100 Watt CFL Grow / Update #1: In The Nursery – Marijuana Seeding Care
[Note: This post is a part of our 100 watt grow journal. See the first post here. Subscribe to follow this grow step-by-step, with tips and tricks along the way. The varieties growing are Dinafem Critical+, and our own house-bred crosses; AK x DG, and RQSAuto x DG. For details on their heritage, see the first post.]
In The Nursery / Under 6500k CFL Bulbs
Just two days after the previous post, the then-sprouting hybrid seeds are enjoying a “sun”bath in 6500k CFL lighting and are now showing their first true leaves. Three 25watt 6500k CFL bulbs are shown in the picture, and one more was moved out of the way for the picture – in total they will be under 100 watts for this grow.
This is a good chance to give you a few more seedling care tips that have occurred to me since the previous post on the topic. I like to start seedlings in soil, rather than in rockwool, special sponge pads, etc. I have had better luck in the past transplanting them into soil when they were started in soil.
In this case, I used some flower potting soil I had handy – which is usually a no-no! Read More…
Pineapple Express Grow Problem – What Is Wrong and How To Help.
In a previous post, we mentioned helping a grower who had over-fertilized their Pineapple Express Autoflowering plant. By flushing the soil with plain, room-temperature water, we managed to get the “nutrient burn” under control, and the plant seemed on the way to recovery. Well, we got another call that the plant was not looking well, and this is what we found:
Nutrient-burned and Overheated Pineapple Express Plant
[Writer Glenn Panik’s “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, is available on iBooks here, for the Amazon Kindle or via Smashwords here. You can also order the ‘stealth title’ of our information-packed ebook for the Kindle here.]
Perhaps you’re here reading this post because this looks familiar to you? The crispy-taco shaped leaves, and general plant malaise?
What is the problem, and how can you save your poor plant? Read More…
How To Tell If Marijuana Is Flowering
For first time growers, the most anticipated point in the process of growing your own marijuana is the begin of flowering. During your first grow, you will probably be checking every day to see if you’ve entered the home stretch and can anticipate your first harvest. This post is aimed at first-time growers who are eager to see their first results, and nervous as to whether everything is going the way it should!
The appearance of the fine, white pistils are the first recognizable sign that a marijuana plant has begun flowering – click on the image above to enlarge it and see the pistils in closer detail. The plant in the picture is a feminized, autoflowering “Pineapple Express” plant, and is approximately 5 days into flowering.
7 Marijuana Seedling Grow Tips
Two Day Old AutoBlueberry Seedling
Spring is here in the northern hemisphere and, for home outdoor growers, it’s time to pop those seeds and get this year’s first grow started.
Novice growers should keep a few things in mind to ensure success during the delicate seedling stage. This short article will all but guarantee that your newly-sprouted seeds will soon be on their way to becoming healthy, happy adults. Here’s a list of 7 important tips to get your plants started right: Read More…
How To Make Marijuana Tincture (Decarboxylation & Alcohol Extraction of THC and CBD)
[Writer Glenn Panik’s “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, is available on iTunes here, for the Amazon Kindle or via Smashwords here. You can also order the ‘stealth title’ of our information-packed ebook for the Kindle here.]
For a variety of reasons, cannabis consumers may prefer not to smoke (or even vaporize) their marijuana in order to consume THC/CBD. The most obvious reason might be a breathing condition, such as asthma, but others may simply not enjoy the taste or smell of marijuana smoke, or may want to avoid smoking out of consideration for a roommate, family member, or pet!
Although baked goods are an excellent alternative for those who would rather hide the taste of cannabis completely while still enjoying all the benefits of THC & CBD, your stash will have a limited shelf life when baked into brownies or oatmeal cookies. Even chocolates will only remain fresh in flavor for a few weeks (although they may still be edible).
Enter extraction. By extracting the THC & CBD from your marijuana, you can create a tincture that will hold for a relatively long time – Read More…
The 10 Best Cheap Good Marijuana Seeds – Inexpensive Growing Tips
Our Cheap Image For Our Cheap Seeds Review!
If you are looking for a good choice of seeds for your first medical marijuana grow, you’re likely to be overwhelmed by the choices available.
In this post, we’d like to narrow down the choices for you by presenting the seeds we think are a great choice for the first-time grower. To come up with “best of” list out of the many, many marijuana strains available, we factored in a few criteria:
- The seeds could be standard, feminized, or autoflowering. Although a first time grower may want the “sure shot” at a female plant that fem/autofem seeds provide, there are simply too many good standard seeds available. See our other post on “Getting more female plants from standard seeds” in order to improve your odds of growing a female plant if you choose to go with standard seeds.
