10 Most Common Mistakes Growing Marijuana



1. Don't Over water
Over watering kills marijuana plants. Water once the top few inches of the soil dry out. Hydroponics is harder to over water because rockwool has such excellent drainage properties. As long as the rockwool cubes are not sitting in liquid it is virtually impossible to over water a hydroponic setup. A hydroponic setup could either be watered constantly as the drip method, or once to three times a day as in the flood and drain method.

2. Don't Tell People
Why? They will only be jealous. People love to feel important and that is why they will tell other people; because others will listen to them. Keep it to yourself.

3. Touch/kill Germinating Seeds
Please have some patience. It sometimes takes 10 days for a seed to sprout. The paper towel method is not recommended because you must handle the seeds when transferring them from the paper towel to your growing medium.

4. Grow seeds from seeded marijuana
One of the greatest disappointments known to the growing man.
90% of what the final product will be is in the seed's genetics and has little to do with the environment the plant is grown in.
Many get their hands on the seed and think they have a gold mine. They will probably grow something like this: hermaphrodites, tall late flowering females coupled with early flowering males. This is because the only pollen that could have produced the seed was from a hermaphrodite or a very stunted and late flowering male the grower did not notice. Unless you are prepared for possible disappointment don't use "unknown" seeds. This is why people buy seeds from seedbanks.

5. Don't Over fertilize.
Fertilize after first 2 spiked leaves appear follow the label. DON'T FERTILIZE EVERY TIME YOU WATER!!!
Start with 25% and work your way up!
Leach the plants with lots of pure water every 2-4 weeks. Organic growing is recommended. Its tastes better and burns much better.
If the leaves suddenly twist or fold under, Leach and Spray with pure water for several days!

6. Don't Under fertilize
Under fertilizing is less common but it happens. If you are one of those people that likes to give the plant just enough nutrients make sure you use a organic soil mixture with blood meal and bone meal or some slow release fertilizer with micro nutrients.

7. Don't Start with Clones. (I personally don't agree with this, I use clones and cuttings)
Start with seeds. Bugs are a pain, So are plant diseases. Many growers are able to grow indoors without pest problems for years. If they do get pests they are probably not enjoying the change from their usual diet to marijuana resin! But as soon as you come in contact with others grow material (cuttings) it is almost guaranteed that its from a long time grower that has many different pests all eating marijuana and bug spray (and surviving) for hundreds of generations!... Think about it.

8. Don't Start Too Early Inside or Outdoors
For several reasons! If you are starting outdoors June 1 is perfect. But if I start earlier I will get bigger buds right? Probably Wrong!
Its strange but usually true. ill explain. Plants started in early spring will get big but they will take significantly longer to start flowering. This is because at the peak vegetative period they sense the light cycles getting longer and longer, until June 21. But they don't realize that its time to flower yet. Finally in the middle of August the plant says "HEY" "time to flower already" and it produces buds in August and September or later they will be tall as trees but thinner buds due to the fact that the sun is not as strong in September. Now if the ganja plants were put out later, as soon as they get a foot off the ground they say "what's going on" I am just in early veggie and the light hours aren't getting longer in fact SHORTER" Then the plants go crazy and since the sun is so bright in July and August you get amazing 6 foot trees that are heavier than the plants started in April!!! in addition to finishing earlier the late started plants are not nearly as noticeable.
Indoors is the same for different reasons. The light cannot penetrate more than a foot or two. So flower when plants are a foot tall. If you wait longer because you want bigger yields, you will get smaller yields and wait longer for them.

9. Don't Provide A Bad Environment.
Always provide air circulation and fresh air even during the night cycle is fine. All the air indoors should be replaced every 5-10 minutes.
Humidity between 30-70% temp aim for around 75-85' Even seedlings need a gentle fan to strengthen the stems.

10. Don't Harvest Too Early.
I know its hard. You see the buds and resin forming at a rapid rate. The buds are potent and you feel tempted to chop em down! The only problem is that another 25% of the weight will form in 2 more weeks. Wait until the plants have totally stopped growing and the white pistils are at least 50-75% brown.

*NOTE: Outdoors if security is a factor make your own call on when to sacrifice the fields. Also take buds continuously in case of thieves.

