Fertilizing is an essential part of the growth and development of cannabis plants, so that they can get the necessary nutrients needed for each stage of their lives, helping them to produce abundant, high quality yields.

Choosing the best fertilizers for your cannabis plants can make a massive difference when it comes to final results. Keep reading, we’re going to go into the characteristics of each type of fertilizer.

Where do Different Fertilizers Come From?

Organic fertilizers are organic in origin, which means they’re produced or obtained from elements present in nature. Worm hummus, for example, is obtained from worm excrement from a specific type of red Californian worm. This fertilizer, as well as being a super complete fertilizer, is highly useful when it comes to growing cannabis as there’s no risk of over-fertilizing plants or burning their roots. This is why it’s ideal for beginners, especially for outdoor grows.

Before explaining how to dry and cure cannabis, let’s make sure the objective is clear and the differences in each process are understood.

Drying cannabis is essentially evaporating the leftover water in the flowers, while curing cannabis also causes water loss as well as chlorophyll evaporation, which makes for a much better flavour and aroma. This also increases cannabinoid content, as well as improving terpenes and essential oils.

The Best Conditions for Drying Cannabis Plants

In order to dry your cannabis plants correctly, you’ll need to keep in mind a couple of factors that determine certaine characteristics like aroma, flavour and effect.

Avoid direct light on the buds: during the drying process plants should be in the dark. Try and keep the ambient humidity between 60 – 65% when drying cannabis during the first 7 days. If humidity is too high and you can’t get it down you can use a small air extractor with an active carbon filter in order to extract extra moisture and allow for passive air. Try and keep the temperature between 15 and 18 degrees; temperatures above this can cause terpenes to evaporate in larger amounts and faster. Avoid rapid changes in temperature. Make sure to let fresh air into the drying area daily. Don’t use fans or dehumidifiers to dry your plants, as anything used to make the process faster can cause a decrease in aroma, flavour and effect. Don’t let your cannabis dry out too much – don’t let it lose more than 70% moisture. How to Know if Cannabis is Dry Enough?

You’ve probably heard about feminized, regular and autoflowering strains, but have you ever heard of Fast Version strains?

In the following post you’ll learn about what they are and how they differ from other strains.

What are Fast Version Strains?

Fast Version seeds are those which have a shorter flowering period, usually a week or two shorter (compared to the original strain).

Trimming is essentially removing stems and leaves from your cannabis plants’ flowers. Essentially, removing everything that you’re not going to be using. Just like with other topics dealt with on this blog, there are many ways and theories dealing with trimming cannabis plants – let’s go over the various options and recommendations so you can choose the right way for you.

Cannabis leaves are incredibly important, as they’re in charge of photosynthesis, storing energy as carbs, metabolizing vitamins and hormones, storing nutrients etc. These are incredibly important for proper plant growth; this is why we don't recommend removing leaves while the plants are growing, unless it's absolutely necessary to increase light reach - even then, we recommend removing as few as possible.

Once harvesting time rolls around, the leaves become less important and less necessary, so you can tuck a some of them under the flowers if light is becoming an issue. Some growers also use a technique called defoliation when growing certain strains; this involves removing certain leaves during the second flowering week in order to make sure more light reaches the buds, although this technique is used by growers who tent to work with the same strain and know their plans very well.

Cannabis Trimming Methods

Depending on the type of grow and the strain grown, harvesting time for cannabis plants can be shorter or longer. Although it’s clear that all of the time spent growing is for the purpose of harvesting, if it’s not done at the right time you’ll be ruining a lot of hard work and the time it took to get there.

The best time to harvest cannabis depends on the conditions in which the plants are in and the results you’re looking for. In order to figure out the perfect time and prepare accordingly, you can use the information that you already have on the strain or clone that you’re growing. Each seed bank indicated the approximate flowering dates of their strains, as well as an approximate harvest date. This allows you to have a general idea of when you’ll have to stop feeding etc.

