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

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

Cloning Sativa vs. Cloning Indica

Cloning Sativa vs. Cloning Indica

Learn the difference in cloning sativa vs. cloning indica

When cloning cannabis plants, the process for cloning sativa and indica (or even c. ruderalis, actually, though cloning ruderalis isn’t all that common) is identical, but results

vary from breeder to breeder and from strain to strain. Your growing medium (soil, clay pellets, rock wool, etc.) as well as your rooting hormone, choice of lights and general growing environment all have a bit impact on your success rates with cloning, but genetics also play a role.

Most c. sativa strains and sativa-dominant hybrids are renowned among breeders for their ease of cloning. Indeed, many strains will take to the soil or rock wool and nutrient combination to form new roots without even using a rooting hormone, but there are always those strains that seem to resist cloning at great length.

For some growers, c. indica strains and indica-dominant hybrids prove more challenging to root. With that said, most indica strains are still reasonably easy to clone, even if you can’t just throw them in some wet dirt to grow roots like some sativa strains are apt to do.

There are a few differences when cloning sativa and cloning indica

Rooting Times When Cloning Sativa vs. Cloning Indica

Rooting times for each strain vary as well, especially among hybrid strains, but clones from sativa plants may root more quickly than clones from indica plants, on average. There are a lot of factors that influence rooting time, not least of which is the skill of the grower, but many growers have seen root growth on sativa (and some indica) strains as early as 4 – 5 days after cutting, with roots developed enough for planning by 11 – 13 days after cutting.

As a general rule of thumb, when properly handled you can expect to see new roots forming on your clones within 12 – 16 days from initial cutting. Some strains may start to pop out after 20 days, but when you get much more beyond 3 weeks (21 days from cutting), the viability of your cuttings is hugely deteriorated and it’s probably best to take new cuttings and start over.

For c. sativa and sativa-dominant strains, many growers will put clones into their flowering cycle as soon as they’ve grown enough roots to be planted. Rushing into the flowering cycle with sativa strains is particularly advisable for anyone growing indoors or within a small greenhouse, as sativa strains can easily double their size, triple it or more during their flowering stage.

Cloning Sativa vs. Cloning Indica

Maintaining Your Marijuana Mother Plant

The Importance of Maintaining Your Mother Plant

Keeping a mother plant for producing clones is a great practice.

A properly tended mother plant can successfully be kept alive for years, with many plants easily lasting 3 – 5 years and some legendary mothers that are claimed to have lived 15 – 20 years. And while keeping a plant alive for 20 years might be beyond the desire, and skills, of the average grower, a female who yields viable cuttings for cloning is nice to have and can be maintained for 3 – 5 years fairly easily.

Good mother plants are worth their weight in gold, as it were, and they offer many benefits. First and foremost is that you can cultivate a uniform, female crop in less time than it would take you to grow from seed and sort out the males, hermaphrodites and weak females that come with it. Second is that you’ll know what to expect from your crop on account of already having grown the mother plant.

To select a good mother plant, choose your strongest female with the best yield. Make sure that she isn’t afflicted by disease, bugs, nutrient problems or any other common grow problems, and set her up in your vegetative area for full-time vegetative growth.

A mother kept for clones can be kept under standard metal halide or high pressure sodium lights, but if you aren’t harvesting as many clones and you don’t want to constantly be trimming your plant, you can also leave established mothers under weaker fluorescent lights with good results.

Keeping your mother plant healthy ensures healthy clones for a long time.

Keep Your Mother Plant Healthy

To keep your mother plant in tip top shape (and remember, as the source of your clones and thus your future crops, your mother plant is a central pillar supporting your entire grow operation, so you really do want to treat her well) be sure to trim away any spent foliage or dead growth. Don’t let yellow, dying or brown and drying leaves linger on your mother.

Don’t sentence your mother plant to the edges of your grow room, either, where she’ll be neglected and may fall prey to temperature fluctuations, mold and bugs. Dedicate a comfortable grow space for your mother plant, allotting her sufficient light, and be sure to keep any particularly photosensitive strains (meaning those that kick into flowering easily) under an 18 hour a day lighting schedule to ensure that she doesn’t go to flower.

When growing your mother in a pot or soil medium, be sure to keep an eye on your root ball. Despite the trimming and pruning you carry out up top, the root ball continues to grow and your plant can become root bound, leading to sluggish growth and sometimes outright death.

As you take cuttings and clones from your mother plant, you can expect that she will grow more densely and bushier. To keep her in check and avoid having your mother plant grow out of control, prune regularly even when you aren’t taking cuttings for clones. If your mother plant starts to get really unmanageable after a few years of growth, you can retire her by taking one of the strongest clones as a new mother plant.

Maintaining Your Marijuana Mother Plant