Starting From Seed

The downside of starting from seed is that unless you have a feminized variety, you won’t know for a while whether you have a male or a female. The upside is that you have a plant with vigorous growth. A clone eventually gets tired and it’s best to begin with new seeds from time to time. But growing from seed affects harvest length, so if a continuous source of medicine is what you need, then focus on cloning existing plants to create additional plants.

Jerry prefers to sprout seeds between wet paper towels placed inside a zip lock bag. He keeps them warm under a fluorescent light, checking their progress daily. Seeds sprout within a couple of days typically. But if they haven’t sprouted within 10 days or so, then they probably aren’t going to do so. So, it may be time to start over.

After the seeds sprout, it’s time to plant them either in soil or in a hydroponic unit. We use Pro Organics soil as a general soil and create a Super Soil from a recipe used by SubCool at TGA Genetics. I’ll include the recipe under the section on soil. Jerry has modified the recipe over time, but it’s still basically the same recipe used by Sub. It’s a concentrated soil blend that takes the place of other nutrients and is used when transplanting as well as a top dressing. It eliminates some of the need to use separate nutrients, keeping costs down. And as anyone who has grown cannabis knows, it’s not an inexpensive process.

Jerry likes to use plastic drinking cups that we buy in bulk in which to plant both seeds and clones. From there, the new seedlings are replanted into 1 gallon pots while they continue to grow. Their final pot indoors will either be a 7 or 10 gallon tall container.

When the seedlings are small, we use a 1/4 strength fertilizer in the water because too much seems to cause male plants to form. It doesn’t matter what fertilizer you use, just that you use about a 1/4 strength when the plants are young. Some store bought soils have some fertilizer in them, but you’ll still need to watch the plant to see if it needs extra support. Additionally, keep the ph of the water around 6 to 6.5. Ph Up or Down can be used to bring the water to the appropriate ph level. You can feed your plants all the nutrient you want, but if your ph isn’t right in the water, you can still experience problems, so take the time to ph your water after adding nutrient.

As time goes on, I’ll add pictures to each of these pages and update them with new info as it comes up.