Growing Marijuana Outdoors for Beginners: Understanding The Basics
Saturday, March 3rd, 2012With so much emphasis on indoor growing in recent years too many people have forgotten about all the benefits of growing marijuana outdoors. Everything is provided for you outdoors. Light, temperature control, timing, ventilation and it’s all free. Plants also grow bigger and better outdoors too, with a tendency towards higher potency.
Only Grow With Outdoor Seed

Read about plant genetics to understand more about seeds that work best for growing marijuana outdoors
The type of seed that you use makes a huge difference in what you end up with, so you need to make sure that you buy and use outdoor seed.
Indoor seed is produced by plants of a type that has been selectively grown to be more aclimated to the mild indoor environment. Strains that have been developed strictly for their flavor, potency, and aroma.
“Some plant geneticists are plant breeders (quantitative genetics) who produce superior plants through selective breeding. Molecular plant geneticists track down genes to discover their functions and identify genes useful for creating improved plants.”
But just like so many other plant varieties that have gone through a genetic selection process, along with the positives like better flavor and smell comes some negatives.
Resistance to pests for instance is one that you’ll get with indoor seed and they also tend to be prone to root problems so they’re more susceptible to things like root rot.
Now this doesn’t mean however, that marijuana grown outdoors with outdoor seed will be less potent or flavorful because of it’s grown properly it can in fact be better than indoor product.
You also need to know that there are several varieties of outdoor seed, so check out the descriptions well before you buy to make sure that you get the type that suits you best. Hash bud plants for instance grow short, so they’re a good choice for discreet backyard growing.
Learn How to Mix Premium Grade Soil
The plants you grow will only be as big and healthy as the root system that supports them. If the roots can’t grow then the plant won’t grow and it’s as simple as that.
“As the number of your plants increase, you might want to consider and concoct your own blend so as to make sure that each plant has its feet (roots) buried in the kind of soil that is best suited to its species.”
So it’s easy, that is that you need to provide the best growing medium possible to fill your containers or grow beds with but unfortunately for a lot of people this part of it is a bit of a mystery.
So rule number one is to only use the best products available to blend into your soil up with, so that means cheap manure type ingredients are out.
Cow and chicken crap works great for vegetable gardens because it’s cheap and provides a broad range of nutrients. You’re not growing vegetables here though, and you can’t afford the risk of things like fungus and root burning that comes with these types of soil blenders.
Peat Moss is the best product to add loam with but if you don’t have the money for that then go with something like red wood shavings. Peat moss tends to be a little acidic though, so you’ll need to add some dolomite which is a powdered white chalk in with it. Then fine sand also works to help with drainage and then if you have a little more money to spend vermiculite works to stabilize nutrient distribution and leaches in magnesium. Perlite also works great for holding air and keeping your soil for becoming compact.
Learn to Use Chemical Fertilizers
When you’re growing marijuana outdoors fertilizer is the food that they eat and concentrated chemical fertilizers are the best way to go at feeding time.
Don’t be afraid of the word “chemical” either because chemical fertilizers aren’t complex and dangerous like other chemicals that you may be trying to stay away from.
“It has been compared to intravenous feeding on people, in the sense that nutrients are delivered straight into the plant leaves and tissue in the same way intravenous delivers nutrients straight into the blood stream. To be more accurate, experts point out that plants access foliar feeding nutrients through stomata, which are basically pores on the leaves.”
They’re simple and basic like table salt and no more dangerous than salt either.
The problem with chemical fertilizers though, is that because they’re concentrated it’s just so easy to overdo it with them. To over fertilize and that in turn leads to root burning which in turn causes stunted plant growth.
Also know right here that root burning problems brought about by over fertilizing when growing marijuana outdoors tend to happen gradually. Too much being added over a period of weeks that eventually builds up to dangerous levels.
So one thing you may want to try, is along with using a mild chemical fertilizer solution on the roots is foliar feeding where you actually spray a chemical fertilizer solution directly on the plant itself. Foliar feeding works great for growing marijuana outdoors and you’ll for sure see this when your plants respond immediately to it.
Just mix up a concentrated solution of water soluble chemical fertilizer in a sprayer, add a few drops of liquid dish washing soap the act is a wetting agent and then spray it liberally on the leaves.
Don’t Try to Force Your Plants to Do Anything

Trying to force a plant to grow or bloom by adding excessive fertilizer will lead to root burn that's indicated by yellowing leaf tips.
Then your final word of advice here is that when you’re growing marijuana outdoors you really can’t force them to do anything.
Now it’s a different story when you’re going indoors because you can change the light timing schedule them to bud for instance.
“There’s a good chance that this bud was subjected to nutrient solution burn. These symptoms are seen when the EC concentration of hydroponic solutions is too high. These symptoms also appear when strong nutrient solution is splashed onto the leaves under hot HID lamps, causing the leaves to burn under the solution.”
Outdoors it’s another story altogether though, because you’re growing on mother nature’s schedule and she just likes to take her time.
So over fertilizing with 0-10-10 flowering blend to speed up budding for instance will lead to root burning which will in fact slow down the process. If you want fast buds buy seeds from plants that are bred to bud quickly but you may have to sacrifice a bit on potency and flavor. Even so some strains of marijuana do bud up substantially quicker than others.
Then during the midsummer vegetative state when you’re growing marijuana outdoors don’t pick any leaves off the plant in an attempt in an attempt at get them to grow quicker or to produce more bud shoots.
It’s a myth that in fact will lead to slower growth with fewer and smaller buds. The leaves are where plants produce and store energy, so the more that your plant has, and the bigger they are, the better off it will be.
How to Improve Your Grow Skills
If you thought this blog post was informative wait till you check out all the golden nuggets I put into my latest book. "How to Grow Marijuana Outdoors: The Ultimate Guerilla Growers Guide" is chock full of my tips and tricks from over 20 years of outdoor grow experience all boiled down into an easy to read grow guide.Click the link below and it will take you to the page where you can get a free sneak peek via Amazon.


