INDOOR TUTORIAL #3
More Basics
BACK TO THE BASICS
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There is some important things I neglected to mention in my first indoor tutorial. Due to this tutorial being aimed at beginners, most of the topics are covering things related to soil growing. Sorry Hydro growers! A separate tutorial is on its way for beginner hydro growers.
Ok lets get straight to it...
WATERING for soil growers
A common misconception to beginner Cannabis growers is that cannabis needs alot of water. This can be quite untrue, while cannabis loves a drink, it is very easy to over water your plants. This will cause wilting, yellowing leaves, and potential fungus/mold/humidity issues.
A good way to judge when a good time is to water your plants is by feel, lifting the whole plant up by the pot. If your plant is quite heavy to lift it doesn't need a water, if its extra light it needs a water.
Cannabis plants that are in their seedling phase or ANY part of their vegetive phase from 10cm high to 2foot will need significantly less water than a plant entering its flowering phase or in full bloom.
For seedlings to plants upto 2foot high in their vegative phase (18 to 24hours lights on, 0 to 6 hours dark period per day) if your plants are sitting under an HPS, metal halide, or powerful LED setup. I recommend watering approx every 7 days with 1 to 1.5 litres (depending on pot size). CFL and lights of lesser power (most LEDs) water maybe every 10 to 14days when vegging, judge by weight of the plant.
For plants that are flowering from weeks 2 to 3 onwards (under 12hours light, and 12 hour dark period per day) Under an HPS, or powerful LEDs increase your watering to every 3 to 4 days giving them approximately 2 litres at a time.
Growers using less powerful lights such as CFLs and most LEDs will also need to increase their watering regime for bloom, every 4 to 7 days.. depending on pot size - 1.5 to 2 litres of water a time.
I highly recommend the use of water collection trays under every plant you grow.
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PLANTING
Cannabis will do her best to grow in just about any situation. Giving her a pot with plenty of space to stretch her roots out in, will in turn give you happier, higher yielding plants. Some growers like to root bind their plants in small pots, mainly these are growers who have not tried pots any bigger than what they have. I personally don't find root binding to be beneficial over using bigger pots, Im all ears to those wishing to debate this.
So big pots 35L to 50L (PB90's) are beneficial.
Another thing that can be poorly done is simply putting the soil in the pot/bag. A reason why cannabis grows so well hydroponically is because the roots have direct access to oxygen. You want to aim for your soil to allow oxygen access too. Some growers use perlite or pumice, however too much of this can make your plants quite unstable, and a good soil mix such as my basic mix there is really no need providing you DONT compact your soil in its bag or pot. Here's a good simple way to do it...
Prepping:
Take your pot or PB bag and loosely fill it with your soil mix until its roughly three quarters full.
Grab your bag or pot from the top (not holding any soil) lift it up 20 to 40cm a smallish amount and let it go letting the weight of the soil drop it to the floor rotate where you first gripped you bag/pot and repeat the same process a couple of times.
Doing this will help have a nice flat bottom and well filled sides in your PB bags, no wonky bags!! this also helps to compact your soil to a perfect consistency for your cannabis plants to grow in.
Continue to fill your bag/pot and do the lift and drop again another time, you can now dig a nice hole in the middle and put our plant in it. Make sure all the roots are covered, and dont be afraid to cover some of the stalk if its long and stretched. The parts of the stalk you cover will begin to shoot out their own roots.
Give your plants a very light push into its new home trying not to compact your soil too much, a mild compaction is good however to help hold your plant more upright.
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BUGS
An indoor growers demise!! Thee most golden advice I can give you is PREVENTION - avoid/prevent them at all costs!! An infestation of the wrong bugs can ruin your whole indoor garden, and no spray will stop them (in rooms with high infestation) - The only solution to them being kill all your plants, sanitize your whole room and start again. So preventing them in the first place is very key. If you are unlucky enough to get an infestation, get on to it early, isolate infested plants, treat them and quarantine them until they are ready to enter your main grow room again - when they are bug free.
There are many ways you can help with the prevention of bugs, most of it can come down to thinking twice before entering your room... "where have I been today?" Ask that EVERY TIME. If your answer involves a vegie garden, your outdoor cannabis patch, strawberry patch, hot house, tomatoes, someone else's garden, or grow room, or somewhere high in spiders like a roof or under a floor... if you have been anywhere you could have picked up bugs have a shower and change your clothes BEFORE you go near your grow room... you are jeopardizing your grow room otherwise... I guarantee you will only find doing that silly until you get bugs in your room.. then welcome to the nightmare!
One very common way to get some very deadly to your cannabis bugs is in the clone trade.
You may be excited to get a new strain off a friend or even the best grower in the world, if you have a pre existing cannabis garden, you need to treat that clone as the potential threat it is! Get a cheap CFL or desk light or something cheap, hang it in a closet somewhere away from your from your grow room and quarantine that clone, hose it down, shoot some bug spray on it if u want, and sit it away from your main grow for a week or two checking it regularly for bugs, before you are certain its bug free and safe to go in.
Plants that are flowering can be a tricky situation. Ideally you dont want to spray them. When plants are in their dark period at the start of it, pull them out of you room, take them to the shower and hose them down, shake as much excess water off as possible, and put them back, depending on infestation, do this once a week, until infestation is low/gone.
In the comments I am happy to give advise on different bug problems, as id need to write a book to list them all.
Thats all for now folks!! stay tuned 😎💚✌