As well as these previous points, which can help you to have a general idea of an approximate harvest date, you should also keep in mind a few important factors that you can observe in your plants.

When to Harvest Cannabis Plants

Fertilizing is the act of giving your plants nutrients in order to provide them with the diet they need to grow and flower under the best conditions. Cannabis plants mainly absorb nutrients via their roots. They also have the capacity to absorb nutrients via their leaves, although not as much. There are three different ways to fertilize your cannabis plants:

Liquid nutrients and additives mixed in with water. Powdered nutrients and additives, mixed or sprinkled in soil. You can also dilute liquid fertilizers and additives in water and then spray it on your plants (foliar fertilization).

Types of Nutrients

Cannabis plants need macro and micro-nutrients to guarantee optimal growth during their life cycle. Macro-nutrients are one of the main compounds in cannabis plants, and micro-nutrients are those needed in smaller amounts. They’re also incredibly important when it comes to metabolic functions in plants (enzymes, vitamins and other additives).

Cannabis Sativa or marijuana is a dioecious plant, which means that both males and females can be found in nature. These plants reproduce sexually via pollination of the female by the male; male plants produce pollen from their flowers which go to the females’ pistils. This is how cannabis seeds are formed, which have Y chromosomes and X chromosomes (male and female, respectively). A pure female plant has YY chromosomes, and a pure male plant has XX chromosomes; most plants are XY.

Most growers are looking to grow plants that produce female flowers, as these are the ones which contain the most active substances in cannabis (cannabinoids and terpenes). Nowadays, it’s easy to get feminized seeds, which always produce females, although if you want to grow regular seeds you’ll need to know how to tell the difference between male and female cannabis plants.

How to Identify your Cannabis Plants’ Sex

When it comes to growing cannabis, you can start from clones or cuttings, which are guaranteed to be female as they’re from mother plants and grow with the same characteristics. On the other hand, if you decide to grow from seeds you’ll need to know what type you’re growing in order to identify its sex.

Types of Cannabis Seeds Feminized Seeds: these seeds also include most autoflowering strains. These seeds only produce female plants, all of which produce sought-after buds. If obtained from a reliable seed bank, you don’t need to worry if they’re male or female plants, as they couldn’t possibly be male. Regular Seeds: they can produce both female and male plants, so you’ll need to be able to differentiate between the two in order to use them according to whatever your goal or objective may be.

Cannabis plants’ roots are incredibly important when it comes to developing and growing properly; the roots are where they’ll absorb most of their nutrients from. A cannabis plant with small or little roots won’t be able to grow large and strong, however a plant with a decent root system will be able to grow into a large, high-yielding plant.

You should always make sure that your plants grow their own healthy root system from the very start up until the end. You can use root stimulants like Bio Rhizotonic by Canna or Rootbastic by Atami once you’ve planted your germinated seeds in order to give them a push in the right direction and an increase in growth speed. We highly recommend using rooting products during transplants too, such as Mycorrhizae and Trichoderma in order to protect and improve root growth (when growing organically).

What is a Transplant?

Transplanting is essentially relocating a plant into new substrate or a new container larger than the last one or straight to the ground in order to increase and improve root growth.

Water is the transportation device used by nutrients in order to get inside the plant, and it’s in charge of distributing nutrients (carbs, vitamins, hormones) around the plant’s metabolic system. It also dissolves the nutrients given to the plant, moistening the substrate, adding oxygen to soil and roots, while also maintaining pH levels etc…

Watering with the correct amount and in the correct way is just as important as knowing when to water. If you don’t water your plants when they need it, they will dry up, and if you water them too much they’ll starve of oxygen in the roots, which is why it’s important to find the perfect balance.

Watering is the most repeated chore when growing cannabis; try and give your plants water with low mineral concentrations (osmosis water is ideal), unwanted mineral salts can block your plants’ roots, stopping them from absorbing nutrients correctly. If you’re using tap water, we recommend using enzymes frequently in order to avoid mineral salt built up.

