For newcomers, growing cannabis can seem very overwhelming, especially when one has so much information at their disposal. We’re sure there is nothing you would love more than to have all of these tips at your disposal. You’re in luck! Here are 11 cannabis growing tips that you must try in 2022!
Get Better Buds with Less Light
When you’re first growing cannabis, you’ll be prone to making some mistakes. This happens to the best of us. The most common mistakes among beginners often have to do with lighting. This is especially true when growing your plants indoors.
When your plants are in the vegetative stage, you should leave them in as much as 18-22 hours per day. During this time, your plants will experience a great deal of growth and progress. Once your plants move on to the flowering stage, you can see why it would be tempting to do the same. This is where most newer growers stumble. When your photo-flowering plants reach the flowering stage, you should actually decrease the amount of light your plants receive down to 12 hours per day.
Why is this, you might ask? Contrary to what you might believe, plant growth in this stage is triggered by darkness, rather than light. Keeping your photo-flowering plants in constant light will keep them in the vegetative stage.
When you grow cannabis outdoors, the seasons will naturally regulate this light and dark requirement. However, you can also place your plant in darkness to help your plants out.
Cut Back on Fertilizer
Another one of a few crucial cannabis growing tips concerns fertilizers. When your plants reach the growing stage, cut back on the nutrients. Again, this might seem contrary to what you have been brought up to believe about plant cultivation. After all, shouldn’t more nutrients be a better thing?
To help you make sense of this, think about multivitamins. When you take a multivitamin, does it make sense to take twice or three times the recommended daily amount? No, of course, it doesn’t! You could make yourself very sick.
The truth is, cannabis requires minimal nutrients to survive. Give them just enough to prevent vitamin deficiencies, and the plants take care of themselves! Why did you think cannabis was called “weed” anyway?
Excessive nutrients can trigger what is called “nutrient burn”, which starts at the tip of the leaves and will slowly spread if the condition is unaddressed. Leaves that have nutrient burn are unable to create and store energy for the plant, which will, of course, lessen your yield, and no one wants that!
Another side effect of giving your plants too many nutrients is that they will have a noticeable chemical taste and/or smell, as well as a lower THC content.
A good rule of thumb is to give your plants half the daily recommended amount of nutrients and only amp it up once your plants exhibit signs of nutrient deficiency. Remember the saying, “less is more”? This especially applies to cannabis nutrients.
Pick the Growing Medium that is Right for You!
Perhaps one of the most important cannabis growing tips is to select the right growing medium for your plants. Cannabis plants perform best when they are planted in something that doesn’t retain too much moisture after watering. For example, using a sandy soil that stays drier will give you a better yield than clay soil which retains most of the moisture provided during watering.
Choosing the correct medium can make or break your cannabis crops by determining how much or how little a yield your plants give. Picking the correct soil does not need to be risky.
Drought Stress Boosts Potency of your Plants
Here is a growing tip straight from the experts! Drought stress can boost the potency of your plants. No, seriously! Allowing the leaves of your plants to wilt just a bit due to insufficient moisture will cause them to curl at the ends and not stand up straight, which is when you would water them just enough to revive the leaves.
If you keep up this drought stress during the entire flowering stage, the harvest you obtain will be more potent than from plants that were watered liberally. This is because THC and other compounds will become more concentrated in the buds of the plants which are watered sparingly.
Think of it like this: take strawberries picked from a plant that is watered heavily daily and compare their taste to sparsely watered strawberries. The berries from the second plant will taste better!
To be continued…