Marijuana Grower's Handbook - Page 5

Tasting marijuana is a very pleasant activity, but it’s also a task that requires seriousness. Today there is a great multitude of families and varieties of marijuana and to know how to distinguish each one of them allows to define the therapeutic preferences and needs of each consumer.

In this Post we will discuss how to organize a professional tasting according to the Philosopher Seeds team. The photos that accompany this article come from a tasting of SuperJuani that we did at the beginning of summer 2015.

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In this article we will highlight the importance of drying and curing. This procedure improves the taste, aroma and smell of dry marijuana buds.

Before speaking about drying and curing of the plants we recommend that you read our two previous posts in relation to the harvest of cannabis and trimming of marijuana.

Among growers it’s often said that to cut the plants only the half of work have been done. The drying and curing is the other half.

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Trimming cannabis buds

The so awaited time of harvest has come. We will enjoy so much having sticky fingers. Harvest marijuana always is a joyful moment. With friends or alone, surrounded of a delicious perfume, the hours go by. For outdoor crops, this task can be long and boring, therefore, we will talk about the existing material on the market to make this work more comfortably. Moreover, we will give you some ideas for recycling the trimming off-cuts and take advantage of almost all vegetable matter.

We suggest that you read our previous post that speaks about When to harvest cannabis plants.

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Harvest both outdoors and indoors always tends to be a time of joy. For outdoor growers, it’s the moment in which they stop suffering for an eventual theft that would suppose a great loss. The harvest is ready! To know when to cut marijuana plants, we will have confidence on some rules that we will detail below.

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Marijuana and ventilation

When we grow marijuana indoors, there are several factors to keep in mind if we don’t want to get in trouble. Together with the lighting system used, the ventilation of the growing space is crucial if we want to have healthy plants and get best yields. Poorly ventilated environments don’t allow proper plant respiration; marijuana needs CO2 during the day and O2 at night, and if we do not ventilate correctly our grow room our plants won’t have enough amounts of CO2 and O2 to develop properly. Here you have further information on CO2.

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Cannabis is an annual plant, (it grows, flowers and dies in the same season) grown for millenniums in almost all corners of the world, except the areas near the poles. Coming from Central and South Asia it's a plant genus with three different plant species: Cannabis Sativa, Cannabis Indica and Cannabis Ruderalis. Although each species of cannabis has a few traits and properties which make it more suitable for certain areas (logically they develop better in areas where they grow naturally), it's an easily adaptable plant for growing outdoors in virtually any climate. With the exception of the auto-flowering varieties, cannabis plants grow during the spring and summer and flowers at the end of this and during the autumn.

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Prepare a good biological substrate to grow marijuana indoors or outdoors is a common issue, and with this post we will try to help you make your own mix. This growing method certainly provides the best quality of marijuana that we can harvest. It allows that terpenes aren’t altered by flavours from, sometimes too much aggressive, fertilisers.

Mixture of organic soil for cannabis recommended by Philosopher Seeds

The Philosopher Seeds Team works with all kinds of substrates and cultivation systems  to perform growing tests, but when it comes to do genetic selections to decide which will be the upcoming strains that will enter in catalogue, we all opt to use the mixture of soil and amendment as follows:

For 100 litres of substrate:

• 70 liters of substrate type “Light Mix”
• 20 liters of Worm Humus (improves the substrate in many aspects)
• 5 liters of Coco Fibers (aerates the substrate and retains water)
• 5 liters of  Perlite (aerates the substrate and retains water)
• 200 gr of Nutrihemp (favours the plant growth)
• 1,5 Kg of Bat Guano Powder (favours the bloom)
• 450 gr of Bacto Force (improves the soil by adding beneficial bacteria, fungi and enzymes)
• Mycorrhizae, the amount depends on the Brand (favours the rooting)

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Before releasing a new variety onto the market, Philosopher Seeds seed bank and its group of breeders bring their genetics to Test Line where they are tested, and thanks to the nearest group of collaborators and growers all kinds of cultivation tests can be done before being launched onto the market. In these tests, the stability of each hybrid is tested, as well as its main growing characteristics: size, elongation, yield, aroma and flavour. Many of these test lines never make it to the official catalogue, even when they are good hybrids. It is never easy to make a decision of this kind and it is always the aim to bring new lines with new parental which have not yet been introduced officially.

