In recent years, there’s been an explosion of material available to new weed growers. That can be a little overwhelming if you’re just trying to get your grow set up for the first time. There’s no need to go all in on your first grow, though. If you’re just looking for an overview, here are twenty quick tips for growing great weed indoors.
Tips for Setting Up
1. Keep Your Plants Mobile
Wheeled tables or pots make everything easier. The easier it is to move your plants, the simpler it is to check them for problems. It also makes it easier to trim them, water, and harvest in the end. If you don’t have a table or pots with wheels, there are simple castors you can get to make any table or pot wheeled.
2. The Basics Still Work
Soil is a solid beginner medium. It’s easily available, cannabis evolved to grow in it, and constant fertilization isn’t mandatory. You can also upgrade it in many ways, like automating your watering or amending the soil.
3. Don’t Be Afraid of Hydro
Hydroponic grows are more complicated, but they give great results. Coco coir and rockwool are ideal for hydro grows. If you’re mechanically minded, you can set up a hydro grow in a few afternoons and reap the rewards at harvest time.
4. Lighting Is Key
Invest in quality lighting. Full stop. Getting enough of lights of appropriate brightness is mandatory if you want a successful grow. Without enough light, your plants won’t grow well, and you’ll get mediocre bud. If you spend the money upfront to get good lights, you won’t have to spend it again to upgrade in two months.
5. Be Confident with Light Levels
The right lights can still go to waste. If you want to be confident in how your lights are placed, get a PAR meter. These meters show you exactly how bright your light is at a given distance. That’s how you can judge the right distance between your lights and your plants.
6. Don’t Forget to Vent
Ventilation is important. It helps keep temperatures stable in your grow room, and it keeps pests away. Even a fan or two in your room is better than nothing. Ideally, you’ll have a fan at a vent that leads outside the room, to blow heat out and pull cool air in.
Tips for Seedlings
7. How You Grow Your Plants Matters
Start your grow with seeds. Continue it with clones. Seeds are the most reliable way to get your first crop going. Once you’ve gotten into a routine, though, switch to clones. Clones lead to consistent, regular harvests of good bud.
8. Avoid Bagseed
Bagseed might be a good way to grow the strain you liked smoking, but it’s irregular. You never know how finicky the strain is to grow. Buying seeds is much more reliable.
9. Knowledge Is Power
Study your chosen strains. The more you know about the growth pattern of your preferred strains – indica, sativa, a hybrid, etc. – the better you can take care of them. You can also be prepared for common problems, like a weakness to pests or a tendency to grow too tall.
10. Dip Your Toes Before Jumping In
Try new techniques on one or two plants at a time. The first time you try fimming or manifolding or even low-stress training probably won’t be perfect. It’s better to try it out on one plant before you apply it to your whole grow. That way you don’t lose your whole harvest.
11. Be Aware of Light Needs
Seedlings and clones need less light than older plants. These young plants are delicate and can get burnt if you light them too brightly. You can sprout seeds and root clones with CFL lights, before moving them to brighter HPS or LED lights.
Tips for the Vegetative Stage
12. Focus on Building a Solid Canopy
The best bud is found at the top of the plant. Training your plants to have multiple colas and keeping them even gives you more great bud per square foot.
13. Don’t Stress Autoflower Strains
Autoflower strains don’t require a lighting change to switch into flowering. They automatically switch after a certain number of weeks. Stressing them by cutting or trimming will simply hurt your harvest, since they don’t have time to recover.
14. Give Plants Time to Grow
Don’t try to skimp the vegetative phase. The longer your plant has to grow, the more bud it can support. Give your plant time to grow and recover from any training you do.
15. High-Stress Training Can Increase Yields
Consider high-stress training techniques if you’re growing hardy plants. Topping, fimming, and other high stress techniques all encourage incredible, bushy growth. They can increase yields by ounces per plant if done well.
16. Low-Stress Training Works for Every Plant
Low-stress training can be included in every grow. It’s the process of guiding your plant to grow in the shape you want without making cuts. Simple plant ties and stakes are all you need.
17. Space Lights and Plants Appropriately
Keep an eye on the distance between your lights and your plants. As your plants grow, they might get too close to your lights. Raise your lights if your plants get near, so they don’t get burnt.
Tips for Flowering
18. Chance Nutrients When You Change Stages
Change up your nutrient ratios when you switch to flowering. Vegetative plants need a 3-1-1 N-P-K fertilizer, or thereabouts. Flowering plants need 1-3-3, in order to support healthy flowers.
19. Don’t Bother Flowering Plants
Once your plants are flowering, keep cuts to a minimum. Your plants won’t grow any new vegetation after the third week of flowering. You want them to focus on bud, not leaves.
20. Dry and Cure Your Bud.
Drying and curing is the difference between okay weed and great weed. Curing properly gives your weed time to settle and finish processing the chemicals that otherwise makes it harsh.
It’s simpler than you think. If you can keep houseplants alive and plug cords into outlets, you can grow weed. It’s really as easy as that.