25 Best Marijuana Growing Tips for Beginners – The Complete Guide

Growing weed on your own seems to be quite a complex task but when you come down to actually doing it, it is not as difficult as it initially seems. Marijuana growers need to understand that they need to follow some basic things and then the plant grows by itself. There’s a fine line of difference between growing marijuana and growing good marijuana – this is where a grower’s experience truly kicks in. 

In this article, we talk about 25 of the best marijuana growing tricks that we have curated over the years. These are some secrets that will help you ensure that you grow the best quality weed possible. If you prepare a checklist of these marijuana growing tips, you will ensure that people start recognizing your genius as a marijuana grower. Let us dive straight into these tricks:

25 Best Marijuana Growing Tips for Beginners

Follow these tips to ensure you are growing great weed:

1. Understanding the Cycle of Growth

For any grower, the most important thing is to ensure that they know exactly what they are growing. It is very important to understand the plant, the plant’s biology, and most importantly the growth cycle of the marijuana plant. Understanding this will help you with two things – first off, you will know the exact requirements of your plant at the particular stage of growth it is in and will be able to provide it with optimal conditions of growth. Secondly, you will know the moment something goes amiss that this is not how it is supposed to be like. 

While you will require a detailed reading on this, the gist of it lies in the fact that the marijuana plant starts its journey as a seed. This seed then evolves into a seedling. From the seedling phase, your plant enters the vegetative phase where you notice the foliage growing and the plant gaining size, this is followed by the pre-flowering stage where the plant’s sex organs begin to emerge, and then the flowering stage where the marijuana buds and flowers begin to bloom. The process then ends at the harvest phase.

2. Choosing the Right Strain

Not only do you need to know what the growth cycle of the marijuana plant is, you also need to know the kind of strain you are growing and all the properties of that strain. You need to know whether it is a Sativa or an Indica, and exactly which two-parent plants have been used to breed this one. Sometimes, you might even have a cross between a Sativa and an Indica parent, commonly known as the ‘hybrid’ plant. Each of these plants, depending on the parent plant, has different amounts of CBD and THC in them, each of these plants has a different kind of a smell and taste to it, etc. Hence, it is essential to know what strain of weed you are going to grow before you start with the process of growing it. This is one of the best marijuana growing tips that you must keep in mind.

3. Choosing the Right Seeds

Seed selection is also an important process. Growers need to ensure that they are choosing the right kind of seeds which have a higher chance of germination and survival. Like how you cannot judge a book by its cover, you cannot determine whether a seed is going to germinate or not by just looking at it. However, there are some traits you must consider – the seed must be hard and not soft or pulpy. You should also make sure that the marijuana seeds you are getting are darker in colour and not yellow or green (which is usually a sign of immature seeds). Getting such a seed means you are getting a healthy seed which has a higher chance of germination. You can also choose to buy seeds from some reliable seed banks which make sure that only the best quality seeds are handpicked and chosen for you. 

4. Choosing the Right Soil

One of the best marijuana growing tips for beginners is to ensure that they are selecting the right kind of soil in which they will be growing their seeds. Growers need to look at several aspects, the most important of which are the texture and the composition of the soil. The soil that you are getting for growing your plants needs to be a little muddy and clayey but also needs to have some amount of sand. It can be neither too tight nor too loose to ensure it does not retain too much or too little water. The soil should also be strong enough to retain the nutrients which can be provided to the plants as and when they need them. 

5. Choosing the Right type of Grow Light

Now, this is an open secret of the world of marijuana growers. However, this is one of the best marijuana growing tips for beginners as they often tend to go for bad or cheaper lights to reduce costs. The best advice you could give to anyone who is just starting out in this is that do not go for the cheaper alternatives in the markets but make sure that you are getting high-quality lighting. These days LED grow lights, and specifically, quantum board LED grow lights are all the rage because they are offering the best lighting experience. You also need to know the lighting requirement of your plants and make sure you are choosing the light as per that. 

6. Choosing the Right Grow Tent

When we say you need the right grow tent, we mean the right sized tent. A rookie mistake that beginners often make is that they buy a tent which is either too large or too small for their plants. While getting a larger tent is usually not a problem, getting a smaller tent can be quite a painful experience because that would mean either all your plants won’t fit in, or even if they do, it will be extremely crowded in there. Your grow tent also needs to be light-proof and should not have any pinhole light leaks etc. It also needs to have an observation window, a removable water tray on the bottom, and ventilator meshes to ensure fresh air can easily flow through. 

7. Choosing the Right Fan

This is another of the most important marijuana growing tips for beginners – sometimes when getting the fan, tent, soil, and nutrients right, growers forget all about the fan! A fan is important for two reasons – it gets fresh air inside the tent and it throws the stale air outside, and secondly, it helps regulate the temperature. Hence make sure you are getting a good quality fan which can circulate the air as well as keep temperatures under control. For understanding what kind of fan you need to use in your grow tent, you need to understand the CFM reading – the higher the CFM the more powerful the fan would be. You need a fan with larger CFM numbers for bigger grow tents and smaller ones for smaller grow tents.

