This is what I did for my first 'budget' grow... started on 01/06/2012 so do this in the summer time in Northern Europe.
I am what you might call a lightweight, I don't need much herb to get a buzz so I decided to look into growing my own herb. I was recommended a specific seed type when I got my seeds, namely Paradise Seeds Wappa, known to do well in northern climes. It is a feminized seed and a photo period seed and to get it to flower you need to adjust the lighting the plant gets to trigger flowering hormones. This is typically 12 hours of as much light as possible and 12 hours of total darkness.
What you need to obtain :
3 inch diamater seedling pots
12 inch diameter and 8 inch deep potting on and finishing pots
Cardboard boxes or a big box for 3 plants
Gaffer tape €3.00
Vermiculite €7.00
Paradise Seeds 'Wappa' feminized photo period seeds 3 (€15.00) - €25.00 for 5
John Innes No.2 potting on compost. 2 bags = €12.00
Westland - Earth Matters - Natural Tomato&Veg Liquid concentrate plant food (Organic) N-P-K / 4-2-6 €8.00
Biobizz Topmax (organic) €13.00
Doff Organic Multi-Purpose Pour & Feed (unknown NPK, seems to be nitrogen rich) €1.00 (lol)
Filtered tap water - use a Brita filter or equivalent
So let's start:
I am not highly technical, in fact this grow is seriously low tech. So this will be an easy read without heavy technical terms but hopefully with enough info to ensure it goes ok.
Fill your seed pots with John Innes No. 2 compost and mix in a little vermiculite (tablespoon), make a little hole 2cms deep in the middle use a tweezer to take your seed ( d not touch the seed with your fingers) and put one in each pot. Water the pots and keep them damp all times but not water logged. Ideally keep the temperature up 20c or so and do it indoors, light is not really needed I found at this stage. After a week or so you will see a seedling sprout. From then on just give as much natural light as possible, the hours do not really matter.
Ideally you have a conservatory or a 'lean to' or a little plastic greenhouse to keep the seedling protected. Water the pot when the soil compost appears dry on the top. Do not over water the seedling, this is an easy mistake to make. Make common sense judgments, I found in my first grow common sense played a big part in success. Once the seedling is around 10cms high transplant with care into the big pots again with the same compost and mix in a handful of vermiculite, the excellent John Innes No.2, just dig a small hole in the new pot around the same size as the seedling pot and fit the seedling into the hole, water it in nicely but not excessively.
Indoors or outdoor grow?......... It's both !
In essence, the plants come in late evening and stay out all day unless rain comes, even on cloudy days there seemed to be sufficient light for reasonable growth. Take your plants in when it rains to avoid excessive moisture which is a potential mould threat. When the plant has it's 3rd set of spikey leaves start to feed it. Keep the feed fairly weak, 50pct of any recommended dilution. Used Doff Organic Pour &feed (which cost me €1.00 from a cheap €1 shop) it appeared nitrogen rich as the plants deepened their green colour after a feed this is great for the plant growth during it's vegatitive stage. The plant was kept outdoors in as much sun as possible (in fact there was very little direct sun as the weather was awful, cloudy, this did not seem to hinder growth very much to my knowledge, average temperatures were around 18C-21C. The plant came indoors to protect it every night. Feed about once a week, when I saw the 4th or 5th set of leaves I snipped them off, this stimulates a 'double headed plant' so you get more bud sites later. You simply snip off the new bud with sharp scissors. You may do this again 2 weeks later if you wish. Grow the plant for 4 weeks feeding a little more as it grows. There can be a little smell build up during veg stage but I did not find it excessive with this variety. Smell is dealt with reasonably easily easily at the later stages when we start flowering the plant.
Flowering the plant
Arguably the tricky bit... this was my first problem, I am not using expensive lighting or hydroponics systems here so..... I am not minted so I thought a cardboard box might work as a cheap solution. There is a need for a 12 hour light and 12 hour dark period for the plant to change it's hormones and think winter is coming. It is essential that no light reaches the plant during the 12 hour dark period. My solution is simply a cardboard box that covered the plant from 9pm to 9am overnight. I checked the box for any light ingress and made sure zero light came in by sticking gaffer tape over any possible holes. I used this to cover the plants nightly. I also used bin liners (directly as they come off the roll) which I placed around the bottom of the boxes where they sat on the ground to ensure no light seeped in from where the box met the ground.
