That advice is handed out practically daily and it is NOT good advice.
　
Pot grown to be smoked that has seeds in it was not grown to get fully mature viable beans, it was grown to be smoked and the beans are only a nuisance byproduct of the grow. Since some to most to even all the seeds may not be fully mature and are not viable beans you can have very low germ rates, sometimes as low as 0%. If you get beans to pop the plants may lack vigor and grow very slowly.
　
Unless you know the growers of the pot the beans came from and know that without a doubt you can trust them if they say the seeds are Blueberry or whatever you really do not have any clue to what you are growing and then you will end up starting about the one millionth thread here asking what in the wide, wide world of sports am I growing? Heres some pics, someone please tell me what strain I am growing.
　
You will not have any way of researching what the strain needs the most of what sort of flowering time it requires. Being new to growing you likely will not even be able to look at the plants while in veg and know if they are sativa, indica or a cross and if a cross if they are sativa or indica dominant so again you will be here asking
what the hell is this stuff? What do I do? What does it need? Who long should I veg? How long should I flower? But who can give you truly accurate answers about a mystery strain that only God could tell you what it actually is?
　
The part about use bagseed beans before you pay for "expensive" beans ALWAYS makes me laugh. Unless someone gives you beans from their bag you did have to pay for the bag of seedy pot you got the beans from in the first place, right? If you do not have a bag on hand you will have to pay for the bag of seedy pot to get the beans right?
　
You can buy a pack of five feminized beans for $34.01 (USD) plus shipping. You can buy a pack of ten regular beans for $22.10 (USD) plus shipping and in both cases they are beans that were grown to full maturity so you can count on their viability and of course they would come from professional breeders.
　
Will the bag of seedy pot you bought or will have to buy cost you less than that? If so will it be enough less to be worth all that can go with attempting to grow using beans that were not grown to full maturation and have dubious viability? Remember paying for a bag of seedy pot does not mean the seeds in it are free. You pay for them and whatever you paid for the bag of seedy pot is what you paid for the number of regular beans (as in not feminized beans) so is it likely that the bagseed beans will be less expensive per bean than what you can buy from a professional breeder? Remember, you can buy a pack of five feminized beans for $34.01 (USD) plus shipping and there are a number of other strains that you can also buy a pack of five feminized beans for not much more than that amount.
　
If someone is a new grower it is typical that their setup will be lacking in some way or ways and also many times their grow area is limited in size. Most will not have a setup to grow out enough regular beans to then be able to separate the males they get, which means they will be starting another is this a dude or a chick thread, and in the end they likely will end up with fewer females than they wanted or needed or at least hoped for
and they might not even get a single female from the bagseed beans they pick out of their seedy pot.
　
If you purchase a pack of five feminized beans if you do not kill any off through ignorance, which is likely with a new grower, you have five girls. Sure more ignorance later may hermi one or all but both of those possibilities for problems can just as easily happen with bagseed that in the end you may have paid more per bean for due to the cost of the bag and the number of beans that are actually grown from it.
　
A new grower should pick some inexpensive feminized beans from a professional breeder and they will have a head start on a successful first grow. Due to the problems that can go with growing from bagseed it can easily confuse a new grower into thinking that the problems they encounter have to have been their fault when they likely are at least in part due to the fact that they grew using beans that were not grown to full maturity and intended to be used to grow plants from. It is confusing enough when you first start out that you do not need any additional confusion tossed into the mix.
When you do pick a strain or strains and if you do ask for advice here or on some other similar site dont just say I am growing White Widow or Blueberry or whatever. Say I am growing Green House Seeds White Widow or Seedsman Seeds White Widow etc. Tell which breeders strain you are growing because there is always only one original and the rest that carry the same names are knockoffs and are genetically different, they are each breeders version and information, accurate or not, about one breeders strain does not always apply to another breeders strain. Some breeder strains that carry the same name my be sativa dominant and some indica dominant and others a 50-50 mix and what works for one might be disaster for another.
　
What goes with that is if someone says I grew White Widow and it took X number of weeks to fully flower/mature so you have another X number of weeks to go ask them whose White Widow, or whatever strain it happens to be, they grew. If it turns out to be a different breeders version then you can pretty much discount much of not all that you were told.
　
Keep things apples to apples and not apples to zebras and you will find that things will flow much smoother for you.
　
Some people do have success growing from bagseed. When I started growing in 1972, and for a number of years after that until I met people who were hobby/basement breeders, my only option, as like most people of the time, was to grow from bagseed.
At times I had good success and at times I did not have anything that even came half close to being something that could loosely be defined as being a success and the difference was the bagseed beans. Some were good, some were half-good and some were worthless. I do not mean that as in the grade of the pot they came from but instead as in how mature the beans were or if they were even viable beans to begin with.
