PREPARING for YOUR GARDEN

Marijuana 101

Conventional wisdom says that it is easy to grow marijuana. It is said to be a weed and, as such, grows anywhere and everywhere without any help from humans. This might have been true at one time but only to a point. Marijuana has been cultivated throughout history and was carried by humans wherever they went, so it didn't grow wild on its own accord for long. Weed was always too valuable to be left wild and free without someone harvesting it and taking advantage of its bounty. Therefore, most cannabis in the world today is the result of careful breeding and gardening techniques. Wild marijuana is said to taste better than cultivated marijuana, but when grown indoors the wild variety is skinny and weak compared with designer-bred indoor strains. Although any type of pot can be grown indoors, every effort must be made to find the best genetic strain that will compensate for the disadvantages of indoor cultivation and be adaptable to lighting that is far weaker than the sun.

Indoor weed is bred to provide the best results for cannabis grown under lights, and it usually begins with an Indica strain. Cannabis Indica is the variety of marijuana used to make hashish. Indica plants grow shorter and thicker and provide stronger highs than the alternate variety of marijuana known as Cannabis Sativa. In effect, indoor Sativa is not a true Sativa plant at all. It is an Indica plant crossbred with a Sativa plant for an airier high. Pure Sativa plants do very poorly indoors. They take longer to grow and are skinnier and less potent than Indica plants. But Sativa plants can provide a soaring mental high without the drag-down effects of the sleep-inducing Indica plants. Therefore, crossbreeding can provide the best features of both plants, and it can be very rewarding to breed your own special brand of marijuana based on your preference for taste, potency, quality of high, long-lasting effects, burning qualities, and so on.

Male cannabis plants produce flowers that pollinate the female cannabis buds but offer very little THC, which is the active ingredient in cannabis that makes you high. Only the female plant is used to produce the dried flowers known as cannabis, but it is not the branches or leaves or buds that make you high, it is the tiny capitate-stalked trichomes or THC crystals that grow on the branches, leaves, and buds. So you are not really harvesting buds, you are harvesting the trichomes/crystals that cover the buds. It is possible to harvest some THC crystals from the leaves and branches of both the female and male cannabis plants, but not in sufficient quantities to make for good smoking.

Cultivating those coveted THC crystals takes about four months. I'll guide you through the two main phases of cannabis cultivation: the vegetative stage (for growing leaves and stems) and the flowering stage (for growing buds). Every two months vegetative plants will move to the budding stage, budded plants will be harvested, and a new generation of plants will start the vegetative stage from vegetative plant clippings also called cuttings. This cycle ensures a regular supply of smokeable cannabis as long as you're willing to keep growing it.

Security

Before we get to growing your marijuana, let's consider how to keep your garden — and you — safe and secure. Pot gardens are often camouflaged in secret rooms. Some growers use trap doors or entrances hidden behind false walls. I