Growing weed in your closet or in a tent is by far the most popular option for home cultivation, but if you’re growing on a budget, you might want to consider growing outdoors. The good news is that New Mexico is a perfect climate for growing marijuana the natural way, and you have just enough time to start preparing now. The bad news is you’ll still have your work cut out for you.
The greatest benefit of growing outdoors is that it’s much cheaper than growing indoors. You won’t need to buy any expensive lights or air filters or fans or tents. The trade off is that your buds likely won’t be as dense and won’t have as many trichomes (meaning less THC). But the buds will be larger and will tend to have more terpenes.
There is also the chance that outdoor weed will be less potent than indoor, depending on how the weather goes, since the indoor cultivator will be able to control every aspect of the plant’s life—such as providing the correct nutrients and a stable, consistent environment—while the outdoor grower will be left to the whims of nature.
If you have money to spend, you can always split the difference by growing in a much more controlled greenhouse that still uses natural sunlight and gain the best of both worlds.
Before you get started with the grow, it’s the perfect time to start collecting everything you’ll need: seed starting pots, bigger pots (if you aren’t putting the plants in the ground) and a bag or two of soil (preferably the soil prepared specifically for growing marijuana).
If you want to start from seed, you’ll need to plant within the next few days. You’ll be keeping the plants indoors during the first phase, so you can coddle them away from the elements while they become established. Seeds take anywhere between a day and a week to sprout, and the seedling stage lasts between two weeks and a month, or thereabouts.
Do some research about the germination time for your particular seeds. The goal is to get the plants through the seedling stage and out in the open air in the first two weeks of May, when the danger of getting hit by a late frost should already be past.
When choosing seeds, think about what kind of strains you want to consume and what kind of growing plan you have in place. Different strains grow at different paces and produce different effects.
Getting your seeds started is the easiest step of the process. The most popular germination method is to take a few wet paper towels and place the seeds between them. The folded towel is then put into a closed plastic container with a hole or a crack in the lid to allow for airflow until the seeds sprout their taproots.
Another popular method is to simply drop the seeds into a glass of water and let them sit for a day or two until the taproots pop out.
Once the seeds pop, it’s time to move them to some soil in a pot. Seedlings are extremely delicate, and your plants are most vulnerable at this stage. Make sure they are in a spot that has a temperature between 68° and 77° F with lots of natural light. Since New Mexico is a somewhat dry climate, it might be helpful to use a humidifier. You’ll want the relative humidity level to be between 40 and 60 percent. If you’re using grow lights, make sure they are on their lowest setting with a light cycle of 18 hours on and 6 hours off. At this stage, it’s easy to damage the seedlings with light stress and ruin your whole grow.
Your seedlings will sprout tiny round leaves that are used to collect sunlight and help the plant get a good start. These leaves will eventually be replaced by the plant’s true leaves. Once you’ve seen that the plant has about seven of these leaves and at least two or three nodes (the spot where a leaf grows out of the stem), it’s a sign that the seedling stage is over and it’s time to take your plant outside.
If you’re using clones, the indoor period will typically be shorter. All you need is to wait for the clone to root—which usually takes somewhere between a week and three weeks—before you move it outside.
Clones are much easier to handle than seedlings. The biggest advantage of using them is they’ll save you some time, since you won’t have to wait on germination. Another benefit is that as long as the clone was taken from a trusted source, you won’t have to deal with separating males and females. If you know the plant that the clone was taken from, you’ll know exactly what to expect from it, since it will be an exact copy of that plant.
The only real downside for growing from clones instead of seeds is that they will potentially produce smaller yields. This is because clones will generally grow into weaker plants compared to those grown from seed.
No matter how you get your plant started, it will be time to push your plant out of the nest and let it fend for itself in the big bad world around the first, second or third week of May. Your plant won’t start flowering until the fall, but you’ll have plenty of time between now and then to worry yourself to death over pests, poachers and the fickleness of nature before you get to enjoy the fruits of your labors.