How to Grow Cannabis at Home: A Guide to Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing
By Glenn Panik
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About this ebook
This book provides a step-by-step guide to successfully cultivating cannabis and an informative read about all aspects of this healthful plant. It is not a gardening tips book, but a guide to help you through each stage of a project that is not rocket science, but has it's pitfalls. Additionally, this ebook serves as a reference/guide to the overwhelming jargon you will run into if research the topic online, for example: What are HPS, CFL, and LED lighting? What is the significance of light cycles? Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Magnesium!? Which of the hundreds of seed types should I choose? Cannabis Sativa? Cannabis Indica? Cannabis Ruderalis!? Should I choose a "feminized" strain? An "autoflowering" strain? What is the best “medicinal” strain? Ahhh! Help!!
This book is aimed at the inquisitive-minded grower. Understanding the various facets of the process becomes both an engaging learning experience and a method to improve your growing results. Written in 2012, the book reflects the current stand of seed strains, lighting technology, growing enclosures, fertilizers, etc. Throughout the text, there are informative side bars that clarify myth vs. fact about the home cultivation of marijuana. If you do any research online, you are likely to find conflicting information about growing cannabis; this book will help clarify these conundrums using factual information. Supplement your own research with this well composed and concise book written by a successful home cultivator.
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Book preview
How to Grow Cannabis at Home - Glenn Panik
How to Grow Cannabis At Home:
A Guide to Indoor Medical Marijuana Growing
Glenn Panik
Copyright 2012 Glenn Panik
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Introduction
Let's face it, the illegality of cultivating marijuana for personal use is not based on any moral/ethical problem between a person and a plant; it is simply a case of governments sticking their nose into our personal lives and telling us what we may or may not do. Cannabis prohibition has all the same effects on society as alcohol prohibition did; eroding respect for the law, providing income for organized crime, corrupting law enforcement and the justice system, burdening prisons by confining citizens who commit no morally questionable crime, and creating a pattern of abuse fueled by the stigmatization of users as criminals. This was a bad idea that has now become a burden on society.
Would the author likewise condone the decriminalization of other plant-derived drugs, such as cocaine or heroin? No. The process of extracting and concentrating the active compounds present, for example, in the coca bush or opium poppy, create drugs far more potent and potentially dangerous than the plants naturally produce. This step, in the author's opinion, is the deciding factor between a natural substance and a artificially processed and concentrated drug. Do I think that people should be allowed to grow any of these plants and use them in their natural form? Yes. Provided they are used in an educated, respectful, and responsible manner, plants of all types can supply a variety of natural compounds that are often more healthful for the human organism when consumed in an unprocessed state, instead of extracted, concentrated, bottled, and sold in stores. Aloe, Anise, Arnica, Basil, Bee Balm, Belladonna, Cannabis, Coca, Comfrey... the list goes on right through the alphabet. Plants have been and remain the source of most of man's medicines.
Plants of the genus cannabis are vigorous, resilient, and adaptable life forms that thrive everywhere on our planet from the Himalayan mountains to the forests of Central America, in cold, decaying urban environments in Russia, and secretly sprouting in spare closets, garages, between rows of corn, and in vacant lots across the western
world.
What this means for you, interested potential grower, is that cannabis will work with you and adapt to the growing environment you can provide for it. The key to success lies in making the proper accommodations for the plant; the better the growing environment you can provide, the more productive the plant will be. A beginner can expect to harvest anywhere from 1/2 ounce to over 2 ounces (15 – 60 grams) from a plant grown indoors. The amount and quality of your harvest will depend on many variables, including the strain of cannabis planted, the light, temperature, and humidity in the growing environment, soil quality, fertilizers used (we will learn that more is not always better), and - not insignificantly – the care with which you treat the plant. Stressed plants give poor harvests. Indeed, plants can be stressed in many ways, and a green thumb
is a real thing! Careful, respectful gardeners will harvest more fruits for their labors.