This box remained indoors overnight every night. This box also doubles up as a 'smell reducer' yeah man thats the tech term right. The box stops the smell becoming too strong (which is an obvious security risk), just air the box out as soon as you remove it in the morning. Withdraw the box nice and slowly and the smell largely remains in the box ready to be aired out outside. I put the box in direct sunlight to evaporate moisture and keep it bone dry whenever the weather permitted.
At the stage when you put the box over every night you change to a feed that has more phosphorous and potassium which flowers need to develop nicely. I used West Natural Tomato&Veg Liquid concentrate (Organic) N-P-K / 4-2-6 and a little BioBiz Topmax. This set of fertilizers will not break the bank. I believe TopMax to be an organic trace nutrient and sugars mix especially for this plant type. I kept this around 70pct of recommended dose. 17 days later I started to see hairs growing from what become very light green new leaf growth. This means female flowers are soon coming. At this stage I go to full strength and feed every 4 days. By day 24 I am giving a feed roughly every other day and watering as the top soil gets dusty. They are exploding and seem to love this regimen. I was giving approx 300ml of diluted feed water each feed.When the direct sun was out the pots got hot and I gave them pure water 300ml in the middle of the day to cool the root system and dilute the nutes a little, they respond very well to this treatment.
The above are the products I used personally and which were successful. I am sure you can try equivalents from your area and that are available conveniently. I am pretty sure that the Wappa strain is a part of the success though, it is an absolutely awesome strain IMO and very forgiving to first timers.
Keep this up and just harvest the plant when you feel it is ready. I hope this rough and ready guide saves you some money growing herb, enjoy. All the above prices are approximate but cheap as you can see. Right now my plants are healthy and thriving. If I encounter any problems at all I will post the info, the only thing you need is some good weather.(and not even that good it seems)
Yours truly 'The cardboard box' man.
I am what you might call a lightweight, I don't need much herb to get a buzz so I decided to look into growing my own herb. I was recommended a specific seed type when I got my seeds, namely Paradise Seeds Wappa, known to do well in northern climes. It is a feminized seed and a photo period seed and to get it to flower you need to adjust the lighting the plant gets to trigger flowering hormones. This is typically 12 hours of as much light as possible and 12 hours of total darkness.
What you need to obtain :
3 inch diamater seedling pots
12 inch diameter and 8 inch deep potting on and finishing pots
Cardboard boxes or a big box for 3 plants
Gaffer tape €3.00
Vermiculite €7.00
Paradise Seeds 'Wappa' feminized photo period seeds 3 (€15.00) - €25.00 for 5
John Innes No.2 potting on compost. 2 bags = €12.00
Westland - Earth Matters - Natural Tomato&Veg Liquid concentrate plant food (Organic) N-P-K / 4-2-6 €8.00
Biobizz Topmax (organic) €13.00
Doff Organic Multi-Purpose Pour & Feed (unknown NPK, seems to be nitrogen rich) €1.00 (lol)
Filtered tap water - use a Brita filter or equivalent
So let's start:
I am not highly technical, in fact this grow is seriously low tech. So this will be an easy read without heavy technical terms but hopefully with enough info to ensure it goes ok.
Fill your seed pots with John Innes No. 2 compost and mix in a little vermiculite (tablespoon), make a little hole 2cms deep in the middle use a tweezer to take your seed ( d not touch the seed with your fingers) and put one in each pot. Water the pots and keep them damp all times but not water logged. Ideally keep the temperature up 20c or so and do it indoors, light is not really needed I found at this stage. After a week or so you will see a seedling sprout. From then on just give as much natural light as possible, the hours do not really matter.
