Keys To growing a Half Pound Your first grow.

IMPORTANT:8 OUNCES IS MINIMUM RANGE WITH THIS SET UP. HIGHER YIELDS CAN AND SHOULD BE ACHEIVED. HAVE FAITH IN YOUR ABILITIES AND RESOURCES AT HAND.

Hey guys. Many people can really struggle while trying to grow their first time around. For alot of people it can take many years of trial and error just to get the quality/yield thats acceptable to the grower. With following this step by step method you should be able to reach a half pound with only minimal problems along the way.


Equipment: First off lighting is gonna be your first priority. I work with a 1000w hps system. Its pretty ideal but if money is an issue i recommend cfls,LEDs, ect. Try to keep atleast 100w for your first plant and 50w per plant after that for the bare minimum to have decent efficiency with your plants. If you want max efficiency with your plants shoot for 100-150w and youll have effective growth taking place. With any lighting heat will be an issue most of the time either way. It will either cause to much heat or not give off enough heat for your plants. Idealy grow in the middle floor of your house to keep the most consistent and mid range temperatures. Basements are more cold and promote mold to your plants and the attic/upstairs can cause real hotspots since heat rises. So if you must grow in one of those temps should be controlled either with house thermostat/airconditioner/spaceheater. Going along with this a temperature gague will be very neccesary to monitor those temperatures, not to forget the humidity. Humidity is less important but keyword is less because it is still important. 40-60% is optimum for plants so its a pretty large window that alot of growers dont need to adjust anything. But if problems arise with that a humidifier will be needed, people short on cash should for for a deep cookie tray and fill it with boiling water on a daily basis and will raise humidity over time. To high of humidity of course a de-humidifier will be needed. After temp and humidity are under control a must for every grower is to buy an oscollating fan! No exceptions. It not only get rid of stale air and ventilates, when the wind hits the plants it causes micro-stresses in the plant that strengthen the stem to support stronger growth in the future. Next you need a place to start your plants. Stock up on red cups for seedlings and clones. Stock up on litre pots for early vegging plants. And 3-5 gallon pots for late veg/flowering stage. If money is a factor here for any of you i recommend improvising with buckets,2 litres lying around( cover with tin foil if used, if you use a clear container it will kill roots and cause fungus mold and yea you just dont want any of that.)Or any deep and relatively wide container you can find. Just make sure it has drainage holes for the water. Next is some soil to put in those pots. I would suggest any new grower to try Fox farm ocean forest. Its a great soil that has nutes in it already for the first thirty days so you just water with out any nutrients. Plus its organic! If money isnt a factor i would add some organic simple potting soil to dilute the nutrients a little bit. This is just a precautionary measure so that no matter what strain you have and what age it is it wont burn it or aleast not to the point of where you cant bring it back. This makes the plants comfortable and lets them gradually adjust to the nutes. Perlite is an additive i also recommend adding due to it adding aeration and absorbs alot of water and nutes so you get to water less and benefits your plant more overall. For everyone on the struggle starting seedlings off in dirt cheap potting soil in a small cup and transfering it to a hempy bucket would work. A hempy bucket is a perlite,vermiculite, based medium, im not too familiar with it but theres plenty of resources on youtube and google to find out more. Basically i know its cheap and pretty effective.Also a side peice of equipment that is most likely need to any grower reading this is a carbon filter/ozone generator to get rid of the smell, if you plan on growing a half pound its gonna smell unless you have some secret, but i have yet to come across one. Next you put up all this equipment ive mentioned so far in a suitable space to grow. Got that? Good cause now you have to lace that room you set that equipment up in either with mylar/white poly material/aluminum foil/flat white paint. These materials will allow for max efficiency of your lighting source bouncing off lumens that your plants need. While setting up reflective material i would use this time to also look for any light leaks. It has to be done at some point so it might as well be while your covering up the inside of the grow space anyways. Make sure its completely sealed a pinhole of light can cause hermy problems, so its better to just be safe than sorry. Finally after you have pots and an ideal environment set up for your grow with all of this equipment theres only a few more things you need. These would be nutrients for your plants in the veg stage and also a set for the flower stage. Most companies offer a complete set that covers everything you need. If your new to growing DO NOT mix and match your nutrients it can cause nutreint imbalances that can mess with your plant. You should just use a line up like General organics box. It has everything you need in it and has specific instructions, but theres tons of different kinds like fox farm, big bug,cn17,humbolt,flora series, ect. All ranging in price but the point is just get the same brand. Once you come along in growing and experiment a little AFTER you get the hang of it you can mix and match nutes for the results you seek. Everyone on the struggle I suggest even getting cheap nutes because its better than nothing. this is a big base to having succes in the future with thriving plants! A cheaper way is also to go oranic with homemade teas made with alfalfa meal, kelp meal, mollases, ect. you can find tons of varying tea recipes that all can work well and suit any budget.After you have whatever nutes your using you want to adjust your ph to between 5.8-6.5 ph can be very important to your plant so pay attention to the ph. The kits are usually pretty cheap but improvising with vinegar to raise ph and baking soda to lower it will work well also. There now you have the basic equipment you need to pull off this half pound grow on your first attempt. Trust me this is just a very basic equipment outline, i consider myself a complete rookie even though im writing this, ive experimented with hydroponics, diff light systems, techniques, training you name it but hardcore growers on here will tell you about far most advanced equipment/nutes/environments ect. The point is you need to asses what you have to work with space/money/time wise. So lets rap up the equipment section with a proper list shall we?
Items:
1000w hps,cfls,flo's,leds,MH
thermostat/airconditioner/spaceheater
temperature gague
humidifier
de-humidifier
red cups, litre pots,3-5 gallon pots
oscollating fan
Fox farm ocean forest
Perlite
carbon filter/ozone generator
mylar/white poly material/aluminum foil/flat white paint
nutrients: GO box, ff,cn17,flora series
ph testing kit
Timer