You can raise a healthy plant in a two-liter soda bottle with the top cut off, using a few compact florescent lights and fertilizer from the hardware store. This plant may even provide you with a small supply of marijuana with a minimum of effort and a relatively small starting investment. In my opinion, you will have to dedicate a certain minimum amount of time, money, and patience to making your garden grow, so to speak, so it is worth doing these things right from the start.
Before moving on to the first active section of this book, it is important to remind you, the reader, that this book is presented only as information for persons legally allowed to cultivate marijuana. Inform yourself about the laws in your area! In some European countries (i.e. Spain, Belgium, Switzerland) cultivation of a small number of plants is decriminalized. In some States within the U.S.A., cultivation for medical use is allowed, in others it is not. Keep in mind that penalties can be harsh if you are not allowed to cultivate this plant! If you break the law, the risk of punishment is real.
Disclaimer: Warning! This information is related to the cultivation of a plant that may be illegal in your location. You, the reader is responsible to inform yourself as to the legal status of cannabis in your area. This book is for information purposes only and is solely the expression of the author's opinion. The author and/or publisher do not promote the use of these substances, and the information contained within this publication is not intended to encourage the production or use of illegal substances. Medical marijuana should be used only under the advice and supervision of a qualified, licensed physician.
With this in mind, legal growers, we will also examine methods to help you keep your cannabis growing private. Just as you don't want your neighbors peeking at pills and ointments in your medicine cabinet, it is perfectly normal not to want anyone peeking at your medicinal garden. You may, of course, choose to grow openly outdoors in your garden if you are comfortable with it becoming common knowledge. However, this book will focus on techniques applicable to discreetly growing cannabis plants indoors, therefore maintaining your privacy. Despite decriminalization, marijuana use still carries the stigma of illegality in the minds of many. The author understands that your right to privacy comes first.
AUTHOR'S NOTE TO CUSTOMERS: If you have ordered this via the Amazon Kindle Reader, you may contact the author to request the PDF version. Contact info is provided at the end of the book. Simply forward your Order Confirmation Email
as sent by Amazon, and of course feel free to delete any personal data before forwarding (address, telephone, etc.). The PDF version will allow you to view the color images in full quality.
Table of Contents
This Table of Contents is hyperlinked, giving you both an overview and an easy way of navigating through the ebook. Links will take you to chapters and important sub-headings in longer chapters. You can also use the Return to Contents
link to easily get back here and jump to another chapter.
Chapter 1: Grower's Jargon
Ch 1: Seeds and Cannabis Strains
Ch 1: Lighting Technology
Ch 1: Ventilation
Ch 1: Round About Growing
Ch 1: SOG and SCROG Methods
Ch 1: Growing Mediums
Chapter 2: Preparing to Grow Cannabis
Ch 2: Light, Lux, & Lumens
Ch 2: CFL Grow Cabinet Design
Ch 2: Indoor Tent Grow
Ch 2: Outdoor Grow
Ch 2: The Lazy Man's Grow
Chapter 3: Talking Dirt (Pt. 1 Composition, Nutrients, & Water)
Ch 3: Dark Chocolate Soil Recipe
Ch 3: Natural Supplements for Organic Cannabis Growing
Chapter 4: From Seed to Bud – A Step-by-Step Growing Companion
Ch 4: Germination and the Vegetative Phase
Ch 4: Transplanting
Ch 4: Determining When To Flower Your Plant
Ch 4: The Flowering Phase: Step One – Determining the Sex of Your Plants
Ch 4: Producing Your Own Seeds
Ch 4: The Flowering Phase: Step Two – Care and Feeding During Flowering
Chapter 5: Harvest Time – Saying Goodbye To Your Babies
Ch 5: Signs That It Is Time To Harvest
Ch 5: A Close Look At Trichomes
Ch 5: Preparation for Harvesting
Ch 5: Cutting and Trimming Your Plant
Ch 5: Drying Your Buds and Trim
Ch 5: Curing
Ch 5: Storage
Chapter 6: Marijuana Maladies And Their Remedies
Ch 6: Insects
Ch 6: pH and Nutrient Problems
Ch 6: Final Notes
Chapter 1: Grower's Jargon
(click here to return to table of contents)
This first chapter is a sort of preface to the chapters about the process of growing marijuana. Instead of a glossary of terms, I've arranged info about everything from the parts of the plant to the tools growers use as a sort of crash course
. This aim of this section is to familiarize you with the vocabulary, abbreviations, nicknames, and jargon used in the special circle of gardens and horticulturists who are cannabis growers.
