Wondering how to grow weed at home? With a Pot for Pot grow kits, you can grow auto-flowering cannabis — also called by its scientific name, cannabis ruderalis. Every grow kit from a Pot for Pot comes with discounts to a seed bank in Amsterdam that sells cannabis ruderalis seeds.
Cannabis is called “weed” for a reason. Given the right circumstances, it will grow quickly and thrive relatively easily. Here’s the Rev guide to growing cannabis at home!
Step 1: Cannabis Germination
Before you can start growing weed, the cannabis seed needs to germinate. During this time, the cannabis seed gets all the nutrients it needs to grow. You can think of it like “charging the pot” so it can successfully sprout, take root, and grow properly.
Two common cannabis germination techniques include:
- Soil: Put the cannabis seed in a smaller pot, using cannabis-friendly soil (soil with the right nutrients and fertilizers, and with a pH of around 6). Let the seed sit for about 10 days in a warm, bright environment.
- Water: Soak the cannabis seeds for one to two days, checking the temperature daily to ensure it stays around 65°F. You could also transfer the seeds to a paper towel after soaking them, letting them sit for an additional one to three days until you see a small tendril (a white-colored sprout) pop out of the seed.
After germinating your cannabis seeds, transplant the seedling into the top of a new, larger pot. Make sure to plant them with the small seed tendril down — this is the seed’s taproot, the plant’s first root! It’s better to transplant earlier rather than later, so your plant has plenty of space to grow.
Each a Pot for Pot grow kit comes with a seedling kit called a Jiffy Pellet. Jiffy Pellets are biodegradable compact disks, which double as the seed’s germination container, filled with all the ingredients a cannabis seed needs to sprout.
Step 2: Setting Up for Success
After you’ve transferred your germinated cannabis seed to its new home, you can really start growing cannabis. Because a Pot for Pot grow kits come with all the nutrients necessary for cannabis growing, the only things you need to get your plant to start growing with these grow kits are light and water.
Sunlight for cannabis plants
Put the pot in the sunniest spot available. You can even move your plant around during the day to follow the sun! Cannabis ruderalis is able to flower with just sunlight, but you could also get a light supplement for your cannabis plant.
a Pot for Pot recommends using a minimum of 30 watts for smaller plants (like in the Mini grow kit) and 75 watts for larger plants. Do NOT use LED wattage equivalents — your cannabis plant needs watts from the wall.
Watering cannabis plants
Many first-time cannabis home growers overwater their cannabis plants — giving it too much water, too soon, and far too often. Cannabis ruderalis likes to be watered in small amounts, regularly.
a Pot for Pot recommends giving your plant daily waterings. Smaller plants will need about one to two shot glasses worth of water, and larger plants will need more. Don’t water to the size of the pot — this will likely result in overwatering. Instead, use the weight of your pot to figure out how much water your cannabis plant needs!
Pick up your dry pot and gather a sense of its weight. A soaking wet pot would weigh roughly twice as much as the dry pot — water your cannabis plant to about half the weight of a fully soaked pot. Joshua Mezher, founder of a Pot for Pot, compares this to the difference between a damp sponge versus a soaking wet sponge.
Step 3: Vegetative Stage of Cannabis
Soon after you’ve begun taking proper care of your cannabis plant, you’ll enter the vegetative state. Over the next two to three weeks, your cannabis plant will grow exponentially.
Along with continuing to water your cannabis plant and give it maximum sunlight, it’s critical to watch out for pests during the vegetative stage. Think about how much humans like cannabis — bugs do, too! If you already have pests from other plants, you’ll have to take extra precautions.
Preventive care is the best care when it comes to pests. a Pot for Pot grow kits come with neem oil and dish soap, which are common ingredients for non-pesticide anti-pest sprays. You can use this anti-pest spray on all your plants, not just cannabis!
Spray your plant twice a week until the flowering stage, and immediately stop using any anti-pest measures once your cannabis plant starts to flower. By this point, your plant should have enough resistance to last until the harvesting stage.
Step 4: Cannabis Flowering Stage
After about five or six weeks of growing, your cannabis plant will go into the flowering stage. With cannabis ruderalis, you won’t have to change the light cycle at all — just keep maximizing sunlight and watering the cannabis plant regularly.
Once the flowering stage has started, it takes another three to four weeks until you can harvest your cannabis buds. Here are three tips for protecting your plant’s buds and ensuring a great harvest:
- Growing cannabis buds need sun! Remove any fan leaves blocking bud sites to maximize sunlight exposure.