Education: I can not stress enough how important educating yourself is. At this point in time ive read 9 books on cannabis cultivation and subject relating to sciences of cannabis and how it reacts, chemicals it has in it, how we react ect. Knowledge is power, thats a pretty old and common metaphor and it couldnt be more true when trying to pull this off. Educate by reading this, constantly looking up information of equipment you need, grow methods,plant problems, basically any little question you have or concern lurking in the back of your head i want you to instantly search it because i gurantee its on the internet. Forum research is a must constantly looking up grows similiar to yours to see what equipment improvments/ equipment modifications you can make to enhance your plants and new methods of training your plants and different ways to approach your plants when they express problems to you. Knowledge is more important than any peice of equipment you can buy because you can have the best stuff but unless you know how to utilize it correctly it wont make a difference in your grow. You can invest little cash an get pretty incredible results. So learn,research,learn,research!!


Grow Method For Seedlings
Now you want to germinate your seeds before you do anything. Put them into a glass of water and set it somewhere dark for 24-28 hours checking on it periodically during that time period. After they sprout i like to put them into a moist paper towel right after and some people will argue that the seed is already germinated and yes it is and yes you can pop it into the soil right then but i like to put it in the moist papertowel and let them for a little bit of a root system and the seed will almost pop off by that time or it might actually fall off. Either way it will look pale yellow due to it not receiving any light at this point i pop them into rockwhool cubes or soil. Whatever is readily available at that time and cushion the sproutling nice in the dirt, water it evenly and lightly, then mist it. At this point i just let it grow not disturbing it at all unless to water or mist them, keeping the light on 18hrs off 6hrs as a minimum and can be left on all the way up to 24hrs to maintain vegatative growth. Thats up to the growers preference and money situation. For a two week time period keep a real close eye on them making sure theyr moist and not drying up to quick but not messing with them. After about 2 weeks congrats youve made it to the vegging stage.