This is not a focus on street jargon, such as the endless nicknames for marijuana (weed, grass, pot, ganja, monkey, bud, Mary Jane, MJ, chronic, herb, skunk, dope...) or phrases like score a dime
(buy a $10 bag of marijuana), wake and bake
(getting stoned in the morning), or puff, puff, pass!
(a reminder not to hog a lit joint).
Street jargon is entertaining at best, but isn't as important to this book as learning about the vocabulary from the side of the cannabis grower. Here, you'll learn about the terms that you will need to understand if you plan on cultivating cannabis indoors – the vocabulary surrounding the cannabis plant, it's varieties, phases of growth, and the (sometimes confusing) technology about growing, such as lighting types and growth mediums and their relative merits.
Instead of just creating an alphabetical list for you to constantly refer back to, I've grouped terms by topic. I think it is more important to at least remember that the term was related to a particular topic, rather than just run down them as a list. It's more useful to recognize, for example, that HPS (High Pressure Sodium lamps) have to do with lighting, rather than just showing up as an acronym that starts with H
.
Since this is an ebook, you can easily use the search text
function to find info about a term. For example, plug in HPS
, and the first time the term appears in the book should be in the terms section. Except for HPS
, which first shows up here three times...
I'll often refer, as do most in the field, to the whole process of setting up your growing equipment, sprouting seeds, caring for plants, etc. as The Grow
. For example, "You may run into these problems during your grow. To keep the text flowing, the verb
to grow is used as as a stand-in for
your cannabis growing project, or
your current setup in your home for cultivating marijuana".
There's a lot of information here. If you start to feel overloaded with new terms, then just move along to the following chapters and start getting your growing setup together. As you run into something you don't understand, you can refer back here for the full story.
Here we go!
About the Cannabis Plant
Throughout the book, there is a need to be clear about the different parts of the cannabis plant, and what they do. As with many (but not all) plants, cannabis usually starts as a seed. A cannabis seed is about 1/8th" (a few millimeters) across, ranges in color from dark brown to a sort of camo-green, and is often mottled, looking somewhat like a miniature quail's egg, but coming to a bit of a point at one end:
Image: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
When sprouted, you will first see the rather round-shaped cotyledon, the sort of baby leaves
of the plant that were part of the embryo of the seed that was protected by the hard outer shell. The root is busy below the soil heading deeper in search of water and nutrients, and will soon let you know of it's success by giving the plant the energy to sprout it's first set of true leaves – with their recognizable cannabis leaf shape – within just a few days. Don't be surprised if you don't see the iconic marijuana leaf shape until the plant has grown to having about a half dozen "nodes"; the points along the stem from which leaves emerge.
As if you didn't know what it looks like, here's that iconic leaf:
Image: Author's photo
It is also worth noting that the stem of the cannabis (hemp) plant is particularly fibrous and resilient, making it very useful for cloth, rope, and paper production. Cannabis sativa (as opposed to c. indica or c. ruderalis sub-types – more on the differences below) provide better quality fiber. You'll have a chance to experience first hand the strength of a cannabis stem come harvest time:
Tree-like stem of Cannabis plant, outdoor grow. Author's Image
Cannabis plants are dioecious, meaning that there are distinct males and females of the species. If you are looking to take advantage of the medical and/or intoxicating effects of the marijuana plant, then it is the female of the species that you are interested in. The non-fertilized flowers of the cannabis plant that provide the highest concentration of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol – the active compound in marijuana), so the seedless flower buds
of