- You can add some sugar or molasses to the soil. This stimulates the bacteria in the soil
and boosts nutrients! - Stop using any anti-pest sprays — including non-pesticide sprays.
Compared to concentrates, edibles, or dried and cured cannabis, raw cannabis plants have a relatively small amount of inactive cannabinoids. For this reason, growing pot plants are generally not harmful to house pets. It’s still best to keep cannabis plants away from pets — especially if your furry friend likes to play with plants.
During the flowering stage, watch your buds closely. Soon they’ll be ready to harvest!
Step 5: Harvesting, trimming, and drying cannabis
As your buds are growing, examine their trichomes to determine when to harvest. Cannabis trichomes are the little appendages or growths coming out of the bud and leaves, and they hold the elements we love about weed: cannabinoids and terpenes.
Cannabis trichomes will hit a peak potency before they begin to deteriorate, so it’s critical to harvest and trim them at the appropriate time. Wait until at least a third of the trichomes are cloudy or milky white in color until harvesting — for cannabis ruderalis, this takes around 10 weeks from seedling to bud. You can achieve different sensations by fine-tuning the length of time cannabis buds stay on the plant.
Once your buds are ready, remove them from your plant. There are two core cannabis harvesting techniques:
- Dry trimming — Cut off entire branches of your cannabis plant with buds on them. Hang the whole branch upside down to prevent flattening or misshaping.
- Wet trimming — Remove just the buds, then place them on a drying rack to dry separately.
Make sure you dry cannabis trimmings in a dark, safe space with low humidity. Leave them for 5-10 days, and check on your harvested cannabis often so it doesn’t over-dry. Wet trimming can take a little shorter than dry trimming. When dry trimming, the stems will become snappy (not bendy) when the buds are ready to cure.
Step 6: Cannabis curing and burping
This is arguably the most important part of the cannabis preparation process. Proper cannabis curing and burping prevents cannabis flower from becoming dry, powdery, or tasting like hay. If you don’t dry, cure, and store your cannabis properly, all your hard work growing cannabis may go to waste.
Curing
The goal of curing is to control the humidity to encourage proper cannabis drying, and prevent overdrying your flower. Place your dried cannabis buds in sealed jars (wash them out first!) or sealable bags to begin the curing process, leaving some space at the top. Place them in a small, controllable space like a closet or small box. You can even cure and dry your cannabis in the same dark, low-humidity environment.
Maintaining a consistent humidity (55-60%), temperature (60-70°F), and constant air flow is the key to great curing. You can purchase hydrometers — little meters that measure the relative humidity (RH) of a space — to maintain optimal humidity, and keep a thermometer in your curing space.
How long to cure your cannabis is completely up to you, but try to cure for at least two weeks. The longer cannabis cures, the more potent your cannabis becomes!
Burping
Burping is an element of the curing process that helps moisture evaporate, which prevents mold from growing and helps the weed dry properly.
To burp your weed, open the jar or bag that contains the curing cannabis for a few minutes. You can also simply jostle the cannabis buds around in the sealed container. Begin by burping your cannabis every two or three days, but you’ll be able to burp less as time goes on.
Cured cannabis should hover at around 50% humidity — under 40% needs moisture, and over 66-67% needs burping. You can place RH meters in curing containers to measure humidity, and use Vita packs to balance the moisture levels of your cannabis. Remember: you can always make weed drier, but it’s much harder to infuse moisture back in!
Along with ensuring a great flavor and potency, burping helps you customize the consistency of your cannabis. Burping your weed less often will make it more moist, resulting in flower that’s stickier and harder to break apart. Meanwhile, burping your weed more often will result in flower that’s powdery and easily breakable.
Step 7: Enjoy your home-grown cannabis!
Now that you’ve germinated, grown, trimmed, dried and cured your cannabis, it’s finally time to reap the benefits of home-grown weed! Roll it up into a joint, put it in a vaporizer, decarb it and make edibles, or conduct your own experiments — the possibilities are truly endless.
Remember to always properly package and protect your home-grown cannabis, including creating clear labels and keeping it safe from others in your household.
For growing assistance or to sign up for their summer grow series, reach out to a Pot for Pot customer support. Plus, keep an eye out for a special grow kit deal coming to Rev customers in the near future. Register your email for our Deals & News sign up below and be the first to know!