Grow Method For Veg
Keep leaving your plants alone for about 2 more weeks just keeping an eye on how theyr reacting to water its important to only water when the soil is deep about 1 knucle down on your finger, during this time period also keep in mind transfering to bigger pots. They grow fast to keep up to date with the plants needs. After a month is when you will need to start adding nutrients. The key is more is less, you will hear that alot and its very true. Start off at 50% strength of the recommended starting dose. Progress the dose as your plants show needs with various defficiencies but i shoot for the goal of not letting it get to that so i up the dose after every 2 waterings with the nutes.Also keep in mind though i water with nutes every other watering so it should be a pretty solid pace to go by for your plants needs but if they burn at the tips like literal burn looking marks then back off the nutes, if they show abnormal colors and the leaves just look funky and it looks like its in bad health( research deficiencies!!!! it helps alot for future reference!) then up it. During this time you are also going to want to use "super cropping" methods. These are purpose stressors put on the plant in order to cause reflexes that the plant will respond with more robust, vigorous, vibrant growth. And will in-turn give you a better yield and maximize your equipment.The first form of super cropping that i induce on the plants is Topping and or Fiming. This is the process of grabbing the main center cola top and trimming it off. Topping is completely removing the leaves of the top cola in turn it will stunt the plant but the plant will sprout out two cola tops this means theres two main stalks that will produce the largest Calyxs' (Weed cola tops) on your plant. You can then do that to the two new tops after they heal for about a week or so. So on and so fourth you can do so but i would stop after you have 4-8 tops total. It will cause more bushy growth and i personally start topping at the 3rd node no matter how small it is. I just prefer bushier plants and it causes great stem growth but extends the veg period and prevents you from reaching your desired height for flowering sooner. Fimming is the same thing but at the top of the main cola you cut about 80% of the top on a 45 degree angle and it just stunts it less basically. Both methods work and you can also alternate methods to your desire. Another form of training is LST or low stress training. This is bending the plant at a 90 degree angle or more that releases a hormone in the plant to shoot up and will make an even canopy. You can tie them down or you can twist and snap the colas and nodes, gently tho. If the branch snaps completely put scotch tape over it and let it heal but put it on there sturdy and pressed down hard. It will regenerate and form a knot that will be beneficial for the transportation of nutes, water, ect. It makes a larger boarding dock for the plant basically, easier exchanging of everything that the plants taking it which equals more growth. Next on the supercropping list is lollipopping, this form is when you cut everything on the lower end of your plant only leaving the top canopy and anything of acceptable size and getting a good amount of light. Since the leaves are the power source of the plant where it absorbs light this means if you remove all of these parts of the plant that arent getting any of the light all of the energy will be transferred into the top parts of the plants that are the biggest and are getting light. With this technique it also adds for way better overall light penetration of the plant and ventilation that goes under the plant now.These past few parts are some of the hardest things to get used to as a grow it can be alot of trial and error depending on how detailed you are on these methods, if you reach X amount of information, your brain gets the hang of the concept and how to perform it from repetition. when you put it to use it should be replaying in your head how to do it, thus its easier to just follow through with correctly.Another main concept in growing besides research, technique, and equipment is keeping it simple. Overcomplicate it and your bound to fail. In other words leave it alone and only adjust when adjusting needs to take place.

Grow Method For Flower
To induce flower you switch the light cyle to 12/12 you need a timer. 12 hours of darkness and 12 hours of light tell the plant that its fall time and its life cylce is reaching an end. First switch your nutrients to the flower cycle during flower your plants need alot of phosphorous. On any nute bottle there should be three numbers this is known as the N-P-K count. N for nitrogetn P for phosphorous and K for potassium. In veg your plant needs more N than anything else and in flower it needs more P than anything else. Bloom boosters like Dry koolbloom are recommended but go light or theyl burn your plants up!At this point after you switch to 12/12 after 2 weeks it will show sex and start to develop pistils. After this your 6-10 weeks out from harvest depending on strain. Try not to tamper with the plants at all and make sure when in dark period they don't have any light comming in. You can purchase a green light bulb that is in the green spectrum and doesnt affect plants in the dark period, but still i just keep them point blank pitch black.When your 1 week from harvest you want to feed your plants only water to flush out any nutrients and salt build ups in your plant. Go 2.5x more than normal on the amount of water you give per plant and give it just pure water. You should see a different color runoff and by the time you harvest it should be clear as if it were a seedling.
Harvest
By this point if you have proper knowledge and have learned thoroughly about techniques + Good equipment thats being utilized well. You should have atleast a half pound dry. The key to this is absorbing as much knowledge as possible, annoying and can be time consuming? Yes. But the results show in your plants so Read books, articles, watch videos, and educate always, even when you get to the point of where you get more than satisfying yields keep educating and learn new ways of doing things you can always find variations of techniques that can work better for your situation and environment plus you can find any type of modification for equipment that you can think of!

Closing
I hope you guys learned how to start of with a solid technique and yield successfully your first time with excellent potency. This isnt nearly detailed enough to start off the back, this was made in a matter of hours, keep EDUCATING, success comes also with experience. This is just a general outline. Good luck!

 

I stated that it wasnt that specific at the end, so can i ask how many people actually read it? yes its a large wall of text but i did it late at night and was high/tired. So i know i missed some parts but i did my best as far as putting it in a few different sections to make it more specific. Just trying to help others.