Beginners Guide to Cannabis Genetics, Environment, and Growing Mediums

Updated on November 27, 2024 by Buzz Jackson

Cultivating your own cannabis is a uniquely rewarding experience. The quality of weed grown properly at home is magnitudes better than what you will find in a most dispensaries. It's fresh, the terps are louder, the effect is as strong and long lasting as it will ever be. Dispensary weed often lacks these things. Your likely here because your trying to make a decision about going down this path. Growing cannabis is truly a choose your own adventure. There are so many different way to grow really good pot. It can be overwhelming when you are trying to figure out how you want to go about it? Do I want organic soil or should I do hydro? What kind of light? What nutrients and how often? The list goes on and on. Our growing guide has taken all of the options and broken it down into what we feel is the simplest way to grow weed at home, from seed to harvest. If you follow this guide, you will have a successful harvest of excellent cannabis that will beat anything you've had in a dispensary.

Lets get started.

Genetics: Choosing the Right Seeds for Quality Cannabis Plants

When it comes to growing high end cannabis, selecting the right genetics is crucial. We would say that this is the most important part of the grow. Even if your grow is fully optimized you can't make up for bad genetics.

If there are good genetics and bad genetics, how do I know what to grow?

You have two options when it comes to choosing cannabis seeds. You can do the research yourself or you can go to a seed bank. Not all breeders are the created equally and the same goes for seed banks.

We love the hunt. We're in the forums, we're on instagram and discords and we're digging around to uncover breeders doing incredible work. Many of our breeders are highly recognizable legends, but we are also working with select up can coming breeders that we think could be the next wave of legends.

Do Your Own Research

Forums: Start searching out and visiting online forums and head for the breeder sections. Look for breeders with the longest threads and recent activity. If a breeder has a documented history over several years, it's likely the are doing capable work. Our personal favorite is the bean basement (here). It's run by Capulator and is truly a place for the heads. Some others are IC Mag, Overgrow and phenohunter. Lots of incredibly deep knowledge if your willing to dig.

To get full access to the bean basement, you'll have to prove yourself a bit though as to gain full entrance you'll need to finish a "put up or shut up" grow log. Once you've demonstrated you can complete a grow, your in and it is a tremendous resource. For those really looking to learn, there are some incredibly high level discussions to browse.

Reputation: Once you've identified a breeder your interested in, take your research a step further. Follow them on Instagram, conduct Google searches, and look out for any interviews or articles. A good breeder can articulate just exactly what they are trying to accomplish and should have some public documentation of their work.
Feedback: This is where the magic happens. Pay attention to what other growers are saying about these breeders. Feedback is incredibly valuable. If your going to spend 3-4 months growing this plant you should know what your in for and that the final result is going to be killer. Forum threads are invaluable as you'll find pictures many finished plants with smoke reports.

Or...Let Us Do the Work for You

Many people don't have the time to sort through years of threads. Just want to grab some fire and get on with it?

Browse Our Curated Selection: If diving deep into forums and social media isn't your thing, don't sweat it. Our website features a curated selection of cannabis seeds from world-class breeders.

Quality and Variety: We've selected the breeders we work with because we've grown their plants and we know the quality is as good as it gets. Unique and diverse genetics are what make this plant so special and we look for quality over hype. .

Check out our current selection of genetics here

Environment & Lighting: Creating the Ideal Growing Environment

Your indoor grow room or outdoor growing space's environment significantly impacts your plants' health and yield. The most important thing is to provide your them with the right conditions throughout the vegetative stage and flowering stage. The way to happy and healthy plants is to provide them as close to ideal conditions as possible. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to do with a bit of automation.

First, do yourself a favor and get yourself a high quality tent. Yes, you can get a cheap one on amazon and yes it will probably work just fine, however investing in a heavy duty well made tent is worth it. Cheap tents have zipper issues and small light leaks. If your zipper breaks in the middle of flowering, you are going to have to completely change over a new tent which is an absolute nightmare to manage.

Cheap tents often times have light leaks through the zippers and you'll often see pinholes of light coming through. Some strains are incredibly sensitive to even the smallest light leaks.

Most importantly though, a well made tent will be easier to control your environment. The same is also true for grow lights. Yes, you can find a cheap LED on amazon, but trust us...when you go from a cheap LED to a well made powerful light, the difference is dramatically noticeable.

SHOP AC INFINITY TENTS

Climate Control and Lighting

Use automated systems for maintaining room temperature and humidity levels at the sweet spot.
Invest in a high-quality grow light. A strong light with the right spectrum coverage will increase yields as well as bud structure and quality.
Ensure proper air flow with an exhaust fan and intake fan. Consider adding carbon filters to control odor.

SHOP CLIMATE CONTROLS

Growing Medium: Start Simple

What is a growing medium? Simply put, this is where the roots of your plants will live and grow and provide nutrient uptake. If your new to growing, we are huge proponents of keeping it simple. For this reason, we recommend using a peat moss/perlite mix for your growing medium. It's cheap, its uncomplicated and takes all guesswork out.

We love the organic growing and if you want to go that route you absolutely should. For beginners though, this mix of coco and peat moss is likely a better choice as it's simpler to manage and put together than organic soil. It offers you complete control over the nutrients your giving the plant. Diagnosing any deficiencies you might encounter is much easier when you don't have to guess. With organic soil, you need experience to properly understand any deficiencies you run into.

No bugs. Having organic soil in your grow space can bring a higher likely hood of unwanted bugs. Just like outside, your grow space creates an ideal environments for all thing to thrive, not just the plants. Yes, you can mitigate this, but again, you have plenty of things to manage during your first grow, having to deal with pests will is a frustration you do not want to deal with.

Why Coco and Peat Moss?

They provide an ideal environment for root development and nutrient absorption.
Suitable for small plants and small spaces, making them perfect for personal cultivation.
Easier to manage water and nutrients compared to loamy soil or hydroponic systems.

Final Thoughts

Growing cannabis is extremely fulfilling when done right. It is also a very nuanced endeavor. Our goal here is to get you set up for success by giving you everything you need to form foundation for successful harvests. If you follow our guide you will have a successful first grow and a solid foundation to begin building your own growing style.

Having a never ending supply of top shelf weed is a dream come true and we firmly believe that investing in yourself and your set up is worth the extra money.