Ideally you have a conservatory or a 'lean to' or a little plastic greenhouse to keep the seedling protected. Water the pot when the soil compost appears dry on the top. Do not over water the seedling, this is an easy mistake to make. Make common sense judgments, I found in my first grow common sense played a big part in success. Once the seedling is around 10cms high transplant with care into the big pots again with the same compost and mix in a handful of vermiculite, the excellent John Innes No.2, just dig a small hole in the new pot around the same size as the seedling pot and fit the seedling into the hole, water it in nicely but not excessively.
Indoors or outdoor grow?......... It's both !
In essence, the plants come in late evening and stay out all day unless rain comes, even on cloudy days there seemed to be sufficient light for reasonable growth. Take your plants in when it rains to avoid excessive moisture which is a potential mould threat. When the plant has it's 3rd set of spikey leaves start to feed it. Keep the feed fairly weak, 50pct of any recommended dilution. Used Doff Organic Pour &feed (which cost me €1.00 from a cheap €1 shop) it appeared nitrogen rich as the plants deepened their green colour after a feed this is great for the plant growth during it's vegatitive stage. The plant was kept outdoors in as much sun as possible (in fact there was very little direct sun as the weather was awful, cloudy, this did not seem to hinder growth very much to my knowledge, average temperatures were around 18C-21C. The plant came indoors to protect it every night. Feed about once a week, when I saw the 4th or 5th set of leaves I snipped them off, this stimulates a 'double headed plant' so you get more bud sites later. You simply snip off the new bud with sharp scissors. You may do this again 2 weeks later if you wish. Grow the plant for 4 weeks feeding a little more as it grows. There can be a little smell build up during veg stage but I did not find it excessive with this variety. Smell is dealt with reasonably easily easily at the later stages when we start flowering the plant.
Flowering the plant
Arguably the tricky bit... this was my first problem, I am not using expensive lighting or hydroponics systems here so..... I am not minted so I thought a cardboard box might work as a cheap solution. There is a need for a 12 hour light and 12 hour dark period for the plant to change it's hormones and think winter is coming. It is essential that no light reaches the plant during the 12 hour dark period. My solution is simply a cardboard box that covered the plant from 9pm to 9am overnight. I checked the box for any light ingress and made sure zero light came in by sticking gaffer tape over any possible holes. I used this to cover the plants nightly. I also used bin liners (directly as they come off the roll) which I placed around the bottom of the boxes where they sat on the ground to ensure no light seeped in from where the box met the ground.
This box remained indoors overnight every night. This box also doubles up as a 'smell reducer' yeah man thats the tech term right. The box stops the smell becoming too strong (which is an obvious security risk), just air the box out as soon as you remove it in the morning. Withdraw the box nice and slowly and the smell largely remains in the box ready to be aired out outside. I put the box in direct sunlight to evaporate moisture and keep it bone dry whenever the weather permitted.
At the stage when you put the box over every night you change to a feed that has more phosphorous and potassium which flowers need to develop nicely. I used West Natural Tomato&Veg Liquid concentrate (Organic) N-P-K / 4-2-6 and a little BioBiz Topmax. This set of fertilizers will not break the bank. I believe TopMax to be an organic trace nutrient and sugars mix especially for this plant type. I kept this around 70pct of recommended dose. 17 days later I started to see hairs growing from what become very light green new leaf growth. This means female flowers are soon coming. At this stage I go to full strength and feed every 4 days. By day 24 I am giving a feed roughly every other day and watering as the top soil gets dusty. They are exploding and seem to love this regimen. I was giving approx 300ml of diluted feed water each feed.When the direct sun was out the pots got hot and I gave them pure water 300ml in the middle of the day to cool the root system and dilute the nutes a little, they respond very well to this treatment.
The above are the products I used personally and which were successful. I am sure you can try equivalents from your area and that are available conveniently. I am pretty sure that the Wappa strain is a part of the success though, it is an absolutely awesome strain IMO and very forgiving to first timers.
Keep this up and just harvest the plant when you feel it is ready. I hope this rough and ready guide saves you some money growing herb, enjoy. All the above prices are approximate but cheap as you can see. Right now my plants are healthy and thriving. If I encounter any problems at all I will post the info, the only thing you need is some good weather.(and not even that good it seems)
Yours truly 'The cardboard box' man.