8. Choosing the Right Nutrients

Choosing the right soil for growing your marijuana plants just isn’t enough. The soil needs to be supplemented with nutrients to ensure that the plants are growing properly. While many growers get the NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium) nutrients right, they tend to forget that plants need more than the basic three elements too! This is one of the best marijuana growing tips for beginners that we can offer you – make sure you are providing the micronutrients to your plants as well. These are Calcium, Boron, Molybdenum, Manganese, Sulphur among others. These nutrients help provide an additional boost to your plants and are great for their overall health and well being – do not forget these secondary nutrients!

9. Coverage of Light

When you are buying a grow light for your marijuana plants, the first thing that you need to check out is the coverage that it offers. But for that you need to arrange your plants in a decided pattern beforehand and know exactly how much space they are occupying. It is based on that space that you need to choose the light. If your plants are occupying a 4×4 space, you need to make sure that your grow light covers at least that much of the area. Getting a larger coverage isn’t a problem but getting a smaller coverage will bother you. 

Also, a secret marijuana growing tip here is that you should never look at the vegetative coverage – always make sure you are considering the flowering coverage as the actual value because when you move your light up during the flowering phase, the coverage reduces. Hence, the true coverage area can only be gauged by looking at the coverage during the flowering phase.

10. Distance and Spectrum of Light

You need to know exactly how far the light should be from your plant during the different phases of its growth. You also need to know the kind of lighting it should be provided with during the different phases. Marijuana plants need the cool blue spectrum during the first half of their growth till the vegetative phase ends and then they need warm red lighting in the blooming and flowering phase. The distance needs to be very close to the plants during the early stages and as the plants grow the lights need to move away from them – during the flowering stage they need to be at the farthest they’ve ever been so that they do not end up damaging the flowers with their intensity or heat.

11. Keeping the Smell Out

This is a marijuana growing tip that we often get asked about – how to keep the smell of weed away! The answer to this is simple. If you are growing your marijuana in a grow tent, make use of carbon filters to trap all the smell using their activated charcoal. If you are someone who grows in a grow room, then you might need to use a lot of these filters to trap the smell. Other options include using scented gels or other stronger smells which can keep the smell of weed away.

12. Providing Water on Time

You need to get the watering schedule of your marijuana plants right. The best thing that we can tell you is that to get the watering done correctly, you need to know that there is no magical “watering schedule” as such and you will need to go around the plants yourself to see how the soil is feeling. Try sticking your finger a couple of inches in the soil and see how it feels. If it is wet and sticky then it is fine but if it seems dry, then you need to water your plants. Make sure you are providing your plants with just the right amount of water which is neither too little nor too much.

13. Should You Grow Indoors or Outdoors?

Growing indoors and growing outdoors both have their own advantages and disadvantages. It is also a matter of scale and your preference for quality. Most growers these days prefer growing indoors so that they can have a better control over the weed that they are growing. Growing indoors means you can provide customized light and a safe growing environment without the risk of pests or insects bothering you. Growing outdoors is less resource-intensive and the plants grow with the seasonal cycles but you need to watch out for pests as well as nosy neighbours – while also risking your plants from excess rain or snow. Some growers prefer using an outdoor setup using greenhouses which is a mix of indoors and outdoors growth.

14. Should You Grow Hydroponic Weed?

Another great marijuana growing tip for beginners is to make use of a hydroponic set up to start off with growing weed if they are living in an area where there is a shortage of water supply. This will help the growers ensure that the same water is being used and reused for at least a week before they can throw it away (or re-use it for other purposes). Similarly, it is a great process for those growers who want to grow weed in a limited space. For those people who are short on space, we recommend trying out the practice of vertical hydroponics. 

15. Is it Legal to Grow Weed in Your Area?

This is something that every stoner must know – regardless of them growing their own marijuana. Make sure that you are checking this out with your local law enforcement agencies and know the exact laws and legalities surrounding weed. This is important to know because while there’s a lot of liberal policies around weed in many states, it continues to be illegal in some regions. Even in areas where growing weed is legal, there’s a limit as to how many plants can you grow in your home before you need to apply for a commercial license. This is different for medicinal growers and recreational growers so you need to know the exact laws around weed in your region to make sure you are not violating any of them.

16. Trimming Your Plants Regularly

We can’t stress on this enough! In fact, this is one of the best marijuana growing tips that we have for anyone who is just starting off. While growing your weed, make sure that you are trimming your plants on a regular basis. Sometimes there might be some leaves which turn brown or some portions of the plant which don’t seem to be productive at all and they need to be pruned off. Trimming these portions ensures that the plant is not spending its resources in these areas and is actually helping those parts which matter more. Pruning and trimming on time can also help spur the yield by multiplying the colas if done the right way.