　
The very best most basic advice I could give to someone who is thinking about growing their own herb would be.
　
Research, research, research
and I do not mean that as in hanging around sites like this and taking the advice of people with 2 or 8 grows under their belt who took the advice of other people who had 2 or 8 grows under their belt. Buy a couple books written by true professional growers and read them from cover to cover. If you cannot afford a couple good books on growing you cannot afford to grow in the first place. You can also find entire books online so you can read others online and increase your actual knowledge that way. Ignore anything said in messages on sites like this that say things like, in my opinion, or I think, or what seems to work for me or I was told by a guy or I was thinking and maybe if you do X or Y is will work, etc. Listen to what pros say, not what inexperienced unskilled people say or what posers say.
　
Dont start threads asking people, what should I grow? Think about what you like the most, as in a sativa high or an indica stone or a cross and if a cross which of the two would you prefer to be the more dominant. Then when you know in general what you want research and find those strains and then pick a few and research them more deeply and then decide for yourself what to grow. Grow what YOU like the most and NOT what OTHERS like the most.
　
Dont ask questions like, I want a strain with a gazillion percent THC level that will yield so much I will need a fleet of dump trucks to haul it around in. The two just do not go hand in hand. Strains with the highest levels of THC are not the best producers and the best producers are not among the group of highest level THC strains. Pick one or the other and then try to make the most of it and just live with it.
　
If your budget will not allow for a decent setup then just wait and save your bucks until you can afford a decent setup. I could not begin to guess how many people I have known or read messages from who said they only had $X to work with so they bought a handful of CFLs or a 150-watt HID light (usually only of MH or HPS and not of both) and later found they had thrown together a Rube Goldberg ghetto grow setup and before long were not at all satisfied with the results they were achieving and then upgraded. You have to consider the cost of your initial shoddy setup and the cost of your upgraded setup together as what you then in the end have invested and starting with crap and then upgrading only means you spent more to get what you end up with than it would have cost if you just saved up a little longer and bought it in the first place. I dont mean that everyone should wait until they can afford a 1000-watt light and a light mover and a cO2 setup and a carbon filter and all else that goes with a top notch setup because some people just do not have the space to use something like a 1000-watt light and they will not be growing enough plants to need a light mover. What I am saying is if another couple months of saving will get you what will be best for what area you have to work with then wait those extra months and save the extra bucks. It will save you money in the long run.
　
Have everything you need on hand before you order your first beans. What will be needed will vary depending on if you grow in soil (which I would STRONGLY advice for any new grower) or of you grow using hydro or aero. If you are into a grow and you need something and you need it now and you do not have it you are up that proverbial creek in a leaky canoe without a paddle. Having everything that you may or will need on hand will make things go a whole lot smoother than trying to pick things up now and then as you find a few extra bucks at the end of a month that will likely end up being after you actually need whatever it is you then purchase.
　
When you are new to growing follow proven steps and procedures, steps and procedures proven by pros. DO NOT EXPERIMENT. Later when you actually know what you are doing if you want to experiment then by all means go for it. But there are so may ways to screw up a grow that a new grower does not need to add to them by attempting to think up something they believe to be new and that may be highly beneficial. Just think a moment about how long pot has been grown. I started growing in 1972 and it was grown for thousands of years before I was nothing more than a gleam in my old mans eye. Almost nothing that someone could think up and believes is their new idea hasnt been tried and tested years or decades or a millennium or two before and if it worked it would now be common knowledge and everyone would be doing it today.
　
Growers, especially new growers LOVE sites like this but a very large percentage of advice that is passed around is at best half accurate and at worst horribly inaccurate. As I said buy books written by true professional growers, find online books written by true professional growers, do not be afraid to Google instead of starting a thread where you post a fuzzy picture and ask is this a gal or a guy or is it ready, should I chop now? If you Google look for sites that are not forums and instead sites where accurate information can be found. Many online businesses that cater to growers have help and advice sections and tutorials and information about plant problems that will list symptoms and then say what causes them and how to remedy them. Rely on them first instead of relying on the opinion of some guy with a Rube Goldberg ghetto grow setup on his third grow if you want accurate information instead of unimaginably poor mainly opinion based answers.
Possibly the most important piece of very basic very general advice I could share with a new grower is to have patience, loads and loads of patience. Remember, Rome wasnt built in a day and neither was Syracuse.
　
If you are going to grow make your very best possible attempt to do it right, right from the start
and I mean that in any and every possible way even if it means waiting longer to get started.
My mother always taught me if you are going to do something do it right or dont do it at all.
Of course my dad said mom gave lousy head so maybe mom should have taken her own advice, but still it is very sound advice and when it comes to growing it should be heeded by one and all.
　
Thus endeth the lesson.
bimmer 
