Growing Organic Cannabis: Part 2

( Photo Credit: u/bigboycaps, Black Garlic, day 43 of flower )

Nutrients for Phases

Over the lifetime of your plants, its needs will shift and change. Seedlings need a very gentle touch, they need to be nurtured with gentle nutrients that are too strong because they are very sensitive and can die suddenly. Young plants are a bit tougher, and they are much more hungry than seedlings, so you need to ramp up the food levels during this stage of growth. The plants toughen up during their vegetative growth phase and can eat even more than the juvenile phase. The flower phase has its own needs that are a bit different than the vegetative growth phase. And finally nutrient levels need to be tapered off in the final weeks of flowering so that the soil is basically barren -- which ensures that your plants will be clean of excess nutrients, no need to do chemical flushes, the plant already ate all of the nutrients available. In its final weeks you want the plant to use up all the nutrients in its system as it pushes to finish the flowers.

A Side Note on pH

It is worth mentioning the topic of "pH", which means "potential for Hydrogen" and is a measurement scale of acidity/alkalinity of water or soil. Water or soil with a low pH can said to be acidic, while water or soil with a high pH level could be said to be alkaline, the scale typically goes from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral (pure water), over 7 is alkaline, under 7 is acidic.

This is important, because your plants absorb nutrients in a very specific bandwidth of pH, generally 6.5 to 6.8 pH (very slightly acidic) is the ideal zone. The reason this matters is, if you have a nutrient deficiency, and you know that the plant should have everything it needs, check the pH of the soil, check the pH of your water source, and check the pH of the runoff water coming out the bottom of your containers. If your pH is outside of the sweet zone of 6.5 - 6.8, your plant struggles to uptake nutrients.

This condition is known as "nutrient lockout", and stresses your plants out, try to avoid large pH swings, so steady as she goes helmsman.

A common source of pH problems is your water source. If you draw water from a well or from a city, check it with both a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) meter and a pH meter. You want your water to have a TDS level from 20-50 ideally (which is very clean water, like out of a reverse osmosis system). Well water often contains high levels of sediments which includes high levels of calcium and magnesium dissolved in the water, and if you live in an agricultural community where they use chemical fertilizers, or pesticides, that stuff ends up in the aquifers wells draw from, polluting your drinking water.

If you don't have access to Reverse Osmosis water, and find that you need to adjust your pH level, you don't want to use hydroponics products like pH Up or pH Down on your organic grow, as it will tend to kill of the soil microorganisms that are living in your containers. Use gentle sources instead: lemons are acidic, and a bit of lemon juice added to your water will adjust the pH level down, making it more acidic. If you need to raise the pH adding a little bit of baking soda to your water will raise the pH making the water more alkaline. Think of pH like a scale or a teeter-totter, you want your soil and water to be just a bit more acidic than pure water.

( Photo Credit: camaca.imaspmedia.com )

The Nutrient Pyramid

In case you skipped Chemistry, this article will be a quick, high level view of the nutrients that your cannabis plants love and crave.

• Organic Elements
• Macro Elements
• Trace Elements

In Chemistry there is this idea of "organic elements" that are given this special designation on the periodic table of elements because they are found in virtually all organic life forms in the world. In the world of living things, these organic elements are the core of existence. It is for this reason that the organic elements are listed at the top of the pyramid.

Organic Elements

• Carbon (C)
• Oxygen (O)
• Hydrogen (H)
• Nitrogen (N)

Three (C, O, H) of the four organic elements are acquired by your plant through the water, and the air, while the final one, Nitrogen, will need to be supplied to the soil biome in order for your plants to uptake.

Carbon

Carbon is the basis for all life that we know of, we are all carbon based life forms. Carbon is also the most abundant element that makes up our bodies, and the bodies of your plants.

Plants breathe carbon dioxide, this is their main source of carbon, and they use photosynthesis to break the CO2 molecule to access the carbon, and in the process they release oxygen back into the atmosphere.

This is the fundamental reason why green growing things produce such clean air: they filter out the stuff we can't use, and produce more of the stuff we can use, and in return we intake oxygen and release CO2 back into the atmosphere. When you hear environmentalists saying that there is too much carbon in the atmosphere, what they mean is that there is an accumulation of CO2 which traps solar energy from the sun in our atmosphere, raising the ambient temperature, melting ice caps and causing havoc on the entire ecosystem. It is estimated that if we as a race plant 1 trillion trees, those trees will consume enough atmospheric carbon to undo a decade of CO2 emissions.

Growing organic cannabis is definitely a "green", "ecofriendly" activity, but beyond that, you should definitely plant as many trees as you can!

Sorry, I got off track... oh yeah, Carbon, some growers opt to give their plants additional carbon dioxide by setting up an emitter and tank for their grow space. In my experience this is only necessary if you have very poor airflow into your grow space. If your grow space is well ventilated with good air exchange it is an unnecessary step.

( Photo Credit: u/jones508, Gorilla Glue, day 65 of flower )

Oxygen

Plants need oxygen, but unlike us, they don't inhale their oxygen, it is absorbed by the root system inside the soil. Roots and root hairs depend on the presence of oxygen in order to "drink" water. Plants cool themselves and move nutrients through their bodies via a process known as "transpiration", where the move moisture from the soil around the roots through their stems and it is atomized out tiny pores called "stomata" on the undersides of leaves. Without proper amounts of oxygen, your plant will not be able to uptake a sufficient amount of water, and this can cause a cascade of deficiencies. This is an excellent reason to NOT overwater your plants. It is okay to let the soil medium dry out a bit between waterings, obviously don't let it get bone dry, but Cannabis is not up to living in boggy, swampy, waterlogged soil, its performance will be very poor, and the likelihood of your plants going to the big compost pile in the sky is highly probable.

Aaron G. Biros did a phenomenal write up on this exact subject of the relationship between Cannabis and Oxygen and I defer to his knowledge and the wisdom of the sources he quotes there.

Hydrogen

I searched and Hydrogen isn't really discussed, so I'm assuming if a plant needs this element, it would acquire it from breaking apart a water molecule with some enzyme or another.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a very important element, but is one of the macro elements that plants cannot acquire through atmospheric means, so I figure it needs an in depth discussion of its own, in a future article!

In part 3, of this series we will review the macro element Nitrogen and its role in growing Cannabis!

If you liked this article, hit that upvote button, hit that follow button, and if you feel like it, drop a comment down below!

Till then, happy toking ya bunch of stoners!

---