neo12345
Well-Known Member
Growing Nirvana NL Autos for dummies.
If there is one thing Ive learnt about growing weed over the years is everyone has their own way of doing things, and youll struggle to convince them otherwise. You can also spend thousands of your beer tokens getting the ultimate set up and gizmos, and spend hours anally over analyzing your plants and their growing environments. Newbies will read these techniques and will blow their own minds with all of the rules and regulations on growing weed, so Ive written this to show how easy it really is to get decent results without spending all of your time and money.
This is not an attempt to tell people how to do things, more of a guide for beginners to show them how easy it is to grow with the minimum of fuss, hassle and money!
Firstly the seeds, as the title suggests I plumped for Nirvana Northern Lights Auto Flowering. I went for these specifically as they are suitable for outdoor growing, I am growing them indoors but my garage gets quite cold at this time of year when my lights arent on so an outdoor variety is a little more forgiving to the temperature changes when the lights are off.
Firstly I soaked my 1.5 inch Rockwool cubes in luke warm water with a small splash of Formulex for about 10 mins giving them a gentle squeeze to remove the excess water, I then fashioned a hole in the top of them using a small screwdriver. The hole should be approx half an inch deep into the cube, then drop the seed into the hole and use the screwdriver or tweezers to gently cover the seed and close up the hole. Do it just enough to cover the seed from light and that the rockwool is touching the seed. Putting a Bob Marley CD on is also good karma at this stage but not essential.
Then place the rockwool cubes with the seeds in to your propagator and place it somewhere warm, I place it directly under my two 400w CFL lights that I use for vegging. This is a little overkill for seedlings but I like to keep my life simple. This also provides enough warmth for my seeds.
After a few days the seeds should sprout, then after 10-14 days they should have two or 3 sets of leaves which is when I open the vents little by little over a few days on the propagator. This allows the humidity to drop and gets them used to normal room humidity, you should now also be seeing roots coming from the rockwool cubes.
I then prepare their new homes by taking one large plant pot approx 12 inches deep by 10 inches wide with drainage holes in the bottom and a plastic plant pot tray. I fill the bottom inch of the pot with clay pebbles, only because I have lots of these lying around but anything like gravel or stones will do as its only for drainage.
This next bit is where the controversy will start, I can already hear people freaking out!!
I then fill the pots with nothing more than a good peat compost available from any garden centre, I paid £10 for three 50 litre bags. One bag will fill around 5 of those pots which is what I have in my 1.2m x 1.2m tent.
Make a little hole in the centre and place your rockwool cubes into the hole and cover over with peat, and water in with around 1 litre of water mainly around the plant but cover the top layer with a little to prevent it drying out.
I can hear people already saying rockwool cubes in soil!!
I watered them sparingly over the first 4 weeks, just enough to keep the top layer moist as they wont dry out too much as they are under my 2 x 400w CFLs. You wont need any nutrients as the soil will provide these for the first few weeks, but at around 5 weeks I start to add just a little Bio Bizz Veg in very small quantities as the soil is still providing most of what they need. The plants will be well established by now and growing well.
The plants took about 10 weeks of vegging using an 18/6 light cycle, I put this down to the lower temperatures than I would normally like but I was too tight to put a heater in there to speed things up!!
The plants were between 14 to 18 inches tall by this time and started to show signs of flowering at the start of January, so I swapped the lights over to a single 600w HPS Growlux lamp and switched the light cycle to 12/12.
I also switched to using Bio Bizz Bloom giving each plant approx 1 litre of water every 2 days with 2ml of Bloom per litre, they have been flowering for about 3 weeks now and I have increased this to 1.5 litres of water with 5ml of bloom per litre. The plants are now about 3 feet tall.
The plants have never shown any signs of ill health and are flowering well as you can see from the pictures, so it really is that simple and shows you dont need heaps of fancy equipment to achieve decent results!