"Whitney in Heaven"
Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:56 PM PST
By Spooky Boyfriend



...actually, her grandmother pronounced the fam'bly name is "-how-stun-" but whatevs'. Anyway, lemme tell you what happened; Along long time ago I was fucking every guy I could in the Castro, snorting any white powder and popping dope from any and all venues from acid to Xanax and back. I hoped I'd finda Daddy. I found a lot of them, a whole lot of them. Closeted professional homophobes would pay to suck my Big Black cock. I'm 'sposeta' capitalize for names, right? This is my cock; Big Black. Anyway, I got the AIDS. I don't know why. I was a really nice guy. A really, really nice guy. So anyways, there I am up in heaven, hanging 'round the Pearly Gates. You know the "Pearly Gates" ain't so much pearly but Cyclone fencing. Once I asked St. Peter about it, I asked her what's up with the "Pearly Gates"? She told me the upkeep was pretty costy and what would I rather have, wings and a harp or fancy-schmancy fences. I thought about her question and answered with another question.

"Then why do you let everybody in?"

St. Peter did a face palm.

...so anyway, I'm inside of the outside of the fence. I can see down the fence line other gates. I suppose they all got their own St. Peters. I dunno. Whichever gate I walk to I find this St. Peter. Every time I think of St. Peter as my own St. Peter she changes; subtly. Over the course of eternity, St. Peter has changed a lot but for the life of me I can't tell where or when or how St. Peter changed. She used to smoke Larks and drive an Oldsmobile Cutlass and she was a he with greying hair anda rosary around the rear-view mirror and was a dude. Now, right now, this very moment St. Peter is aging Lesbian post-starlet. She does too much Yoga and can't figure out what to do with her hair; I'm gonna hafta to be the one to tell her about what to do with her grey part.

"Let the grey grow out; you're not getting any younger."

St. Peter imperceptibly turned to a 20 year old Mongolian girl.

...so anyway I am sent down as a guide. I know! Can you believe it! St. Peter sent me to be Whitney Houston's Spirit Guide. I gently lift Whitney out of the tub. She has put on a good deal of weight but that doesn't matter. In Heaven, I'm really strong. I look great but oddly enough, in Heaven there are no mirrors. Who planned this? Reflecting ponds everywhere but no freaking mirrors. A couple of eternities ago I asked St. Peter about the design and amenities of Heaven. St. Peter drifted into a change of St. Peter-ness. Whenever I ask anything aroundhere, everything changes but I don't actually understand or see the changes. I just sense there has been a re-arrangement, a shift, a slightly different view.

...anyway, I lift Whitney from the tub and hold her in my arms.

"Whitney."

She sputters tub water. She looks at me and has the snap. There is a snap that happens when you know you are dead. Suiciders and O.D.ers have really crackly snaps. Old people who die in their sleep have quiet and subtle snaps. Snaps happen when you are newly dead and realize you are still "here" but don't know where "here" is.

"Whitney, You are dead. I am here to guide you."

"Where am I?"

There is a high point to her question. That is to be expected. I hold her hand and we crouch, forehead to forehead. She reaches to hug me. Her arms pass through my body but I hold her up. She breathes deep and starts to cry. I pat her shoulders and rub my hands down her spine. She again tries to hug me and her arms swing and tears fall from her. I hug her. My arms surround her. After a long while I stand and pull Whitney up to me. Her arms stay to her side and I hug her again. There are still tears in her eyes when she gives one last desultory try to hug me in return. Her arms pass through my ethereal body. I pull her close. She is still damp from the tub water. I hold Whitney close.



"I didn't think I had meant to do it until I was doing it and then had done it and I thought I should take a bath and then...."

"Ssssshhhhhh; there is no matter. Let's go over here."

Places in Heaven are very close together. You can get from one place to another place in no time at all.

We got to the Pearly Gate and I was blown away; there was a line. Standing there is a another spirit guide in a shark skin suit with a tall Black woman with a platinum blond bouffant.



Whitney shout whispered asked, "Etta?"

Etta turned towards the voice she heard but saw only a cloud.

Whitney shout shouted, very loudly, "ETTA!"

The cat in the shark skin suit strongly guided Etta towards the Gate and spoke in Hollywood-esque pantomime, an out-turned hand to his muggy lips.

"My lips to Jah's ear here. I gotta big star here, a really, really, really big stupendous star."

Etta blushed. I find that odd and kinda funny because Etta, just as Whitney, was naked and unashamed.

St. Peter went down her list, furrowing her owl-like brows and passively aggressively sighing and hemming and hawing.

St. Peter looked from her dais to Etta. "Miss Etta James, you've been a reprobate, recalcitrant back slider into a deplorable life of drugs, booze, fast cars and bad and varied choices in bed mates. You've been picky when you should have been choosy and choosy when you should have been picky. You have made many of your friends and relations admonish and disavow you in record speeds and heart aching velocities. Let ask you Miss Etta James, let me ask you one question and I may open the gates of heaven to you if you give me a correct answer."

