i am going to be placing my seeds in wet paper towl to start after that
1) what would be a good soil to use? that i would be able to get at home depote or lowes?
i will be using 23w cfls for this step
1)how many should i use?
2)how long should i leave them in cups under cfls?
thanks in advance for any imput
My 2 cents:
I use happy frog soil because it's low nutrients AND you can buy a variety that has mycohrizial arbuscular fungus... The fungus actually breaks into the root cells of your plant, and gives it nutrients in exchange for water. Very cool. Use a soil that is low in nutrients, so that you can feed it yourself accurately. Don't feed it nutes until after 3 weeks.. the seedling uses the nutrients from it's seed for 3 weeks. Use a formula of nutrients designed for marijuana, like 'jungle juice' brand. The micro, grow, bloom combination is the best, whatever brand you use. Just to be on the safe side, first test your nutrients by giving your plants half the reccommended dose, and slowly increasing the innoculation until the plant is at it's peak.
Use about 2-3 23 watt cfls per plant, and place them about an inch to two inches away from them. You can use CFLs for the seedlings (when they're in the soil) for 3 weeks or so, then I would switch to a HID (metal halide for vegetal, high pressure sodium for flowering, although you can use high pressure sodium for the entire duration, but it won't give you as good a yield). If you use CFLs the entire grow, your yield will suck.
Transplant them from your cups to a 3 or 5 gallon container after about three weeks, depending on your cup size, because by that time you should have a nice healthy rootball, and the roots wont' be too rootbound.
The entire time you grow, have a fan blowing gently on the plants so that they vibrate gently. This ensure their stem will grow strong. Keep the temperature between 72-80 degrees farenheit, and the humidity at least 15-20%. The pH of the soil should be around 6.2-6.8.
You will want a 20/4 light schedule while it is a seedling and in it's vegetal stage. The vegetal stage will last anywhere from 3 weeks to 2 months. Veg your plants depending on if it's sativa or indica dominant, and also how big you want them to get. The plants will usually double or triple their size from the start of flowering to harvest time, so think about that and note how much growing space you have. If you want a small plant, switch from veg to flower cycle when they are 5-6 inches, which can range from 3-6 weeks old.. Remember that before switching to veg the plants should have shoots coming out of the nodes (nodes are the places where the side branches are).
If you want a bigger yield use techniques such as LST, FIM, and topping, along with SGROGing. These methods are easy to do and look up, so I won't go into detail about them. Sativas definitely should be LST'd or FIM'ed, because they grow so tall.
To switch them to flower, simply switch your bulb to HPS (If you have one) and go from a 20 hours on, 4 hours off to a 12 hours on, 12 hours off light cycle. This induces hormones to get synthesized which in turn forces the plant into flowering. You MUST have complete darkness for the 12 hour dark cycle. Even a tiny bit of light will stop hormone production! Even 5 minutes of light stops the hormone production.
Depending on the strain, the plant may need 7 hours of dark, or it may need 12. To be on the safe side, growers do 12 just to make sure.
After 2 weeks of the flowering cycle, you should be able to sex your plants. Males develop ball-shaped sacs, and females can be identified by their pistils (long fibrous straight strands coming out of the flowering sites. Males don't have to be killed if you want to save their pollen, or else polinate other flowering females in the vicinity. Also males have a small amount of THC and other pychoactive cannibinoids so you can save the male and extract the active chemicals for butter and such.
If you want big, THC-loaded buds, don't pollinate the females.
Depending on the strain, after 2-4 months your female plant will be ready to harvest. The best time to harvest is when 75% of all the trichomes (the small, sphere-like projections that appear on the buds) are cloudy and brown. Clear trichomes are unripe and don't have much THC.. Cloudy trichomes are healthy and contain the most THC, and brown trichromes are dead or dying and a lot of the THC has been oxidized (chemically changed) into other cannibinoids. If you want a more stony, indica-type lazy high, wait for more brown trichomes. If you're looking for a more heady, upbeat high like sativa, you want more cloudy trichomes. This is a personal preference.. I prefer the stony lazy high because I can get paranoid with the heady high.
Another indication your buds are ready for harvest is that the bud hairs will have turned brown, and the leaves on the buds (not the true, 5 leafed fan leaves) will start to droop and die.
When harvest time comes, put the plant in a complete 36 hour darkness spell just before cutting it. This makes the plant believe winter has come, and it will expend the rest of it's nutrients in developing the trichomes (and hence, THC). Also flush the plant a few days prior to harvesting the buds. This will help get rid of the 'chloropyll taste.'
Now for the actual harvest (Usually 3-6 months after germination). Cut the branches off one by one carefully, and do not place the buds directly on any surface while working, because the sticky residue will get all over, and you'll lose a small amt of THC. When you have all the bud-containing branches, place them gently on some newspaper. Begin cutting off all the fan leaves. Then hang the branches with the buds still attached upside down in a cool, dry area with no direct sunlight. After a day the branches will turn slightly brown, but they should still be semi-pliable, i.e. they should bend without snapping. This is the time to cut the buds off.
Remove the small leaves that are attached to the buds.. You should save these for making butter because they have a relatively high THC content.
Now it's time to dry and cure your buds~~!
Drying the bud essentially dehydrates them so that they are smokeable - it's hard to combust wet product =) The curing of the bud ensures a uniform distribution of THC and degrades a lot of the organic material such as chlorophll that makes the bud taste nasty.
The best technique I know of is to do it simultaneously. By the time you've cut off the buds, a lot of drying has already taken place. Place the buds (after cutting) into a glass jar that has a cork or otherwise airtight lid, and seal it for 12 hours. This is the curing part. After 12 hours, open the jar and allow the moisture that has left the buds to leave the jar. If the buds still look too wet and green, take the buds out and lay them on a newspaper for 8 hours in a ventilated area with no sunlight. Then place back in the jar. If they are not too wet, just keep the jar open for a couple hours. Now reclose the jar so it's airtight again, and cure for another 8-12 hours. Repeat this with smaller and smaller amounts of time until you have nice, smokeable buds =)
Enjoy friends!
