Success in your cannabis cultivation depends upon several factors, of which growing medium and nutrients are central. Choosing these two elements carefully helps you maximize your investment.
This post shares all the details about appropriate cannabis-growing mediums and nutrients. You can get more information about high-yielding marijuana seeds here. Keep reading to learn more and make an informed choice for your next growing project.
Table of Contents
The Best Growing Mediums for High Yields
Cannabis can grow in different growing mediums. This section examines the best growing mediums.
Soil
Soil is the original growing material and remains the best natural growing medium for the following reasons.
- Soil is the cheapest and most readily available medium, making it the best choice for novice growers.
- Working with soil is easier than with other mediums.
- Cannabis grown in soil has the best taste.
- Soil contains many microorganisms that help regulate every environmental dimension, saving you the time you would waste adjusting them. For instance, fluctuating pH levels or other natural variables don’t drastically affect your cannabis as in other cultivation mediums.
Besides natural soil, you can use commercial soils with packed nutrients. These soils don’t require plant feed or fertilization.
Growing cannabis in the soil gives you three options: clay, loam, and sand. However, loam is the best choice because it contains an ideal sand, silt, and clay ratio. This combination guarantees the soil’s texture, moisture, and retention ability.
Loam mixes 20% clay, 40% silt, and 40% sand. It would be best to aim for a soil pH between 5.8 and 6.2. However, most strains don’t manifest nutrient lockout above this range until it exceeds a pH of 7.0.
Out of the above combination, clay is the finest, with excellent moisture retention but poor drainage ability. Silt has a good balance between drainage and moisture retention. Sand is the coarsest component in the mix, with the highest drainage ability but the poorest retention power.
Rockwool
Rockwool is a brand name for mineral wool made from volcanic rock. This medium has perfect drainage and aeration levels, making it a favorite choice for cannabis growers.
Rockwool is neither biodegradable nor organic. Since it contains zero organic matter, it’s resistant to harmful fungi and bacteria, significantly reducing plants’ potential of getting diseased.
This medium supplies the correct nutrients and water to maintain proper pH levels throughout the growth cycle. This way, Rockwool can promote fast root development that, in turn, produces large plants for higher yields.
Hydroponics
Although it isn’t an exclusive cannabis medium, hydroponics is another excellent pick for cannabis cultivators. The system is versatile but essentially involves delivering nutrient-rich solutions directly to plant roots at predetermined intervals.
You can use hydroponic settings with growing media like Rockwool or coco coir to support your plant’s roots. Alternatively, you can use it by suspending cannabis plants above a reservoir with their roots dangling into the water.
Since it saves your plants’ roots the need to search for nutrients in the soil, your crops use that energy to produce stronger stems, leaves, and flowers.
Moreover, the absence of soil minimizes the disease chances. It also reduces nutrient lockup, when nutrients are locked up in the soil but remain unavailable to plants. However, this method is costly and complex, making it unsuitable for rookies. Moreover, plants grown using this method usually have an unnatural taste.
Coco Coir
This growing medium is a by-product of coconut harvesting. Manufacturers make it from discarded coconut husks. It’s popular for its excellent aeration and water retention. Close to a third of this medium’s fibers repel water and create air pockets, giving the medium excellent drainage and oxygenation.
This structure allows roots to grow and access nutrients more easily than soil. This frees the roots’ energy to boost plant and bud development. Therefore, cannabis grown in this medium grows faster and larger than soil-grown marijuana.
But all these benefits depend on how much you add the right blend of nutrients into the mix.
Please note that this growing medium contains no nutrients to support plant growth and lacks the natural microorganisms soil contains. All growers seeking to benefit from it must manually control all necessary variables.
A grower must monitor the medium’s pH levels to ensure it remains within optimal ranges and provides the correct nutrient blend at the growth cycle at every stage. This manual involvement is positive and negative because it lets a farmer control crop root zones but allows for mistakes.
The Best Nutrients for High-Yielding Cannabis
Nutrients are indispensable in cannabis cultivation. Following the basics guarantees maximum yields. Excelling in this area requires continuous learning because things evolve daily. This section focuses on your plant’s nutritional requirements and what you should know about the different nutrients that meet them.
Plants require a balanced Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K) or NPK ratio. All fertilizers contain three key components for boosting healthy plant growth. The NPK ratio is the percentage of all these nutrients in the fertilizer.
The NPK ratio contains nitrogen, which is essential for chlorophyll development. Without this element, plants can’t photosynthesize and won’t grow. Chlorophyll also enables plants to form amino acids, which later form plant protein.
They also use phosphorous in essential metabolism processes, such as root growth and flower development. This essential nutrient also enables plants to store energy. Plants with sufficient phosphorous levels are resilient to stress.
The nutrient enables water, nutrients, and carbohydrates to move throughout plant tissues. Lastly, phosphorous helps plants use the proteins nitrogen delivers.
Your cannabis needs different NPK ratios at its various growth stages. Thus, the best nutrient kits give you various fertilizers with different NPK ratios.
Secondary Nutrients
We established that NPK is the essential nutritional mix your plants need. However, cannabis also requires secondary nutrients to develop well. These nutrients are calcium, sulfur, and magnesium.
In this combination, calcium helps your cannabis develop strong roots and synthesize proteins. Magnesium enables your cannabis to turn light into energy, while sulfur allows cannabis to turn amino acids into proteins. When buying the best fertilizer, it should list all the secondary nutrients it contains on its package.
Micronutrients for Cannabis
Your cannabis plants will also need different micronutrients to grow well. These trace nutrients are iron, manganese, copper, zinc, and boron.
- Iron. It benefits your cannabis in many ways, including protein synthesis and chloroplast development. It also helps cannabis store energy.
- Manganese. This micronutrient assists cannabis with photosynthesis and nitrogen absorption.
- Copper. Copper assists cannabis with photosynthesis, metabolism, and respiration.
- Zinc. This trace nutrient activates enzymes to boost chlorophyll production.
- Boron. Boron helps cannabis grow sturdy stalks.
Final Thought
Proper nutrients and an ideal growing medium are essential components for successful cannabis growth. All your efforts, time, and money could go to waste without these two.
Therefore, we explored this twin combination to help you make an informed choice for optimal yields. The ball is in your court to use this information to get the best returns on your investment.
The author of this article is Tia Moskalenko, an avid weed grower, researcher, and marketer. Tia is employed as a full-time writer at AskGrowers, where she shares her hands-on cultivation experience and best tips from grower pros. She is dedicated to helping people advance in their weed-growing projects and get the maximum out of their plantations.