17. Proper Heat Dissipation

Make sure that your growing setup has adequate provisions for ensuring that all excess heat is let off. The biggest source of heat in a grow tent is the grow light. Hence, you must ensure that your grow lights either have proper heat sinks on them – or have a combination of multiple fans which make sure that all the heat is let off. Growers also need to ensure that their ventilation system is on point so that no heat gets accumulated in the tent. One of the best marijuana growing tips is to use a clip-on fan which will help blow air and create a gentle breeze in the tent. Furthermore, using an air conditioner could also help keep the temperatures down, but more on that later.

18. Keeping Clear of Pests

Pests can be quite a bother! Insects such as spider mites, aphids, etc. can destroy months of your efforts in just a matter of days as they tend to feed on the plant and destroy the leaves and their tissues. You must make sure that you are growing your plant in a safe and hygienic environment where there are no pests. Even in case of a pest invasion, we recommend using organic solutions such as Neem Sprays and garlic based solutions which will help you get rid of these insects. Using a good quality grow tent can be quite effective when it comes to keeping pests out. Pests need to be particularly monitored for when you are bringing in a new plant into your tent.

19. Setting up Timers

Timers can help you with multiple things – be it adjusting a lighting schedule or a watering schedule. Sometimes you might even need programmable timers to turn on and off air conditioners, heaters, dehumidifiers, or humidifiers which you might be using in your setup. Hence, growers – and particularly those who operate at a large scale – must familiarize themselves with how to set up and use timers to get a better growth.

20. Protecting Your Eyes

One of the lesser-known things about grow light is that sometimes they can be so bright that they might end up damaging your eyes. One of the best marijuana growing tips for beginners is to never look directly at the grow light as the intensity of the light can actually end up damaging sensitive parts of your eye! 

21. Adjusting the Temperature

Plants need a specific temperature for growing properly – marijuana plants thrive the best between 18 to 25 degrees C during the vegetative phase of growth. During the flowering phase, however, the plants need a somewhat cooler temperature – around 15 to 20C would be ideal for this phase as flowering plants don’t take well to heat at all. However, you must also make sure that temperatures do not go too low, because that might lead to the plants freezing over – especially the parts which store water are at a greater risk as they might burst open.

22. Adjusting the Humidity

Humidity is quite an important element that growers need to keep in mind when growing their marijuana plant. The simple concept of humidity is – when the humidity levels are high, plants absorb water directly from the air and the stress on the roots is lesser and lesser nutrients go in at the time. This is good during the early phase of growth but humidity needs to be reduced to about 40-45% during the flowering phase because that would force the roots to seek more nutrient-rich water as nutrients are very important for the plants during the flowering phase.

23. Flushing the Plants

Flushing is a process that many growers ignore – and months of their efforts is ruined by missing this out! Over the course of time, nutrients tend to get deposited in the soil and even in the body of the plant. Flushing is basically the process of providing the plant with pure water (without any nutrients) for about seven to ten days before the harvest so that all the stored and deposited minerals are consumed by the plants. If you don’t flush the plants some buds and portions of the plant will carry these nutrient deposits and will then give you a bad taste or an undesirable effect when you smoke them. Sometimes growers also need to flush their soil as nutrient deposits in the soil can block the passage of water into the roots. 

24. Harvesting the Plants at the Right Time

Harvest needs to be carried out at just the right time. One of the best marijuana growing tip for beginners is to calculate it from the flowering phase. When it comes to the Indica plants, you must begin your harvest almost 8 weeks after the flowering begins and for Sativa plants, this process needs to wait for two more weeks, starting after 10 weeks of flowering. Autoflowering plants are on a different tangent altogether and need to be harvested roughly about 10 weeks from when they are planted – however this number might differ from plant to plant so check the instructions that come with the seeds. 

25. Storing Your Weed After Harvest

Finally, you also need to take better care of your plants after you are done harvesting and curing them. Growers need to ensure that they are stored in airtight glass containers for the best possible preservation. These containers need to be opened up twice a day for about five minutes for the first ten to fifteen days. This is a process commonly called ‘air burping’ which makes sure moisture is sent out into the air and the weed remains fresh inside the glass jars. 

Conclusion

We hope that this article on the 25 best marijuana growing tips for beginners helped you with exactly that! Beginners often need a lot of help when they are starting out and these are some of the best tricks and tips that we have come out with after years of personal experience as well as consulting with professional growers. If you have some tips of your own, or want to know about some part of the process of growing weed – drop us a mail or let us know in the comments below and we shall get back to you shortly! Till then…

…Happy Growing! 🙂