Love marijuana but haven’t taken the plunge into cannabis cultivation yet? What’s stopping you? High-quality indoor and outdoor weed seeds and widespread legalization have more people than ever enjoying growing marijuana at home.
If you enjoy smoking, live somewhere weed is legal, and aren’t growing pot at home, it’s time to change that. Read on, learn how to grow marijuana at home, and never have an empty stash again.
Choosing a Strain
Choosing a strain is the first step toward growing pot at home. There are countless options out there, falling into three main categories.
- Sativa: Originating in subtropical locations like South America and Southeast Asia, sativa strains like hot, sunny weather. Sativas tend to grow tall, with slender branches and long, narrow-fingered leaves.
They’re reasonably sensitive to environmental changes, especially temperature, but require less pruning than indicas. Grow marijuana at home that’s sativa for a stash of cerebrally stimulating and uplifting cannabis.
- Indica: Indica cannabis comes from more rugged areas like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tibet. These cooler, harsher conditions produced a shorter, bushier, and sturdier plant than sativas.
The resilience and hardiness of indicas make them a perfect choice for beginners growing marijuana at home. This tough subspecies easily withstands environmental change and bounces back from small grower errors or stressful episodes.
Indica home grown marijuana focuses more on delivering profound relaxing physical effects with a sedative side.
- Hybrid: These are strains that combine the genetics of two or more cultivars. Hybrids usually contain a mix of both sativa and indica.
When it comes to growth characteristics, hybrids have the potential to display features from both subspecies.
Growing marijuana at home that’s hybrid allows you to choose the perfect mix of effects to suit your tastes.
As well as choosing a strain, there are different seed variants to consider before you grow marijuana at home. Here’s a brief overview of what each one offers.
- Regular: Regular marijuana seeds contain a full set of sex chromosomes. Plants from regular seeds may be males or females. If you want to breed your own unique hybrids, use regular cannabis seeds.
- Feminized: Feminized cannabis seeds contain only XX chromosomes, developing into females 99% of the time. These are best if you want a productive all-female crop of plants. If you clone feminized seeds, you’ll get more of exactly the same, which is another benefit to consider.
- Autoflower: Home grown marijuana from autoflower seeds starts flowering regardless of daylight length. This makes repeat harvest possible for outdoor cultivators and eliminates photoperiod management inside. Autoflower plants are compact, have a rapid life cycle, and flower faster than other variants.
Picking a Place
Select a strain and variant, and the next step on the road to home grown marijuana is choosing where to cultivate.
- Indoor: Indoor cultivation gives you great control over lighting schedules and the environment. Your plants are also less exposed to airborne pests and pathogens. On the downside, growing marijuana at home can get significantly more expensive.
- Outdoor: Growing pot at home outdoors is fantastic if you’ve got the right weather. Plants thrive in natural settings and feel healthier under the sun and with a natural breeze. Outdoor cultivation is cheaper, but your plants face a greater risk from pests of all sorts.
Providing the Basics
Growing marijuana at home is no more difficult than caring for any other plant. Provide the basics and let nature take care of the rest.
- Light: Without plenty of light, your plants won’t have the energy they need to flourish. Photoperiod cannabis needs at least 18 hours of light during the vegetative stage and 12 during flowering.
Use high wattage lights of at least 600w for growing pot at home inside. If you grow outside, ensure you plant at the right time to maximize sunlight hours. Unless you’re growing an autoflowering strain, that is.
- Food & Water: Water and nutrients nourish your home grown marijuana. Cannabis requires a different mix of nutes during the vegetative and flowering stages. Thankfully, there’s a range of excellent nutrient packages designed for growing marijuana at home.
- Air: Air plays an important part in cultivating healthy home grown cannabis. A constant flow of air around your plants keeps them oxygenated, helps them develop stronger branches, and prevents mold and mildew.
If you’re growing marijuana at home indoors, ensure adequate airflow for your crops. Outdoor plants are naturally exposed to wind and breeze, making this one less thing to worry about.
- Temperature & Climate: Home grown marijuana likes a warm environment that’s not too dry or humid. Generally speaking, sativas prefer it hotter than indicas and a little more humid.
Maintain temperatures of 69–79°F and relative humidity (RH) around 50–60% to keep most strains happy during vegetative growth.
Once flowering starts, it’s important to reduce RH to 40–50% and as low as possible for the final week or two. Damp, humid conditions have the potential to cause mold and bud rot.
Stages of Growth
You’re almost done learning how to grow marijuana at home. Here’s what you can expect from each stage of growing marijuana at home.
- Germination: Cannabis seeds lay dormant until the right conditions exist to open or germinate. Most high-quality home grown marijuana seeds are highly viable and sprout in 24–120 hours.
- Seedling: This is when your baby plants develop a healthy root system and their first sets of branches. It normally takes about three weeks for them to establish themselves fully.
- Vegetative: This stage is where your home grown marijuana does most of its development. Vegetative length varies depending on many factors, but it lasts for 8–10 weeks on average.
- Flowering: Here’s where the magic of growing marijuana at home happens. Cannabis from regular or feminized seeds flowers once subjected to 12 uninterrupted hours of darkness each day. Each strain’s flowering period is different, but most flower for 8–12 weeks.
- Harvest: Once your home grown marijuana finishes flowering, it’s time to harvest. Cut down and hang the plants in a dark, dry room to allow them to dry. Then you can cure your buds to get the best flavor possible.
Get Growing
Now you know the basics of how to grow marijuana, get out there, and start cultivating hauls of juicy buds.
If you know someone else who’s on the fence about growing marijuana at home, be sure to share this article with them.
Jennifer Gallagher
Jennifer Gallagher, an experienced cannabis grower at SeedSupreme Seedbank. During a 7-year career in the marijuana growing business, Jennifer has gained a high competence in this field. As far as weed is concerned, she knows it all inside out. Jennifer is an expert in pot-growing, as well as cannabis types and their effects. She’s also familiar with all legislation nuances.
