Marijuana can be categorized into two main strains; Cannabis Sativa strains which generally offer a more uplifting and euphoric high or Cannabis Indica strains which like its smell, offers a stronger more heavy stoned feeling.

Indicas tend to be shorter and more compact whereas Sativas are taller and more leggy. Modern growing techniques also mean that there are a seemingly endless varieties of hybrid marijuana strains available, giving the best of both worlds. Read more about the difference between Sativa vs. Indica.

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We have reviewed hundreds of marijuana seed strains including:

• Autoflowering marijuana seeds – These seeds will flower automatically;
• Feminized marijuana seeds – Chemically treated so that 95% – 99% are female;
• Haze marijuana seeds – True ‘Haze’ seeds are magically pure sativas;
• White seed strains – Include the famous White Widow and White Rhino strains;
• Blue seed strains – Include the famous Blueberry and Blue Cheese strains;

Basic requirements – Marijuana plants need water with the right pH level, grow lights, nutrients and suitable air, ventilation and temperature. However you choose to grow weed you should bear these basic requirements in mind and ask yourself at each stage how can I improve what I offer my plants?

Cannabis life cycle – Cannabis is an annual plant. If grown outside it germinates in the spring, lays down a lot of vegetative growth throughout the summer, and then flowers in the fall. Growing marijuana inside you would germinate the marijuana seeds, then place the seedlings under 24 hour lighting (some people use 18 hours on and 6 off) for the vegging stage and when your plant has grown large enough you will want to trick it into flowering (budding) by adjusting the light sequence to 12 hours on and 12 hours off, the plant thinks it is fall.

Approximately 10 – 12 days after the flowering stage begins you will start to notice two small pistils right at the crux of the branch joint, take a note of the sexing marijuana plant pics. To produce the most potent buds it is necessary to remove the male plants as they have very low amounts of THC, CBN and CBD when compared to the females and they will also make the female plants start to seed. Remove the male plants before they pollinate the female plants as once pollinated the females will turn to seed and we don’t want that! The flowers are the bud, the thing we’re looking for and what you will harvest and smoke.

Without males around the female plant will put all of her energy into creating sticky, THC-laden flowers rather than seeds. The result is essentially a virgin plant, or sensimillia, which comes from the Spanish ‘sin semilla’ or ‘without seeds’.

So you’ve decided to grow weed indoors with an indoor grow set up. Now you will be in total control of the plant’s environment. Be aware that this carries a greater risk than growing marijuana outdoors. But on the upside, you can expect to harvest some premium grade frosty bud in a much shorter time and you won’t be dependent on the season.

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Hydroponic growing systems can be simple affairs or more complex like Sea of Green or Screen of Green or large grow systems like from Fullbloom Hydroponics. Hydroponics just means that the plants can grow without soil, they will usually grow in an inert medium and all of their nutrient requirements will come straight from the water they are added to. After choosing your hydro setup you will need to pick what growing medium to grow your marijuana in; some prefer the organic nature of good soil and others like the more synthetic such as rock wool and perlite. Apart from this difference the way you set up your grow room will be the same. So firstly we will look at the different marijuana grow methods. More info on how to grow marijuana indoors.

Growing outdoors will of course give you less control over the growing conditions. Your crop will be prey to weather, disease, thieves, even the law and a host of other things that are beyond your control. On the other hand, if the crop is not on your property you can distance yourself from it and avoid things like nosey neighbours and the cost and hassle of setting up an indoor grow room.

The first and most important factor to bear in mind if you decide to grow weed outdoors is site selection. Assuming that the site is not on your own property you will need to think about discretion. You will also need to consider soil quality and availability of water. Every time you visit the site you put yourself and your crop at risk so it makes sense to choose a site where your plants can be mostly self-sufficient. More info on growing marijuana outdoors.

Light is one of the basic requirements to grow weed and it is important to get this right. Marijuana plants need different parts of the light spectrum to grow, from blue light during their vegetative stage and yellow, amber, red and far red light during the flowering or bud stage, marijuana needs light between 420 and 750 nanometers (nm), note that the well respected McCree scale from Utah Stat University shows the light spectrum for all plants starts at 375 nm, marijuana is closer to 420 nm.

There are many types of grow lights on the market – let’s take a look at the most popular four.

Click here for our Marijuana Grow Lights main page.

LED grow lights – Recently, modern technology has finally brought the ideal light to the market. Broad spectrum LED lights really do offer it all to the indoor marijuana grower. LEDs offer power consumption at approximately 15% of a similar HID, long life span of around 50,000 to 60,000 hours, no ballasts, no maintenance costs, no excess heat produced and effectiveness in all stages of the plants life. Broad spectrum LEDs are our pick for indoor growers who want a simple straight forward setup whilst maximizing space requirements and minimizing heat and electricity costs. Read more about LED grow lights.

HID grow lights – High intensity discharge grow lights (HID grow lights) are the industry standard used by every generation right up to now. It is a fight between HID and LED these days and the LEDs are winning the race in recent years only. HID used to be the most efficient way of transferring electricity into light; you might have seen them in use at stadiums and tennis courts. However LEDs are more efficient at turning electricity into light these days and that is why you are seeing LEDs make their way into car headlamps, yachts, street and stadium lighting.

There are two main types of HID marijuana grow lights; High Pressure Sodium (HPS) grow lights and Metal Halide (MH) grow lights.

Metal Halide (MH) grow lights emit light with a lot of blue in the spectrum. This makes them ideal for vegetative growth however they are not very efficient lights during the flowering stage. Many growers use metal halide lights just for the vegetative grow phase and then switch to high pressure sodium (HPS) grow lights for flowering. Using a mix of both lights throughout the entire grow is one of the optimum ways of providing light for your plants. More detail on MH grow lights.

High Pressure Sodium (HPS) grow lights emit the familiar orange or amber light you might see in street lighting. This light spectrum (yellow, orange, red) is the most effective for the flowering phase of growth. Although HPS grow lights are not the optimum light for vegetative growth they work very well and are the most popular type of grow light for anyone who may be limited by budget to just one lamp. They also run more efficiently than metal halide lamps, emitting more lumens for the same Wattage. If you are only going to use one lamp and have not considered LED grow lights then this is the one for you. More detail on HPS grow lights.

Fluorescent and CFL grow lights are now a little more popular to growers due to their compact size. Bulbs usually either target the blue spectrum used in the vegetative stage or the amber / red for the flowering stage however there are a couple of broad spectrum units available which should be suitable for growing marijuana from seed to flower. Fluorescent bulbs are available in a variety of types, roughly speaking they can be categorized into cool, warm and daylight light spectrum’s  The daylight (white light) types work best but a mixture will also suffice. They are relatively cheap to buy and don’t need a ballast while their low heat output means fluorescents can be placed in very close proximity to the growing plants, indeed this is advised as their actual light output (measured in lumens) is quite low. Many growers use fluorescents for seedlings and young plants as their light demands are lower but there are better all round solutions like LEDs. Read about the new CFL compact fluorescent grow lights.