- The strain must have a relatively short flowering time. We don’t want to suggest that first time growers choose a tall growing sativa strain that takes 12 weeks to finish flowering. Your first grow always seems to take forever to finish anyway, so let’s keep it reasonable.
- The strain should be relatively tolerant of grower error. Some cannabis strains are especially sensitive to nutrient levels, light schedule interruptions, and other newbie mistakes. The strains we picked for this list should be good for beginning growers using soil.
- The strain should be suited to an indoor growing environment. Considering that many newbie growers may not have their own garden to help them produce their medicine, the plant should be tolerant of indoor growing conditions, and maintain a reasonable height.
- The cost should be under $10/seed. There are varieties of cannabis out there that can cost $50.00+ per seed. Although these may be of interest to breeders, commercial producers, and collectors of cannabis genetics, we want this list to represent seeds that will give a newbie grower a easy-to-grow plant that also won’t break the bank. Don’t let price fool you – many seed banks offer some of their best strains (that were formerly more expensive) at lower prices as they develop new “flagship” seed varieties. Offering a great Skunk or Kush strain at a good price helps them maintain a customer base and draw in new customers with a great deal. These “cheap” seeds are usually just as potent and pleasant to consume as varieties costing many times more.
OK, let’s cut to the chase, here is the list of our favorite “cheap seeds”, starting at number 10: Read More…
Choosing A Marijuana Strain, Pt.4: Should I Choose AutoFlowering aka “Autofem” Or Regular Cannabis Seeds?
Here is a list of the pros and cons of purchasing standard marijuana seeds vs. choosing autoflowering feminized (aka “autofem) seeds. I’ve grown standard, feminized, and “autofem” seeds, and have always been satisfied with the results, although I was looking for different characteristics in each case.
Learning about what you can expect from the strain and seed type is key to choosing the right seeds for your grow. Be sure to order our info-packed and fully illustrated eBook on iBooks, the indie publisher “Smashwords” (provides you with all ebook formats”, or – for those of you rightfully concerned about your privacy – our new “Privacy Edition” of the Ebook on the Amazon Kindle.
In this post there are tips for producing more females from of your standard seeds. Yes – there are ways of encouraging cannabis plants to mature into females rather than males. For now, let’s move on to the lists:
The Pros And Cons Of AutoFem (Autoflowering Feminized) Seeds
Pros: Read More…
How To Get Dark Purple Leaves And Buds – Marijuana Growing Tip
Glenn Panik’s Purple-Leaved Plant Technique
[Writer Glenn Panik’s “How To Grow Cannabis At Home: A Guide To Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing”, is available on iTunes here, for the Amazon Kindle and Smashwords here. You can also order the ‘stealth title’ of our information-packed ebook for the Kindle here. ]
Ahh… the color of autumn leaves; shades of gold, purple, red, yellows, and orange. These colors are even more beautiful if they appear on your maturing medical marijuana plants! So what is the secret to getting rich, deep greens and shades of purple on your maturing leaves and buds? It is actually not difficult, and doesn’t have to do with special fertilizers or unique strains of cannabis. There are three steps to getting this to happen: Read More…
Make Your Own Autoflowering Seeds – Royal Queen Seeds “Royal Automatic” Autoflowering x White Label “Double Gum”
I’ve been curious as to what kind of plants we’ll get if we cross an autoflowering strain with one of my favorite standard plant, White Label’s “Double Gum” (see our earlier posts for Double Gum info).We had an extra “Royal Automatic” seed from Royal Queen Seeds that we started on a windowsill, just to see how it would turn out without extra lighting.
The plant flowered after about 3 1/2 weeks, and after flowering was underway for 2-3 weeks, I simply sprinkled the flowers with pollen from a male “Double Gum” plant using a dry paintbrush dipped into the pollen. It’s really easy to make your own seeds. Here’s a picture of the plant after about 5 weeks of flowering:
The plant is a mere 15 inches tall, due to the relatively meager light that it received during vegetation on a simple windowsill. These plants can grow quite a bit larger if you give ’em full sun, but we wanted just a small plant for trying out a homespun autoflower strain. I’m expecting that the offspring from this cross may not all be 100% autoflowering, but we’ll try them outdoors in the spring and see what happens.
Here’s a photo right before cutting the plant down to dry and harvest the seeds (about 8 weeks of flowering): Read More…
Cannabis Growing 