I hope some people find this useful and I will post up the results when the plants have finished.
If there is one thing Ive learnt about growing weed over the years is everyone has their own way of doing things, and youll struggle to convince them otherwise. You can also spend thousands of your beer tokens getting the ultimate set up and gizmos, and spend hours anally over analyzing your plants and their growing environments. Newbies will read these techniques and will blow their own minds with all of the rules and regulations on growing weed, so Ive written this to show how easy it really is to get decent results without spending all of your time and money.
This is not an attempt to tell people how to do things, more of a guide for beginners to show them how easy it is to grow with the minimum of fuss, hassle and money!
Firstly the seeds, as the title suggests I plumped for Nirvana Northern Lights Auto Flowering. I went for these specifically as they are suitable for outdoor growing, I am growing them indoors but my garage gets quite cold at this time of year when my lights arent on so an outdoor variety is a little more forgiving to the temperature changes when the lights are off.
Firstly I soaked my 1.5 inch Rockwool cubes in luke warm water with a small splash of Formulex for about 10 mins giving them a gentle squeeze to remove the excess water, I then fashioned a hole in the top of them using a small screwdriver. The hole should be approx half an inch deep into the cube, then drop the seed into the hole and use the screwdriver or tweezers to gently cover the seed and close up the hole. Do it just enough to cover the seed from light and that the rockwool is touching the seed. Putting a Bob Marley CD on is also good karma at this stage but not essential.
Then place the rockwool cubes with the seeds in to your propagator and place it somewhere warm, I place it directly under my two 400w CFL lights that I use for vegging. This is a little overkill for seedlings but I like to keep my life simple. This also provides enough warmth for my seeds.
After a few days the seeds should sprout, then after 10-14 days they should have two or 3 sets of leaves which is when I open the vents little by little over a few days on the propagator. This allows the humidity to drop and gets them used to normal room humidity, you should now also be seeing roots coming from the rockwool cubes.
I then prepare their new homes by taking one large plant pot approx 12 inches deep by 10 inches wide with drainage holes in the bottom and a plastic plant pot tray. I fill the bottom inch of the pot with clay pebbles, only because I have lots of these lying around but anything like gravel or stones will do as its only for drainage.
This next bit is where the controversy will start, I can already hear people freaking out!!
I then fill the pots with nothing more than a good peat compost available from any garden centre, I paid £10 for three 50 litre bags. One bag will fill around 5 of those pots which is what I have in my 1.2m x 1.2m tent.
Make a little hole in the centre and place your rockwool cubes into the hole and cover over with peat, and water in with around 1 litre of water mainly around the plant but cover the top layer with a little to prevent it drying out.
I can hear people already saying rockwool cubes in soil!!
I watered them sparingly over the first 4 weeks, just enough to keep the top layer moist as they wont dry out too much as they are under my 2 x 400w CFLs. You wont need any nutrients as the soil will provide these for the first few weeks, but at around 5 weeks I start to add just a little Bio Bizz Veg in very small quantities as the soil is still providing most of what they need. The plants will be well established by now and growing well.
The plants took about 10 weeks of vegging using an 18/6 light cycle, I put this down to the lower temperatures than I would normally like but I was too tight to put a heater in there to speed things up!!
The plants were between 14 to 18 inches tall by this time and started to show signs of flowering at the start of January, so I swapped the lights over to a single 600w HPS Growlux lamp and switched the light cycle to 12/12.
I also switched to using Bio Bizz Bloom giving each plant approx 1 litre of water every 2 days with 2ml of Bloom per litre, they have been flowering for about 3 weeks now and I have increased this to 1.5 litres of water with 5ml of bloom per litre. The plants are now about 3 feet tall.
The plants have never shown any signs of ill health and are flowering well as you can see from the pictures, so it really is that simple and shows you dont need heaps of fancy equipment to achieve decent results!
I hope some people find this useful and I will post up the results when the plants have finished.