Her agent removed his hat and fiddled with the brim and took a large step backward and away from Etta James.

"How can I drop an egg ten feet over the side walk and for that egg not break?"

Etta cleared her throat. She vaguely had a memory of this with Sphinxes and the Egyptians on the mighty Nile.

"...uhm, drop the egg from eleven feet."

St. Peter smiled her enigmatic smile and, with feathered quill, checked of the name of Etta James. St. Peter presses a button and the door opening motor hummed a cranky pull of the gate. Etta's agent, threw his hat in the air and smiled a million watt shark's smile, toothy and sharp.

"You see Sugar, I told you I could get you in! Me and St. Petey go back, way back. We were booking gigs here since before the ground stopped steaming." The agent hooks Etta's arm and pulls her through the gate. "Yeah, me and Pete here are long old chums. What it is, old girl!" The agent has his right hand left hanging for a none existent "high five".

"Yeah, okay, love is the answer. You gotta let it show St. Petes!"

Another long moment with the agent's hand held up.

"Aw, for Pete's sake..."

St. Peter tentatively pats the up and out held palm of the agent. The agent sparkles and ripples at the touch. He escorts Etta over there rolling gate track threshold and both the agent and Etta James are refreshed and renewed in heavenly bodies of light and pure love.

One of the problems of eternity is the lack of the new and novel, the missing surprises of the vicissitudes of Earthen being. I have seen that scene a few dozen times but it always makes me choke up a bit when St. Peter starts in on Earthly sins and the sinner hangs their head in hope that this great judge will have mercy, a mixture of strength, wisdom and forbearance, over the lives lived out in loud galoshes and quiet bangs, over loves misbegotten and forgotten and the coordination and compromises of the body corpreal.

Whitney looks to me when St. Peter leans back in her executive office chair anduses both hands to massage her temples. A few moments or years (...it's kind of hard to tell, you know, with the whole eternity thing going, it's hard to pay attention to time, much less to set your watch, which by the way, there aren't any wrist watches or grandfather clocks. There are only glass and sand hour glasses. They are all over the place. I almost tripped over one last week. I could have wrenched an ankle but of course, the wrenching of ankles is rare here in the clounds and you are spontaneausly as soon as you realize you've been injured. Next thing you know, you are better than new and a better you than you knew you were before.

Anyways, St.Peter calls out a random letter/number

"B-322?"

"Aw Jeez, I was 'sposeta' to get a tag."

I grab a ticket from the dispenser. The ticket reads F-745.

"Whitney, let's have ourselves a good set down, eh? How a bout a cuppa, honey and lemon"

"B-323?"

We sit on the bench, an old pew from a defunct church is all I can guess. I put a tea bag in a paper cup and split open a plastic honey sinlge serving packet with my teeth.

Whitney smiles weekly and warms her hand around the cup

"B-324?"

"B-325?"

"B-326?"

"B-327?"

The wait is kind of a purgatory. This sitting around and waiting, conceptually knowing your number may come up. The tickets make the newly departed far more aware of their mortality than counting out cups of coffee as if they were naps and smoking cigarettes like the tobacco was a kiss.

"D-899?'

"D-900?"

"D-901?"

Once again, I gotta tell you about the phenomena of endless time. You don't see eternity as you pass through timebut if you look in any horizon you see points and lines that tell you that you are in the middlle of forever. I had just closed my eyes when I got the sense that Somebody was try to tug at my sleeve and shove me awake. If I had had a lap, Whitney would have fallen over it but I don't have a lap and Whitney falls forward, her cheek against the wooden seat of the bench. I pat her back. She is tired of all this nothing, tired and bored on the verge of tears when she hears, "F-744".

Whitney leaps up and rushes towards the Pearly Gates, her tag F-745.

"F-746?"

Whitney looked at me. She is confused. Why was her number skipped?

"This can't be happening to me." Whitney turned to me with a bit of anger and spittle.

"What did you do? Did you fuck this up for me?"

I purse my lips and she looks down to her feet.

"Come on, there has gotta be something you can do to get me in."

I suck my teeth and check my teeth with a swipe of my tongue. Heaven is great for dental hygiene. In Heaven there is no need to floss or brush hard.

Whitney smooth her robe, hands on hips and rocks towards me in a sexily vampish way. She is a handsome woman but I don't really swing that way. Whitney sashays towards me andask if I would consider a deal. First of all, I'm not the deal guy. That would be St. Peter. Second of all, I'm not so into chicks like that.

"Whitney fox, you gotta rap with San Pedro. My pull is only so strong 'round here."

