Why oh why don't people who set out to grow weed spend a few minutes reading up on the subject (such as a grow guide)?
There is such a wealth of info available it boggles the mind.
When I first started to grow, the only way you could get info was if you KNEW someone who already successfully grown a crop.
For the first 4 years, I didn't know how to get buds.
I knew enough to plant in the spring.
But I'd pick leaves and by mid-summer the plants would be picked clean i.e. dead.
I'd look at a bag of weed I bought and then a bag of pot leaves I grew and I'd be like WTF?
I also didn't know that pot, unlike most other plants on earth have seperate sexes, and that to get buds you had to wait. I remember the year after I found out pot had seperate sexes and you had to wait until fall and that only the females grow seeds, I saw some balls forming on a plant and I thought "all right those are seeds so it's a female" so I ripped up all the plants that didn't have "seeds".
The "seeds" weren't seeds at all; they were male pollen sacs, so what I thought were females were actually males. What I had done in reality was kill the girls. So another year with no buds.
I finally found out what was what the following year. I had forgotten about some seeds I had planted behind the garage that spring and when I went back there to chop weeds in Oct I came upon a scraggly, untended plant--that had buds!!!
I knew I had to find out more so I went to the library and started to read about horticulture in general.
I discovered that pot was an annual so I started to research annuals and found out about flowering and budset & stuff.
And then finally the next year, armed with knowledge I brought in a bountiful crop of buds.
Nowadays all someone has to do is google >marijuana cultivation< and discover links to numerous grow guides. They can find out in a few minutes what it took me years to discover thru trial and error.
But do people do that?
Noooooo.
Indoors especially, the people who succeed most often are those that read up on the subject. Even with over 20 years exp. growing outdoors I read up on indoor cultivation before I spent a dime on equip. And learned quite a lot.
Which brings me to another point.
Visiting cultivation websites and talking to several people I know who own growshops I've come to the conclusion that people who are thinking about growing weed enough to join a site such as this quit growing after a few months, if they start at all.
They either discover that indoor growing is harder, costs more $$ and takes more of a committment--and lifestyle change--than they thought, or their plants die or the results are so bad they give up.
I remember I was advising one guy on how to row outside. I emphasized the need to dig holes, and to work & amend the soil.
The next day he told me he planted 50 seeds.
"You dug 50 holes since yesterday?" I asked.
He said "No, I just threw them on the ground."
"Don't you remember what I said about preparing the site?"
"Yeah" he answered "I'll do that later."
Sheesh.
And then there are the liars. People who claim to have read grow guides but continue to ask the most basic of Q's.
And finally there are those people at another site that I try to encourage to grow outside but it's like banging my head against the wall.
I tell them all it costs for a guerilla grow is a few bux and hikes twice a week to grow thousands of dollars worth of weed.
Some of these people are kids. They get money from mommy and daddy and do not yet know the value of a dollar.
But jeez even if they're getting $ that way you'd think they'd grow weed so they could spend their allowance on other stuff.
Typical newbie post:
I threw some seeds on my driveway and they started growing, so I pulled 'em up and planted them in an aquarium under my bed. How long til I get buds?
End Rant mode.
There is such a wealth of info available it boggles the mind.
When I first started to grow, the only way you could get info was if you KNEW someone who already successfully grown a crop.
For the first 4 years, I didn't know how to get buds.
I knew enough to plant in the spring.
But I'd pick leaves and by mid-summer the plants would be picked clean i.e. dead.
I'd look at a bag of weed I bought and then a bag of pot leaves I grew and I'd be like WTF?
I also didn't know that pot, unlike most other plants on earth have seperate sexes, and that to get buds you had to wait. I remember the year after I found out pot had seperate sexes and you had to wait until fall and that only the females grow seeds, I saw some balls forming on a plant and I thought "all right those are seeds so it's a female" so I ripped up all the plants that didn't have "seeds".
The "seeds" weren't seeds at all; they were male pollen sacs, so what I thought were females were actually males. What I had done in reality was kill the girls. So another year with no buds.
I finally found out what was what the following year. I had forgotten about some seeds I had planted behind the garage that spring and when I went back there to chop weeds in Oct I came upon a scraggly, untended plant--that had buds!!!
I knew I had to find out more so I went to the library and started to read about horticulture in general.
I discovered that pot was an annual so I started to research annuals and found out about flowering and budset & stuff.
And then finally the next year, armed with knowledge I brought in a bountiful crop of buds.
Nowadays all someone has to do is google >marijuana cultivation< and discover links to numerous grow guides. They can find out in a few minutes what it took me years to discover thru trial and error.
But do people do that?
Noooooo.
Indoors especially, the people who succeed most often are those that read up on the subject. Even with over 20 years exp. growing outdoors I read up on indoor cultivation before I spent a dime on equip. And learned quite a lot.
Which brings me to another point.
Visiting cultivation websites and talking to several people I know who own growshops I've come to the conclusion that people who are thinking about growing weed enough to join a site such as this quit growing after a few months, if they start at all.
They either discover that indoor growing is harder, costs more $$ and takes more of a committment--and lifestyle change--than they thought, or their plants die or the results are so bad they give up.
I remember I was advising one guy on how to row outside. I emphasized the need to dig holes, and to work & amend the soil.
The next day he told me he planted 50 seeds.
"You dug 50 holes since yesterday?" I asked.
He said "No, I just threw them on the ground."
"Don't you remember what I said about preparing the site?"
"Yeah" he answered "I'll do that later."
Sheesh.
And then there are the liars. People who claim to have read grow guides but continue to ask the most basic of Q's.
And finally there are those people at another site that I try to encourage to grow outside but it's like banging my head against the wall.
I tell them all it costs for a guerilla grow is a few bux and hikes twice a week to grow thousands of dollars worth of weed.
Some of these people are kids. They get money from mommy and daddy and do not yet know the value of a dollar.
But jeez even if they're getting $ that way you'd think they'd grow weed so they could spend their allowance on other stuff.
Typical newbie post:
I threw some seeds on my driveway and they started growing, so I pulled 'em up and planted them in an aquarium under my bed. How long til I get buds?
End Rant mode.
