Seed Crop Care

Marijuana Horticulture

by Jorge Cervantes

Typically, cannabis growers use a high phosphorus, low nitrogen diet during the flowering cycle. My personal philosophy is to give seed production plants a complete balanced diet throughout the seed gestation period, so all nutrients required for proper development of the seeds are available. Because most cannabis specific flowering fertilizers are low on nitrogen, growers may wish to combine vegetative and flowering fertilizers to ensure a complete diet for their seed mothers. Flowering nutrient formulas often lack certain nutrients, and the gestation period is not the time to be starving plants of these needs. Provide a complete diet, and let the developing seeds have all they need.

I’ve found that complete, balanced, organic based soil mixes produce the most healthy, viable seeds. Organic soils contain various bacterial populations that break down and digest soil amendments to make them usable by plants. Sterile salt-fertilizer based soils do not support these bacterial populations, and while they do support plant growth, they lack the “alive” quality of and organic soil. Many growers agree that organically grown pot has more flavor and taste than pot grown on a synthetic salt diet. it could well be that these organic bacterial populations provide some benefit to plant health, and thus produce more mature, healthy, viable seeds.