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We are going to talk about CO2 which is sometimes used in the cultivation of marijuana in order to explain the reaction of plants when using this gas. It is a pretty straightforward post so that all of you can understand what the use of CO2 when growing marijuana indoors is. We will post a more detailed and technical article about this in the future.

First, we need to talk about chemistry to become familiar with this gas.

What is CO2?

CO2 comprises 1 carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms. It is a linear chemical molecule and its formula, which was developed by Lewis, is: O = C = OCO2 comprises 1 carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms. It is a linear chemical molecule and its formula, which was developed by Lewis, is: O = C = O

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Philosopher Seeds shows you in this post the correct parameters for optimal growth of cannabis plants both indoors and outdoors, and the suitable types of growth for your growing space and medium. We will talk exclusively about photoperiod plants - either regular or feminised seeds. Therefore, we will not talk about autoflowering marijuana plants since the onset of flowering period is an automatic process.

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Pruning marijuana crops has a very specific function, which is maximize performance in the growing space by cutting or diverting of the main branches. This enables the internal transfer of growth hormones (auxins) through the entire structure. This makes it easy to create a more robust and compact growth that allows you to get thicker flowers and high yielding marijuana plants.

Thanks to these methods you can grow a strain that is large in size in a small space indoors, or obtain a good marijuana crop outdoors on a balcony or terrace. In this way, you’ll get a great yield for each Philosopher Seeds variety through methods such as FIM pruning, LST (Low Stress Training), the well-known Super Cropping, and including a new shaping technique known as Wesley Cross Branch.

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Usually, throughout the life of our marijuana plants, at some point we will have to transplant our plants to a container or larger pot, usually more than once. It is important to perform this task because the container will eventually be too small, and it will hinder the normal development of the roots and thus the growth and health of our cannabis plants.

With a correct transplant, we will allow the roots to continue to grow and so they will have a better substrate to be fed.

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In spring, the good weather arrives and we start to grow marijuana plants outdoors, where unwanted eyes could ruin the work of several months.

In this post we will tell you a few techniques to have your plants under control regarding shape and size so they can go unnoticed besides increasing your marijuana plants yield .

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First of all, you should know that choosing the type of soil is very important; for this reason you should look for a light, airy soil that can retain sufficient amount of water. The key is to find the balance: neither too much nor too little, the right choice basically depends upon every grower and his/her feeding schedule.

To improve your substrate in terms of water retention, you should use perlite and coco fibre. The proportions of these elements are also up to the grower, but often range from 10 to 20% of perlite, and 10 to 30% of coco fibre.

Most soil bags sold at grow shops already contain these materials with a pH suitable for growing marijuana. Philosopher Seeds highly recommends choosing these ones instead of buying substrate from the usual garden centre.

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Philosopher Seeds always encourages its customers to monitor the water pH and EC when watering and fertilising their marihuana plants: if these values are properly adjusted and under control, we ensure that our plants absorb all the necessary nutrients, keeping them healthy, without any kind of deficiency and getting the maximum yields.

pH is the coefficient that indicates how acid or alkaline the water is. Later on, we will show you how a different pH range is required depending on the growing medium.

EC is the electrical conductivity of water; in other words, the amount of salts dissolved therein. The more nutrients we use, the higher EC values we'll get.

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Growing marijuana outdoors with Philosopher Seeds

In this post we will show you how to get a good harvest outdoors with the strains we suggest from our catalogue, since the first thing to do, which is very important, is to choose marijuana seeds that adapt well to where you are located and your growing method.

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