symptom
• Immediately diagnose any problems and fix them as soon as possible! If you just pay attention to your plants daily and quickly respond to any problems you will get above-average results! The most common reason to see deficiencies is the pH is too high or low.
• Water plants as needed. Never let the coco coir completely dry out or it could kill your plants!
• Make sure 250W HPS is about a foot away from your vegetative plants – put your hand where the seedlings are for 30 seconds; if it’s too hot for you it’s too hot for your plants and the light should be moved up a little bit. If you have a new bulb you may have to keep your light slightly further away than an older bulb.
• The main thing is to avoid any major stress because these first few weeks are important!

Your seedlings should look something like this during Week 2 from seed

Plant Training for Bigger Yields (Optional)

You don’t need to do this part! You can skip it altogether and your plants will grow just fine. But a little plant training can help increase your yields for free, so why not?

The idea behind plant training is to manipulate your plants while they grow so they tend to grow more short and wide as opposed to tall and thin. You want to “spread out” the plants under the grow light instead of growing tall Christmas Tree shaped plants.

The main way to do that with auto-flowering plants is to watch the plants as they grow and bend any tall stems down and away from the middle of the plant. Then secure the stems in place with something that isn’t sharp, like plant twist ties. By constantly bending over the tallest stems whenever you spot them, you’ll make it so all parts of all the plants are about the same height as each other, in a flat, table-top shape.

Here’s an example of some light LST (low stress training) on a very young seedling to pull the main stems down and away from the center. This was the tallest seedling of the bunch so the grower is trying to keep it about the same height as the other plants. It’s starting the process of getting the plant to grow wider.

You can secure twisty tie to your smart pots with a safety pin

By the end of Week 2 or 3 your plants should look something like this

Around Week 3-4, your plants should be nice and flat from the training. Sometimes you’ll have plants that just grow faster than others. You can see the back right plant is much smaller than the others here, but it actually ended up yielding just as much! It just had a little bit of a slow start. As long as your plants are growing and appear green and healthy you know you’re doing good by them!

Flowering Stage

Once your plants are around Week 3-4 from seed, they’ll start showing the first signs of buds growing. The new buds will initially look like wispy white hairs at all the joints of the plant, but these hairs (pistils) will soon start turning into buds with weight to them!
Daily Care & Tips

Around week 3-4 you’ll start seeing wispy white pistils at all the joints where fan leaves meet the stem.

Around week 5 they’re still growing lots of new leaves and stems, and those “buds” are still mostly just a bunch of white hairs at the joints

Notice how from the side they have been maintained in a flat, table-top shape. By constantly bending the tallest stems down and away from the center of the plant, your plants will automatically be growing in this shape.

Here are the plants at the beginning of Week 6

A view from the side

During Week 6 you may notice the main stems look sort of “stretchy” as all the bud sites have lengthened. By this point you’re basically just watering your plants and waiting until harvest time, because there’s not much left to do. You can still gently bend tall stems down, but after week 6 your plant is going to focus primarily on buds and stop growing new stems and leaves altogether.

Up close your buds might look something like this around Week 6

Example of Training at Week 6 – Before Bending/Training

After bending – Notice how all the stems have been bent down so the plant appears flat like a table. Week 6-7 is around the last time you want to train with your plants. After this it’s mostly a matter of letting them fatten up.

Here are the buds at week 8

Patience 

The hardest part about growing (at least for me) is waiting for the plants to finish flowering and making buds. It’s exciting while the plant is still growing and changing shape, but there is going to be at least 4-6 weeks where the plant isn’t growing vegetatively anymore and all growth is just buds fattening up and gaining in potency.

It’s hard to be patient while the plant is growing buds, and it’s really easy to take the plant down early. However, if you harvest early your yields and potency will be greatly reduced!

Most autos take about 12-14 weeks from seed before they’re ready to harvest (~3 months), though some strains take a few weeks longer. When choosing strains, you can see from the breeder’s estimations how long they think this strain will take.

Most autos are ready to harvest about 12-14 weeks from seed (~3 months)

If you want to get the best yields and highest potency, it’s been my experience that your auto will usually take 2-3 weeks longer than the breeders recommendation. However, sometimes they’re right on target so it’s important to watch your plant!

