Marijuana Cultivation: Aeroponic and Hydroponic Systems

Basics of Aeroponic and Hydroponic Systems

For those who feel lacking in the DIY skills department, or who simply don’t have the time or inclination to set up their own system, there are some very effective pre-made / predesigned aeroponic and hydroponic systems for rooting and growing your clones.

One of the more affordable, and simple, setups available is the cloner bucket available from Bloom Brothers. Available for sale online and through retailers like Amazon, the Bloom Brothers Cloner Bucket is a pretty affordable aeroponic system that is easy to setup, easy to use, and delivers reliable results time and time again.

With room for 18 plants, the Bloom Brothers bucket comes with just about everything you need to start cloning with aeroponics, including 18 neoprene inserts for use in place of net pots. The Bloom Bucket is 3.5 gallons and also comes with 15ml of Clonex rooting gel.

For a more immersed growing environment, you can also set up a bubble bucket for a single plant. Alternatively, there are several small-scale hydroponic setups available to the amateur grower, so if you want to experiment with a hydroponic setup without investing a huge amount of money in a larger grow, here are some great, small-scale hydroponic setups:

Basic Hydroponic System

The DWC Basic Kit from Stealth Hydroponics is, as its title states, an entry-level, basic kit for those who want to experiment with deep water culture (DWC) hydroponic growing. With this kit you’ll get everything you need except the plant and lights.

Available from online retailers including Amazon for as little as $40., the DWC Basic Kit comes with a 4-gallon reservoir, a tight-fitting lid, 4 net pots, an air pump and ceramic air stone for keeping the water oxygenated and a downloadable PFD with detailed instructions of how to set up and use the simple system.

Another great kit from Stealth Hydroponics is the Bucketeer DWC kit. Designed for growing a single plant at a time, this little kit comes with a deep, 5-gallon bucket to hold your water and nutrient solution, as well as an air pump, a ceramic air stone and clay pellets for use as your rooting medium. All you’ll need to get started growing great bud is your seedling and proper lights.

Alternatively, with $15 – $30 of materials from Home Depot, Lowes or Walmart, you can put together your own bubble bucket or single-plant DWC bucket.

Marijuana Cultivation: Aeroponic and Hydroponic Systems

Tips for Monster Marijuana Growth

Next Level Marijuana Growth

Achieving large marijuana growth can take some practice, however, follow our tips and you will be growing monster marijuana plants in no time!

If you’ve ever wondered what some growers do to get their monster yields, you’re in luck. Today we’ll go over two of the surprisingly simple tricks you can use to maximize the yield from your marijuana growth, whether you’re a seasoned grower or a first-time amateur.

The first tip for achieving some extra monstrous marijuana growth in your cannabis grow requires a touch of patience, as you’ll be lengthening your grow time a bit to achieve the best results. Other than being a bit more patient, though, this is a very simple, easy and practically free method of maximizing your cannabis yield. To start with, you’ll grow your seedlings or clones through their regular vegetative phase with no special changes; just plant them and let them veg for 6 – 8 weeks or however long you usually would.

Now, when you’re plants are 6 – 8 weeks into veg, or about 8 – 12 inches tall, you can induce flowering. Change the light cycles and start giving your plants 12 hours light, 12 hours dark, but don’t adjust their nutrient blend too drastically. After 2 – 3 weeks in the flowering stage, switch your plants back to your vegetative light cycle. It will take 1 – 2 weeks for them to fully kick back into vegetative growth, but once they do the growth will take off.

Let your plants vegetate for another 4 – 6 weeks, then commence flowering as you usually would and watch your little monsters explode into bud. This whole process will extend your grow time by 4 – 6 weeks, potentially longer depending on how long you choose to keep the plants in each stage of growth.

Controlling large marijuana growth properly is very important.

Super Cropping for Large Marijuana Growth

Another popular method among some growers is the practice of super-cropping. This method is a bit brutal, and is part of a class of high stress training techniques (HST) that rely on damaging your plants while they are growing in order to take advantage of their resilience and healing capabilities. By comparison, there are low stress training techniques (LST) that many growers use to achieve similar results without the harsh damage to the plants, but that is a topic for another article.

To use super-cropping as a method on your plants, you’ll want to start with healthy vegetating plants. Don’t try to super-crop a plant that is ill, afflicted with disease, nutritionally deficient or infested with bugs; all those factors stress your plants, so preforming something like the HST super-cropping technique at that time will only slow your plant’s growth, and might even kill it.

