How did everybody FIRST learn to grow?

[AussieGWRER]

talking bout 1 plant being female.............

[Esteban1]

Learned after I was paying top $ for product being shipped in from the west. Was good x a year but said wtf, been growing veggies so why not green? Did me 1st indoor 2 + years prior & was a quasi success which led me to my 2nd outdoor grow. Reading a lot & learning how not to make the same mistake twice. Need to re-up on nutrients, anyone with a heads up on the "best" ? Peace. Btw, cool thread.


:thumbsup:

[Shovelhandle]

1968; A local friend and professional landscaper grew excellent bud each summer. Got some tips from him, he grew very simply. My friend and I would try and grow out a little. Some success, lots of losses. Also read some of the early hippy grow books, could have been Mel and Ed. 1970s I worked in UMass and they had a nice scince dept with environmental chambers and grow rooms. I learned some things there. When I moved to Vermont there were many guerrilla growers. And I learned a little there. But after all this time I'm still learning all the time, especially since being on the island.

[lipps]

Just when you think you got it something will happen to show you that you don't.

[tlranger]

Just when you think you got it something will happen to show you that you don't.

I'll second that!! I started in 69, buddy came home from nam, spent night by fire talking, decided then l liked pot and did not want to go over there. Got seeds from the bag, planted them the next day. That harvest decided that if a person got any, he did good. Ben learning ever since.

[built2spill]

Started in 87 when I got out of High School. It took two seasons of less then stellar production for me to research my new found hobby. High Times was a great reference back then and every book you could find on the subject was like a bible. Anyway I learnt about ph and proper nutes and things took off.

I continued for about 6 more seasons giving it up in 96', had just gotten married and had a baby on the way. I took the next 12 years off, raising kids and being the good worker Hubby.

Then we moved to where I live now about 8 years ago and I could not resist taking up my old craft. The area is great with miles and miles of woods, mountain streams and a good sized river. There are many places where grapevine has taken over and few if any large trees stand. There is a small (1200ft.) mountain with a southerly slope to take advantage of as well. Plentiful supplies of water, sun and privacy, what more could a farmer ask for.

Year one back on the growers wagon was a disaster. I had over 50 plants doing great and just starting to flower. I had all the plants in a large spot and they got nailed in early August. It wasn't deer or rabbits or even some poacher it was the bad guy. Since then it's been one plant at a time no closer that 10 yrd to the next in any direction. No more bad guys getting my stuff anymore.

[rachel502]

My first grow was a few years ago, good times. I grew tired of paying out the ying yang for good quality bud. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and see what I could do with a few seeds. With the ammount of knowledge from the forums here, an some friends with experience I was able to pull off a very good harvest my first grow. Of course trial an error has been a big part of it. Surprisingly what I had grew was just as good as what I was getting in the first place. From that moment I was bit by the bug. I've been growing my own ever since and wouldn't have it any other way!

[MedicalTentGrower101]

I read Jorge Cervantes' Books'

[galt]

In the late 1990's, there was no facebook. There was no web forum software like vBulletin. There was barely a web and Netscape made the number one browser. But there was usenet. It was almost an email protocol, but not quite. There were redundant servers and anything posted to one server would propagate thruout the world over a few hours time. There was no such thing as encrypted web. And email security was a big concern. So we learned to use pgp encryption, and used anonymizers to email comments into one of the usenet servers, who would then decrypt it and post it. There were two groups. alt.drugs.pot.cultivation and alt.drugs.pot.cultivation.hydroponics No sub-groups, just threads.

We named SOG and refined it. We invented SCROG. LST was just bending. Hybrids were new, and feminized seed was only an idea a few people were tinkering with. Autoflowering was accidental and annoying. Ordering seeds was shaky, and new seedbanks ripped off lots of people. But usenet friends would sometimes mail you a seeded bud or two, so you could try it out, and then grow it out if you liked it. Domestic mail was still safe to use. It was a small community, you knew who was smart. We had few posers, and less fake experts. We had a community-authored FAQ for new members.

[catbuds]

Came from MANY generations of W.V. mountain folk. Organic farmers each & every one. Its a plant. Plant diseases can look a little different on your grow than in the garden, ok, so you get used to that. They flower on a 12/12 photoperiod, ok. Get to know your NPK & what it means, when your plants need a change (from nitrogen to phosphors). Now go grow something. Fine tune here & there, learn from your mistakes. Been there, done that before I earned my B.S. in hort. It just comes so natural to some of us, part of our natural way of life. For those who find it hard, well its usually just a matter of getting over a fear of failure.