Growing your own cannabis plants isn’t just fun, it’s also super rewarding! But before you get your hands dirty, you should take some time to understand how cannabis plants grow and what to expect during your grow. Here’s what you need to know about growing your own cannabis plants.

Minimum Growing Equipment

You don’t necessarily need a high-tech grow room to grow high-quality cannabis. If you’re just growing a plant or two (or three), some basic growing equipment will do just fine. Here’s what you’ll need at a minimum:

• Potting containers
• Soil
• A grow light (unless growing outdoors)
• Cannabis seeds or clones

The Life Cycle of Cannabis Plants

There are 4 stages to the growth of a cannabis plant: the germination stage, the seedling stage, the vegetative stage, and the flowering stage.

Germination

The germination stage is where the roots of the cannabis plant sprout out of the seed. This can take anywhere from 3–10 days, depending on the method you use. To germinate quickly and easily, just wrap your seeds in a few paper towel sheets, add water, place them in a warm place, and wait a couple of days for them to sprout.

Seedling

After your seeds have sprouted, you can move them to a pot or other container in order to really begin their growing journey. The seedling stage typically takes about 2–3 weeks and requires about 16 hours of light per day. During this stage, plants will begin to sprout leaves and you’ll know that they’re ready for the next stage when they begin to grow leaves with a full number of fan blades.

Vegetative

The vegetative stage can last anywhere from 3–16 weeks depending on the kind of plant you’re growing and the conditions it’s being grown in, but for most indoor plants this stage lasts about 4–8 weeks and requires about 16 hours of light per day. This stage is where the plant’s growth really takes off as it begins filling out with new stems and leaves.

Flowering

The flowering stage is where the plant begins to grow its coveted buds and colas. In order to push a plant into its flowering stage, a light change from 16 hours to 12 hours a day is necessary. Autoflowering plants can skip this light change as they are genetically designed to move into this final stage on their own.

Growing Cannabis From Seeds

There are two ways to begin growing your cannabis plants – either by using seeds or by using clones. Growing cannabis from seeds is the traditional way to do it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the easiest way to do it.

There are 3 different kinds of seeds you can grow with: regular seeds, feminized seeds, and auto-flowering seeds. Since only female plants grow the cannabis buds that we love so much, it’s important to sprout a female plant. Regular and auto-flowering seeds have a 50/50 chance of sprouting a female plant. Feminized (female) seeds will give you a 100% chance of sprouting a female plant.

Despite only having a 50/50 chance of sprouting a female plant, auto-flowering seeds have their own advantages. Autoflowering plants do not need any lighting changes to transition to their flowering phase, which will make your life as a grower much easier.

Growing Cannabis From Clones

Growing cannabis plants from clones is much easier than growing from seeds. That’s because a cloned plant is an exact genetic replica of the plant it is cloned from. This takes much of the guesswork out of the growing process by guaranteeing a female plant by guaranteeing the exact kind of plant genetics as the mother plant

Additionally, by growing from a clone, you can skip the germination phase altogether. Not only does this save you a few days at the beginning of the grow cycle, but it will let you get started on your next harvest even quicker by speeding up the entire process.

If you don’t want to waste too much money on seeds and want to speed up the growing process, then you should seriously consider starting your grow with a clone instead of a seed.

You can stop in to shop our clones or check out our Sacramento dispensary online menu to place your order today