You don’t really need to do much else from now on besides water your plants and just check on them for possible problems.

What if a plant doesn’t auto?

One time I grew an “auto-flowering” plant that didn’t automatically start making buds. This happens sometimes, especially with less experienced breeders. This is why it’s so important to purchase auto-flowering strains from a trustworthy breeder! I learned my lesson 🙂

Even though I lost one plant because it didn’t auto (again, make sure you always buy from a trustworthy breeder!) this setup is so effective I still yielded almost 7 ounces with just the remaining 3 plants. You can see the “hole” in the canopy where that 4th plant used to be.

If one of your plants isn’t “auto-ing” you can choose to toss the plant (that’s what I would do if you have limited space and several other plants)

Your other option is to keep it in the same tent until the other plants are ready to harvest, and then put it on a 12/12 light schedule to force it to start making buds after you’ve already harvested the other plants (you can force any cannabis plant to start making buds if you give it 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness every day).

However, if it doesn’t start making buds, that means it’s going to keep getting bigger, making more stems and leaves every day (stay in the “vegetative stage”). It may be difficult to “tame” a plant like that while your other plants have stopped growing vegetatively, but it can be done.

Despite missing a plant, there were still lots of developing buds from the other three!

Don’t want to put any auto-flowering plant that has automatically started making buds on a 12/12 schedule because it will hurt your yields. Your plants can make a lot more bud under 18 hours of light a day than 12 hours of light a day. This is one of the main reasons autos are able to yield so much bud so fast!

As buds mature they fatten and become more dense. The white hairs that used to be sticking straight out start to darken and curl in.

Harvest

Oh boy! You made it! Time to harvest your plants!

These are the same plants a little over 3 months from seed (13 Weeks)

How to Know Exactly When to Harvest

There are two main ways to determine when to harvest, either by looking at the pistils/hairs, or looking at the trichomes (“glitter”) on the buds under a magnifier.

Your plant is ready to harvest…

• After most of the white pistils (hairs) have darkened and curled in
• After most of the trichomes have turned milky white

These buds are ready to harvest
(learn more about how to harvest at the right time)

Here’s a video of the trichomes from a plant the day before harvest under a digital magnifier. Most of the trichomes are opaque and white, which means these buds are ready to harvest

The structure of one of the plants “under the hood” after it’s been harvested

Learn more about when to harvest!

Here are those 3 auto-flowering plants from above at harvest (I pulled them on 3 different days)
(6.7 oz yield in total – check the grow journal!)

How to Dry & Cure Buds for Better Potency

Now that your plant is harvested, you need to dry and cure your buds for the best results! By drying buds slowly and letting them sit for a few weeks before you smoke them, you will dramatically improve their taste, smoothness and perceived potency! Don’t skip the dry and cure because it can make up a great deal of the final quality of your buds. You’ve come way too far to give up now!

The main idea of drying and curing is to slowly dry your newly harvested buds, then let them sit in a sealed container for a few weeks for the “green” stuff to start to break down and other important chemical processes. This dry/cure process will make buds taste better, smell better, and feel more potent!

Learn how to dry and cure your buds here!

Jump to…

Auto-Flowering vs Photoperiod Strains

Plant Training for Bigger Yields

1st Grow in My Garage – Auto Northern Lights – 5.35 oz Harvest

5 Ways to Increase Yields When Growing Indoors

Cost Breakdown (Including Electricity)

Total Cost for Setup & Supplies: $652
($742 if you get all the optional stuff)

Cost for Complete Setup & Supplies First Grow: $652

Setup Cost for Setting Up 2nd Grow: $122 ($50 for new seeds and $72 for new containers and coco coir)

Most of this stuff can be purchased for cheaper if you shop around online or in person!

Seed Budget: $50

• In general you can expect to pay about $12/seed for feminized auto-flowering seeds, though some cost more or less. Generally most seedbanks will also throw in a few free seeds with every order.