Important Factors When Watering 1. Controlled watering

Cuttings are fragments taken from plants that are capable of rooting and replicating the original plant, which is why they’re taken from branches rather than leaves. A cutting is a clone of what’s known as a mother plant. This means that they’ll grow to be genetically identical to the plant they’re taken from with the exact same characteristics. Taking cuttings is a relatively easy task, but you’ll need to know how to do it correctly in order to make sure that your cannabis clones root properly. In this post we're going to talk about how to clone cannabis plants.

How to Clone Cannabis Plants

Cloning cannabis plants is generally a simple, easy task, but you’ll need to be meticulous, organized and clean in order to do it correctly. The following video is a summary of the process, followed by a detailed step by step explanation on how to clone cannabis plants so you can successfully take your own cannabis cuttings in order to grow clones.

Within the various types of strains that can be found on the market, it’s important to differentiate between feminized photoperiodic cannabis seeds and autoflowering seeds, as this affects their life cycle as well as their general needs.

Photoperiodic Seeds and Autoflowering Seeds

Cannabis plants need a decent amount of light to grow and flower correctly regardless of the type of seed. There are feminized and autoflowering seeds, both of which need light to grow properly, although there are two main differences:

Feminized strains grow and flower depending on the amount of light received. Autoflowering strains grow and flower regardless of the light periods. Photo-Periodic Cannabis Seeds

Photo-periodic cannabis plants can be either feminized or regular, although the most common type is feminized.

pH indicates the acidity or alkalinity of a liquid. The pH of a liquid is determined by the concentration of positive hydrogen atoms (H+). The pH value is the hydrogen potential of a given solution, which is expressed with the following formula: pH = -log[aH+], and it’s measured in a scale of 14 points.

0 – 7 are acidic levels. 7 – 14 are alkaline levels. 7 is neutral.

Cannabis plants absorb nutrients from the soil or substrate they’re in. Each nutrient has a determined pH value through which it is best absorbed. If we establish an average between all of the optimal pH levels of each nutrient, you’ll be able to know what the best pH is for your plants. This level isn’t going to be the same for all substrates, fertilizers or nutrients. There are certain factors to take into account when measuring and establishing the right pH level.

Your plants’ substrate can influence the pH value. Each substrate has its own ideal pH level for nutrient absorption. Each substrate also varies in as far as its capacity to maintain a stable pH. The type of nutrients used will also affect this process. Bio and natural products have a much wider range in which they can be absorbed. However, mineral products have a more exact level that must be stuck to and they don’t do well with pH fluctuations. Lastly, the state in which your plant is in should also be taken into account. During their life cycle, cannabis plants need macro and micro-elements in different quantities. For example, during the growth stage they need more nitrogen (N) than potassium (K) and phosphorus (P), and vice versa during the bloom stage. This means that, logically, the pH levels for each stage vary.

How to Measure pH In Cannabis

If you grow cannabis then you definitely know that it’s common to find leftover small buds or other trimmings around such as bits of leaf covered in bud trichomes, buds in the end of forgotten stashes, or maybe even full buds that you just didn’t quite like enough to smoke.

What to Do with Leftover Cannabis Trimmings

Making the most of your weed essentially involves extracting their active components for various different uses. When you have delicious buds on your hands it can be harder to extract their properties due to their quality, but if you have leftover trimmings, small buds and stems on hand you can either use them up or throw them out. Your harvesting leftovers are as essential as your yield!

Some growers smoke their flowers, others vaporize them, some never use tobacco, others like to make various types of concentrates etc. The reality when it comes to leftover trimmings is different: they're not high quality buds. They don't usually contain the same amount of trichomes, same size in flowers and sometimes they lack aroma and flavour, or they're simply leaves close to the buds that you've accumulated while trimming.