So start with healthy plants in the vigorous stage of their growth; don’t try super-cropping just a week or two before you intend to flower. Your plants should have several sets of healthy branches; the limbs you choose for super-cropping should still be fairly new, green growth that is reasonably soft as opposed to older growth that is harder and woodier in texture.

Identify the main cola or colas of your plant, and choose the one(s) you intend to super-crop. If there is only one main cola, then you will want to super-crop it near the top of its growth, where the main limb is still relatively new and soft. Now grasp the limb you wish to super-crop firmly between your thumb and forefingers.

The trick here is to apply enough pressure to crush the stem slightly, and while continuing to apply this pressure evenly you will gently bend and twist the limb. When possible, bend or twist your limb in the direction that you wish to have the plant grow.

Wait until your hear a small pop or feel a break in the inner stem, and then gently release and leave the limb bend in the direction you desire the growth to go. If you damage the outer skin of the limb too much during this process, use a piece of duct tape to bandage the wound and support the plant for 1 – 2 weeks while it heals the super-cropped area.

The advantages of super-cropping include a smaller, more compact and bushier plant, which is ideal for indoor growing or that stealth closet grow you have. Super-cropping also allows you to develop more branches, with more light, thus yielding more bud.

Tips for Monster Marijuana Growth

Fact & Fiction: Debunking Common Marijuana Grow Myths

Common Marijuana Grow Myths

The Grow Myth: Stressing your plants during flowering, either by withdrawing nutrients, changing the lighting cycle, subjecting them to cold or frost-inducing temperatures, or forcing them through prolonged dry spells will increase their resin production.

The Facts: When you subject your plants to unnecessary stresses during their flowering period, you actually cause more harm than good; stressing your plants slows down their rate of growth and can even turn susceptible females into hermaphrodites with male-style flowers. These types of unnecessary stress factors can also damage the cannabinoids already produced by the buds. Remember that your cannabis plants are living organisms, so the more hospitable you make their environment; the more they will thrive and reward you with a bountiful harvest.

The Myth: Harvesting during the night cycle, or giving your plants 24 – 72 hours of total darkness just before giving them the chop, will increase the potency of your herb.

The Facts: Although many growers do harvest during the night cycle and some growers put their plants in the dark for a few days before harvest, no measurable difference has been found between plants harvested during the day, at night or after 24+ hours darkness.

Determining Legitimacy of Grow Myths

This grow myth has been rather pervasive, due in part to two legitimate factors: the hormones that induce flowering in the cannabis plant and production of resin are activated at night, and THC and other cannabinoids are known to suffer from photo-degradation, i.e. light causes them to break down. When you consider the amount of time that cannabis spends flowering (usually 50 – 60 days or longer) though, it makes more sense that a couple of days (or nights, in this case) is not going to make a huge difference in the level of resin or associated cannabinoids in your crop.

The Myth: Using the pollen from the flowers produced by hermaphrodite plants to fertilize other females will allow you to harvest fully feminized seeds.

The Facts: Whenever a hermaphrodite shows up in your crop, you should actually cut it down for the sake of maintaining the genetics of the rest of your plants. While some breeders use the pollen from these hermaphroditic females to pollinate other plants and produce so-called feminized seed, the reality is that you don’t want plants with hermaphrodite genes in your crop if you can help it. Plants with the genes to turn hermaphrodite are less resistant to stress, including bugs, mold, nutrient deficiencies or overloads and generally poor growing conditions.

In short, a plant turning hermaphrodite is a sign of weak genetics, and you certainly don’t want to purposefully pass those genetics on to your future crop. Reputable seed banks will sell seeds that re known to be ‘stabilized’, meaning that the seeds are from plants that are three, four, five or more generations descended from the original plants. These seeds comes from parent plants that have been shown to reliably produce similar results; while isn’t not impossible to get a plant that turns hermaphrodite from a reputable seed bank, the chances are very slim.

Fact & Fiction: Debunking Common Marijuana Grow Myths

What is a Clone & Why is Cloning a Good Skill to Have?

Learning the Proper Way to Clone

Cloning is a popular method of propagating cannabis; it allows you to ensure a higher degree of quality control and predictability when raising your crop, as well as allowing you to bypass the lengthy process of growing from seed. Although seed is a good way to start a grow initially, the process of germination and growth from seed, including the weeding out of unwanted male plants, hermaphrodites and weak females makes growing a cannabis clone an attractive alternative.

In addition to being able to cultivate a crop of entirely-female plants, cloning will ensure a uniformity of growth among your plants, so you can expect to harvest similar quantities and potency of medicine from each plant grown in the same conditions. After all the other factors in your grow are taken into consideration, the quality and quantity of cannabis that your plants will yield largely comes down to genetics.