Growing Medium & Containers: $85

• $40 – Pre-Made Coco Coir Potting Mix (or make your own for cheaper)
• $21 – 4 x 3-gallon Smart Pots
• $11 – Rapid Rooters
• $13 Trays to Catch Runoff Water

Nutrients: $52

• $35 General Hydroponics Flora Trio
• $17 CaliMagic

Grow Tent: $216-276

• $80 2’ x 4’ x 5’ Grow Tent
• $26 2x small clip-on fans
• $110 Can Max 6″ Fan – 334 CFM
• $60 (Optional) Window fan

250W Grow Light: $154

• $65 – Reflector
• $80 250W Ballast
• $9 250W Bulb

Random Grow Tools: $95-125

• $20 Thermometer & Humidity Monitor
• $20 Power strip
• $10 Electrical timer
• $10 Rope Ratchets (best way to hang lights, don’t skip these!)
• $10 Measuring spoons
• $5 Dropper/Pipette (for pH testing)
• $20 General Hydroponics pH Kit
• $5 (Optional) Plant Twist Ties
• $25 (Optional) Bucket Head Wet/Dry Vacuum

Total Cost of Electricity: $30-60/Month

This includes the cost of running the grow light and fans. The average electricity price in the US is $0.12/kWh, and the average price in a big city is $0.25/kWh. I’ll make estimates for both. If you have cheap electricity where you live, your amounts will be even less!

The post Grow 4-7+ oz with a 250W HPS – Step-By-Step Beginner Tutorial appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Is your cannabis seedling growing upside down? Has the tap root come above the soil?

If your root is growing straight up like in the picture below, it’s not good. This is most common in seedling plugs. The tender white root tip has a good chance of drying out or being exposed to too much light. You may want to do some “plant surgery” to turn this little seedling around to the right direction 🙂

Step 1 is to get a new Rapid Rooter. Since your seed already has a relatively long root, cut the plug open lengthwise so you can gently place the seedling inside in the right position without having to “push” down on the seed.

Now gently extract the seed from its original home with a pair of tweezers making sure to touch only the shell and not the root (the root is the most sensitive part)! Now lay the seedling in the middle of your newly split open Rapid Rooter and gently close the plug around it again.

Most seedling plugs will go back into place easily, and you’ll barely be able to tell it’s been opened 🙂

Since your seedling has already sprouted and has been in placed into the right growing position, it’ll probably pop its head out within just 12-24 hours! Sometimes you see just the leaves, but occasionally you actually see the seedling push the shell above ground.

When this happens the shell usually falls off on its own as the seedling grows!

When Should I NOT Do Surgery?

Sometimes you can see the young taproot of a cannabis seedling but the situation isn’t as dire. If the root is already pointed in the right direction, it’s probably going to be just fine! But if you’re worried, you can cover up the root until the leaves actually make it to the surface.

For example you could tear a tiny piece off the edge of this Rapid Rooter and gently lay it on top. Or if you were in soil you could sprinkle a tiny bit of soil over the seedling. The seedling will push it off as it grows upward.

This case isn’t so bad because the root is already facing down, in the correct direction. Note: This seedling was just watered, but typically the Rapid Rooter should never look this wet. It should be moist but not shiny.

If you leave it alone, the seed will start to rise up, and open to reveal the seedling’s cotyledons (first, round leaves)

The cotyledons unfurl and then the regular cannabis leaves between to grow. Here’s another view of that same seedling from above only a few hours later. Even though it may have looked a bit weird at first, this seedling is completely normal and will grow just fine from now on!

Most of the Time Seedlings Take Care of Themselves!

When you see your seedling looks like this, where the part of the root exposed to the surface already looks green like a stem, you don’t need to do anything.

After cannabis germination, the root tip goes down and stays white. The other side that’s contained in the shell tries to work its way up, and that part of the stem turns green. Sometimes it looks like the root is going upside down because it appears that it’s not strong enough to be able to push the seed up.

As long as the tip of the root stays wet the seedling will be fine! The “root” is the same as what is going to become the stem. If it appears green it means that part of the root is already in “stem” mode and isn’t sensitive to the light.

If you just wait a little everything will have righted itself 🙂 Here’s that seedling 12 hours later…

12 hours after that, the leaves have completely emerged!

If you hadn’t been watching you wouldn’t even have known anything happened!

How to Germinate Cannabis Seeds

Common New Grower Topics

How Much Will Electricity Cost?

What Type of Nutrients Should I Use?

Choosing the Best Grow Light

Stealth Growing: How NOT to Get Caught Growing Weed

Where to Get Seeds

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