MarijuanaGrowGuide - Growing Marijuana Guide - Soil

Now you have your seeds, but nowhere to plant them. You need some soil for your marijuana grow.

The soil will be in many respects both the home and the food for your marijuana plant, so it should be taken seriously. Many veteran growers develop their own mixtures of raw soil, nutrients and absorptive material, but when you're starting out, it's best to find some commercial potting soil.

Soil character is specified by the ratio of three elemental components, Nitrogren, Phosphorous and Potassium, usually written N:P:K. Marijuana likes to grow in a soil that is rich in Nitrogen, so find a soil with a higher N value and lower P and K values. A typical good ratio is 20:10:10. The growing requirements of marijuana are nearly identical to growing tomatoes. If you are purchasing growing supplies from a store in which the staff is not knowledgable in cannabis growing, you can ask for advice regarding growing tomatoes to the same effect.

Many people prefer using organic soil for growing marijuana, but as long as it has the appropriate N:P:K ratio, good acidity, and enough plant food to feed the plant for three months, it should work fine. Another ideal characteristic is that the soil protects against over and under watering. Some soil manufacturers include materials that take care of this. While it is still very important to control your watering, this will help provide you with a margin of error.

Advanced Soil Options

For a slightly more advanced choice you can go with a good organic soil medium, and carefully mix in some organic nutrients for a proper growing environment. If you decide to go with this organic soil and nutrient solution for your marijuana grow, make sure you carefully follow the nutrient mixture and watering schedule. Thinking more is always better will result in you burning your plants and possibly compromising your marijuana harvest. The benefits of using this more advanced methods will be in possibly a more robust harvest. The drawbacks are more work and more margin of error.

For an organic soil choice for your grow, FoxFarm Ocean Forest Potting Soil simply is the marijuana growers choice. FoxFarm has other quality growing mediums, but they are not always optimum for a cannabis grow. There are many other fine quality growing mediums around. Humboldt Flower Products is also a very fine choice. However they are limited in their supply, and purchasing their products is difficult and slightly more expensive, even online.

On last word on soil is that there are as many recipes for the perfect soil as there are cannabis growers. You can find any number of variations of peat moss, Perlite, vermiculite, bat guano, bone meal, kelp, ash, worm castings and buried dead fish carcasses to write a small novel. The fact is that optimizing your grow soil to this degree is growing way beyond work vs reward ratio. Start out small and basic and then decide to work on highly optimizing your soil in your own small increments.

Advanced Nutrient Options

Now we have our high quality organic soil, we are going to have to also use some high quality organic nutrients added to our watering schedule. Again FoxFarm provides a good choice for high quality nutrients needed for growing marijuana. They have a three step organic based fertilizer and plant food liquid nutrients system. To use these products; simply mix with correct ratio of water and use for your watering cycle in every other plant watering. So have one watering jug filled with clean water, while the other contains the proper nutrients mixture. Each type of nutrient should be added at different ratios during different weeks of the plants development that I have outlined in the chart below. Also be sure when adding nutrients to the water, you never mix any two nutrients together even if they both should be used at the same time. Always add the nutrients to the water separately.

Nutrient Schedule

	Big Bloom	Grow Big (6-4-4)	Tiger Bloom
Week

Seedlings

pre-transplant

2Tbl --> gallon

NONE

NONE

Vegetative

Week 1	2Tbl --> gallon	NONE	NONE
Week 2	2Tbl --> gallon	1tsp --> gallon	NONE
Week 3	2Tbl --> gallon	1tsp --> gallon	NONE
Week 4	2Tbl --> gallon	2tsp --> gallon	NONE
Week 5	1Tbl --> gallon	2tsp --> gallon	NONE
Week 6	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	NONE

Flowering

Week 7	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 8	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 9	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 10	1Tbl --> gallon	1tsp --> gallon	2tsp -> gallon
Week 11	1Tbl --> gallon	1tsp --> gallon	2tsp -> gallon
Week 12	1Tbl --> gallon	1tsp gallon	2tsp -> gallon
Week 13	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 14	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 15	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 16	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 17	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon
Week 18	1Tbl --> gallon	NONE	2tsp -> gallon

*note1: This chart assumes a long grow cycle. Please adjust accordingly if your cycle differs(ie if you do a 5 week veg cycle, skip week 6 and move right to week one flowing cycle.)

*note2: This chart differs slightly from FoxFarms guidlines. I feel their cycle is on the high side. Choose whichever one fits your needs best.

Final note on marijuana grow mediums

There are alternative growing mediums to use. Another popular technique is the hydroponic method of growing marijuana. It involves growing marijuana in a reservoir of water and nutrients. The plant is held in some solid medium while the root system is suspended in the reservoir where it can absorb nutrients. This method tends to be more complicated and more expensive, but because you are able to control the nutrients the plant receives directly, you can end up with a higher quality product.

Now that you have your soil, you will need to get some lighting.