With cloning, once you’ve identified a female plant with robust, healthy growth and high resin / THC production, you can keep her alive and propagate genetically-identical clones from her for years to come. Timing the growth cycles and harvesting time of your crop, adjusting your nutrient blend to be perfectly suited to the needs of your specific strain, and maintaining perfect light, heat and humidity levels is all made easier when you grow a uniform crop of clones.

Perhaps most importantly, whether you choose to grow from clones regularly or not, being able to clone your plants is an immensely useful skill to have simply because it allows for asexual reproduction. So long as you know how to clone your plants, you won’t be totally reliant upon seeds or having access to pollen from a male plant in order to continue your crop. In this way, someone with only one or two female plants can still propagate a new crop and continue to grow and harvest their crop successfully, practically indefinitely.

There are very few downsides to cloning, and it is widely practiced by growers.

Downsides of Choosing to Clone

One of the few downsides to cloning is the resultant lack of genetic diversity among your crop. Not only might you get bored of smoking the same strain of bud all the time, but if a disease, mold, infection or pest gets into your grow and afflicts your plants, it can quickly spread to all the plants in your grow. To mitigate this factor, choose a mother plant that has demonstrated hardiness, resiliency and resistance to mold, infection, pests and other growing hazards.

To further avoid the potential of infecting or infesting your grow, be sure to sterilize and clean all the equipment you use (especially if you reuse equipment between grows), and try to wash your hands before entering your grow room or handling your plants.

What is a Clone & Why is Cloning a Good Skill to Have?

Cutting and Preparing a Pot Clone

Learning Basic Pot Clone Techniques

Understanding how to properly cut and manage a pot clone can result in higher cloning success rates.

Proper harvesting and preparation of your cuttings is important to ensure successful rooting, and while there is no substitution for the hands-on experience you’ll get as a grower, there are some tips and suggestions you can follow to increase the survival rate of your new pot clones. To start with, you’ll select a healthy, robust female and take your cuttings during her vegetative cycle.

If you have several females and you aren’t sure which one you ultimately want to keep as a mother, then take a few clones from each female before putting them in to flower. Label the clones, and once you’ve flowered and harvested the mothers you can choose whether to keep or trash the clones you took from each plant accordingly.

Cuttings for cloning can be taken during regular pruning; you’ll want to target lower branches and growth that is still green, relatively new and between 4 – 6 inches long. Some growers will take larger cuttings of 8 – 10 inches, but without a rootstock to support the extra growth, larger clippings may take longer to root or simply die from lack of nutrients. Softer, newer growth is easier to clone than harder, woodier growth; take your cuttings just below a node on the limb.

Use a sterile razor blade or very sharp scissors / pruning shears to take your cutting, making a 45-degree or diagonal cut. Many growers make another cut underwater before actually rooting their cuttings, so if you plan on making a second cut, the angle of your first cut is less important.

When you take your cuttings for new clones, try to process them (trim, scrape and dip them in rooting hormone as you see fit) as fast as possible; the sooner your cuttings are put in their cloning tray or rock wool cubes, the more likely you are to get healthy root growth. Cutting your stems at a 45-degree or diagonal angle will expose more of the inner bark, known as the xylem and the cambium, to the rooting hormone and growing medium.

There are many tips and tricks to increase the success rate at which growers successfully cut pot clones.

Additional Important Information

It’s important to expose the xylem and cambium because that is where the stem cells that will grow new roots are located. In softer, greener cuttings a simple diagonal cut will generally expose enough of this inner bark to produce roots.

If you’re having trouble getting a strain to clone or if you’re cloning with cuttings that are harder or woodier in texture, you can scrape the outer bark away with a razor blade (or a fingernail in some cases) for about ½ an inch around the base of your cutting. This will expose more of the xylem and inner bark, giving your clone more surface area to produce roots.

When you’re taking a lot of cuttings all at once, or you don’t have time to finish processing your cuttings the day you take them, store them in a bucket or vase of water with a light nutrient solution (use about 1/5th of your normal nutrient solution) and an air stone to keep them fresh. Storing your cuttings this way will prevent them from wilting due to dehydration, as well as help to avoid the chance of a lethal air bubble forming in the stem.

Cutting and Preparing a Pot Clone

Rooting Your Clones: A Review of Rooting Mediums

Understanding Rooting Mediums

Rooting Mediums can vary widely, it is important to do research and understand the different types.

The best rooting mediums for your clones may differ slightly based on your experience, your own preferences as a grower, and your environment (think about whether you’re growing in Washington state or British Columbia vs. growing in Arizona or New Mexico).