Whitney sniffs, "I don't know why I even talk to you. You are pointless, worthless and no good for me ..."

Ouch. Whitney can be mean. She usually is. I saw her pre-flight flyer. It's okay. I'm a pro. I'm used to this.

Whitney rushes into my arms.

"I'm sorry, that is not what I meant."

She sobs. I hold her until the number F-744 comes back around. I tried to do the math. If this is what I assume a systematic numeration system based on a beginning letter and a three digit number. Twenty-six letters times 999 equals...? I'm not sure what alphabets Heaven uses. I met a guide who said Hawaiian was the lingua franca- twelves consonants and four vowels. Easy peasey japoneezy. Anyway, we had been set on the church bench for a long, long damn time. This time, Whitney quietly holds up her ticket, resigned to her imagination of not being called on from the pulpit of St. Peter.

St. Peter clears her throught. She has an accent of South Asian mixed and squalled with a south London brogue.

"F-745?

Whitney gets up and warily,wearily approaching St. Peter's pulpit. She hands St. Peter the well thumbed ticket. I stand to the side and behind Whitney.

""Miss Whitney Houston (St. Peter pronounces it correctly, -how-stan-), you've been a reprobate, recalcitrant back slider into a deplorable life of drugs, booze, fast cars and bad and varied choices in bed mates. You've been picky when you should have been choosy and choosy when you should have been picky. You have made many of your friends and relations admonish and disavow you in record speeds and heart aching velocities. Let ask you Miss Whitney Houston, let me ask you one question and if answered correctly, I may open the gates of heaven to you."

Whitney shoe gazed as St. Peter asked her a question.

"Whitney, do you know what time it is."

She convulses in sobs. Whitney falls to her knees and cries out, "NO! No I have no idea what time it is."

She is already dried from her tears and ready to meet her fate and sentence. The bang of chain on fence steel signalled the gate opening. The motor vroomed and shirred. Whitney looks over her shoulder at me. I smile and use my hands to shoo her into through these Heavenly Gates.

Whitney and I walk through the gate and she grows and morphs into a much younger version of herself. She is twelve and new to the world of pro-musica. She has just left church, Newark 2nd Baptist, andwas a bright voiced young girl. Whitney runs off in the way only children are able to do. I watch as the clouds behind her close her away from my sight. St. Peter also watches the girl run, all elbows and knees and a loud, clear voice.

St. Peter booms her voice around the Heavens.

"Agent, you have done a good job. She is happy now."

"Thanks Pete."

St. Peter leans back in her chair.

Without looking she hands me another assignment packet.

"Another one?"

"Yes, another one. This is your vocation, job and occupation."

"...until when?"

"When what?"

"...'til I don't gots to do this anymore?

"Oh, that's gonna be a while. Why don't you go back to the nether world and wait for my call?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No."

...and *poof*, I'm back here, right now, back here, right now.

Take care Whitney.

www.youtube.com/watch

A long, long time ago I could remember how the music used to make me smile and I knew if I had my chance, I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while but February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver; bad news on every doorstep. I couldn't take one more step. I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride but something touched me deep inside the day the music died.

Did you write the book of love and do you have faith in God above If the Bible tells you so? Now do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your mortal soul? Can you teach me how to dance real slow? Well, I know that you're in love with him 'cause I saw you dancin' in the gym. You both kicked off your shoes. Man, I dig those rhythm and blues! I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck but I knew I was out of luck the day the music died.

Now, fifty-two years we've been on our own and moss grows fat on a rolling stone but that's not how it used to be. When the jester sang for the King and Queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean and a voice that came from you and me.
While the King was looking down the jester stole his thorny crown. The courtroom was adjourned. No verdict was returned. Lennon read a book on Marx and the quartet practiced in the park and we sang dirges in the dark on the day the music died.

Helter skelter in a summer swelter, the birds fell off the fallout shelter; they were eight miles high and falling fast. The ball landed foul on the grass. The players tried for a forward pass with the jester on the sidelines in a cast. Now the half-time air was filled with sweet perfume while theROTC played a marching tune; we all got up to dance but we never got the chance 'cause when the players tried to take the field the marching band refused to yield. Do you recall what was revealed
the day the music died?

There we were all in one place with no time left to start again. So Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candlestick because fire is the devil's own best friend. As I watched him prance upon the stage, my hands were clenched in fists of rage. No angel born in Hell could break that Satan's spell and as the flames climbed high into the night
to light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the music died.

I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news. She just smiled and turned away. I went down to the sacred store where I'd heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn't play and in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed but not a word was spoken. The church bells all were broken.
The three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last plane for the coast on the day the music died and they were singing.