Budget and what your end goal are may also impact your decision of rooting medium. Most growers stick with the tried and true, preferring the reliability of rock wool, starter trays or peat pots, while others champion bubble buckets and deep water culture (DWC) hydroponic systems.

If you’re just starting out, or you’re looking for more information about different rooting mediums for your clones, here’s a review of the most popular cloning mediums.

1. Rock wool cubes: these are an affordable rooting medium (generally you can get a hundred rock wool cubes for about $10 – $15) that can be coupled with a cheap tray to provide an affordable, reliable rooting medium for your cannabis clones. Aside from being cheap, rock wool cubes also reduce the need for aeration or water stones, and as long as you leave the cubes in ~ ¼ – ½ inch of nutrient solution and water they will continue to uptake water as needed, so they won’t dry out.


2. Peat moss pots: the two chief problems with peat moss pots are that they dry out very easily, which results in the death of your new clones due to their fragile roots being unable to take the dehydration, and peat moss can be susceptible to mold and rot. Peat
   
   
   

   Various rooting mediums require different nutrients and care.

   
   
   
   

   moss is also prone to lowering the pH of your nutrient solution, so you may need to adjust your nutrients and pH slightly to account for this affect. Those issues aside, peat moss can be a great rooting medium and is both cheap and widely available.

   
   


3. Soil in starter trays: tried and true, this method has been used for decades and with strains that root more easily it is often enough to just take your cutting and immediately plant it in moist soil. Keep your soil from drying out, but don’t waterlog your plants when you start in soil; overwatering can cause rot and suffocation. To maintain good drainage you can mix your topsoil with perlite or vermiculite (wear a mask for this).


4. Aeroponic systems: you can build your own aeroponic system with anywhere from $15 – $50 of supplies, or you can purchase a premade aeroponic system such as the EZ Cloner system (~ $280) for up to 60 clones. For growers interested in a more economical aeroponic system, the Nutriculture PT100 (~ $100) is a smaller system designed for up to 20 clones. Aeroponic systems are generally renowned for exceptional results, producing roots on 90 – 100% of clones, and are especially good for cloning tougher strains.

For a novice grower, first-time cloner or the cannabis cultivator on a budget, rock wool and a nutrient tray are an affordable and generally quite reliable method of growing your first clones.

Rooting Your Clones: A Review of Rooting Mediums

How to Care for Your Marijuana Clones

Marijuana Clones and How to Care for Them

It is very important to understand how to care for your marijuana clones.

Caring for your marijuana clones is easy once you’ve had a bit of practice, and some strains are so easy to clone that you can practically set them and forget them. But as a general rule of thumb, here are some of the basic guidelines for taking care of your plants and ensuring the best survival rates for your new clones.

1. Prevention is worth a pound of cure, so protect your clones from the potential of disease, mold or a bug infestation by sterilizing your cloning area and tools before use. You can use a water and bleach combination (10 parts water for one part bleach) to wipe down and sterilize the walls, tabletop or other area that you are growing in. Also use sterile tools for cutting your clones, so as to avoid the possibility of infection at the cut-site.


2. Work fast so that your clones go from being on your mother plant to dipped in their rooting hormone and plugged into the rock wool cubes or other growing medium with as little down time in between as possible.


3. Keep the temperature stable, generally between 75 – 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Fluctuations and extremes in temperature will stress your new clones and can kill them.


4. Maintain humidity levels of approximately 75 – 95%, especially during the early days of rooting your new clones; if the growing medium dries out too much you risk damaging or killing the fragile new roots your clone is growing.


5. Use a heating pad beneath your plug tray or the tray holding your rock wool cubes to ensure that the new roots are kept warm; new roots thrive in warmer environments, so if you have a heating pad under the tray but the rest of the room is only 70 degrees, you can still achieve good results rooting your new clones.


6. Reduce the amount of foliage your new clones have to support; without a root system, it is hard for your cuttings to focus energy and nutrients on photosynthesis and you want them to be focused on developing new roots anyway, so remove or trim any large fan leaves on your cutting. Smaller leaves may remain, so don’t strip your cutting to a twig.

Marijuana clones are important in increasing the efficiency of your grow operation.

Other Considerations

Follow these basic recommendations and keep your plants under cool fluorescents or low-wattage MH or HPS lights, and you should have healthy clones with roots in 1 – 2 weeks. Some strains are harder to clone, or slower, but if you don’t see any roots by ~ 3 weeks, you may have a problem. Cuttings that haven’t rooted after 3 weeks or more are unlikely to become viable clones, so you’ll have to take new cuttings and start over if that happens.

How to Care for Your Marijuana Clones